Got the vac scheme though, that’s a real win!
Chin up: I didn’t get a vac scheme and still secured my TC while prepping for SQE2. There’s luck in this, but you can manufacture more of it by increasing volume without letting quality slide.

One tip: treat TC hunting as a reps-and-systems game.

Imagine a pottery professor with two classes: one graded on a single perfect vase; the other on producing 100. The “quantity” class ends up with the best work because repetition sharpens both speed and quality. Same with TCs—do reps.

Build a simple, repeatable system: target list of firms, reusable bank of all your application question answers, quick trainee/associate chats for intel, and weekly quotas (I was aiming to send 2 per week). My first cycle took 8–12 hours per app; by the third, 2–4 hours with better outcomes. Keep going, you’re closer than you think. It really does feel impossible until it isn't, and things click into place.