A 23-year-old engineering student said she dropped out of college because she was “too pretty” for such a dull job. She has no regrets because now she is making bank as an Instagram influencer.
Too pretty to be an engineer?
“You belong in STEM” is the official slogan from the US Department of Education, which is pushing events such as the STEMconnector and Million Women Mentors Summit in Washington, D.C. to get girls and young women into STEM careers.
Yet, Raquel Llorente, a 23-year-old young woman from the UK, is walking away from her engineering degree claiming that she is “too pretty” to be in a conventional 9-to-5 job.
“I never wanted to be there in the first place,” Llorente said of her educational career path and her decision to drop out of her engineering courses at a college in Britain. She enrolled because she felt pressured to pursue a prestigious occupation that could provide her with financial stability, the New York Post reported.
“Engineers are important, but I don’t want to build a career in something I would have hated,” Llorente added.
It’s hard to stem the fact that girls will be girls
Llorente told The Sun: “I was spending all my student loans on different [cosmetic] palettes and would lose myself in make-up.”
“I was playing around with different looks and all of a sudden I’d realize five hours had passed and I had a deadline at midnight,” Llorente added. “When I did submit an essay on time, it was last minute and looked messy — but I looked great.”
Making bank as an Instagram influencer
In case you didn’t know, being a social media influencer is one of the most powerful forms of celebrity these days, leading to worldwide fame. It quite often comes with fortune as well.
Llorente started an Instagram where she began playing around with different looks, and to her surprise, the number of people following her exploded.
“I wasn’t even paying attention to the follower count,” Llorente said. “I was just having fun and doing what I usually do, but I was getting better with make-up and I felt too pretty to not be in front of a camera.”
With a booming audience – 100,000 followers in less than a year – Llorente decided to step away from a potential budding career as an engineer to become an online beauty guru and Instagram influencer.
“Now brands like ASOS reach out and want to work with me,” Llorente said. “It was only a year ago that I was buying everything I could afford from their website.”
Llorente is now a full-time beauty influencer working with the agency Ace Influencers. Besides getting paid for her endorsements, she receives thousands worth of beauty products for free.
To put things in perspective, the average salary for a full-time worker in Britain between the ages of 22-29 is £24,600 ($28,222) annually. Working as an influencer, Llorente is now bringing in about £30,000 ($34,400) a year.
Critics: Beauty doesn’t last. An education lasts a lifetime
There are many critics who think Llorente made the wrong move. “You are young now,” one commenter wrote at the New York Post. “In the blink of an eye, you will be old like me. An education lasts a lifetime. A ‘job’ on the Gram will not last. Nor will youthful looks. Bank your money, you will need it later in life.”
