The first thing to stress is a third is not a fail. If you had failed the year, you would be retaking it rather than progressing to your second year.
When your at a uni at Oxford, you get into a little competitive bubble where supposedly everyone is doing all the flash internships in their first/second years and securing graduate jobs before they get into their final year. The reality is that the majority of people don’t do this. You only hear about the people who are securing these things rather than those who have not and so the perception is that everyone is doing it.
As a non law student, you are early to the game. Yes, there are some firms who would take you on this year as a penultimate year student, but they are actually a minority. Most firms would not take you on until you are a finalist or graduate as a non-law student.
So there is going to be plenty of time and opportunity to achieve your goals. It is not all going to come down to what happens in the next 6 months or so. You can apply to opportunities as a finalist and although I know you don’t have formal exams in second year, you can use any other informal grading systems to show your academic performance/improvement/consistency. If you have to resit your first year module, you will also have an improved grade for that too.
And even then it sounds like you have some mitigating circumstances to your failed module too, and if you do have extenuating circumstances to that, that the university can/will verify, then that will help you in the future too.
I have seen enough people with a similar academic profile to you secure TCs. They usually just are the ones who aren’t securing them as a second year student. But considering the average trainee is 28 years old, clearly most people are not securing them as a second year undergraduate.
You’ve got plenty of time and you’ve still got this!
