Career Goals

This is it!  It has been a hard slog, it has taken a long time, but it has finally come to fruition.  It is six days shy of the two-year milestone that saw me wrestle back control of my career, leaving my comfortable job in the retail sector, and taking myself out into the world on a gamble.  I had a plan to fill my CV with experience, voluntary at first, and to meet professional people who would help, advise and equip me for the world of work in press and communications.  It was a frightening experience, to leave the security of an (albeit low-paid) salary, and it took an exhausting amount of energy to constantly make contact with press managers, communication officers and news editors, to meet new people, jump in at the deep end of new working experiences, and hope like hell that I just didn’t sink.  But today; this is it, this is what the last two years have been about; today, I finally landed my permanent contract.

Me in 2012 (source: HR Made Easy Blog)

I remember settling down one morning in May 2012, sending out dozens of emails to offices across the country with offers of free work, in exchange for a learning experience.  Back came the rejections – messages apologising that there was simply no time, no workspace, not enough work...  But hidden in the 95% of “no thanks” replies, there was the odd yes that gave me encouragement.  Tony, press manager at the RSPB, an organisation close to my heart, gave me a good bit of training on writing press releases.  The Exeter Express and Echo and the Plymouth Herald let me loose on their news desks to write up some lighter stories on lifeboats, school visits, and tea cosy competitions.  Tim, the Torquay United press manager, gave me a match day with him, so I could learn the processes behind the hectic communications of a League football club.  Liz, the University of Exeter press manager, offered me some valuable days writing up research stories from across the institution.  And Andrew, Communications Manager at Mid Devon District Council, could not have been more accommodating in introducing me to the busy communications and press liaison side of local government.  This placement was particularly fruitful, leading as it did to a three-month paid position – the first time I was paid for such work, and a sure sign that I was climbing the ladder.

Phoenix House, Tiverton, home of Mid Devon District Council (Source: Mid Devon News Centre) 

Onwards and upwards.  As my short-term contract drew to a close with the Council (and I was told, had it been any other time except the austere period we are now living through, I would have been given a permanent job), I was approached by the University of Exeter to work on a temporary contract in their communications team.  Naturally I jumped at the chance, and have now been in the role for nearly a year, receiving my permanent contract of employment today.  I never thought I’d find a job I love, but I have lucked into a sector I enjoy, at an institution that is world-class, and with supportive colleagues from whom I learn much every day.  And all right on my doorstep!

 

Northcote House, University of Exeter

So what did I learn, and why did I write this blog?  The last 24 months have been really tough going – money has always been tight (voluntary work pays surprisingly poorly!), worry has been high, and there have been days where this whole project has felt aimless and impossible.  On these days, I have learned the importance of tenacity, the willingness to fight on and on and on, to never give up, to keep searching for new opportunities.  During the last two years, I have become fiercely protective of my career, in a way I never understood before, because it has taken so much effort, time, money, and sleepless nights to build up to this point.  The experience I have gained has defined me, it has changed me, and I have learned from it both professionally and personally.

But in a larger sense, this hasn’t just been about me – my beautiful girlfriend Lizzie has waited with the patience of a saint, never wavering, utterly supportive and believing in my endeavor, even in the times when I felt it was failing in me.  We have been through the austerity of this experience together, and although it took me longer than first anticipated, we know it’s all worth it.  Because we know that this isn’t just a job, and it isn’t just a contract.  It could mean a mortgage.  And that would mean a home.  With a kitchen and an oven, a garden to grow vegetables, and lounge wallpaper that excites you because you chose it yourself.  It's the pillow that your head hits at the end of the day, knowing that your hard work bought it, that it’s yours because you earned it.

Delighted, relieved, proud, ecstatic, tearful.  These are all words that could apply today.  But topping them all, the loudest of emotions, and the one I vow I’ll take with me every single day – grateful.  Grateful for the opportunity to make a change.  Grateful for the support of those around me.  Grateful that it all ended up this way.

I know I am, I'm sure I am, I'm Torquay 'til I die

Am I the only person in the world who owns both a Torquay United shirt and an Eastleigh shirt?  The Gulls versus the Spitfires is not exactly a fixture I ever expected to see, but such is the pyramid of English football, that next year, this match will become a reality.

So, why do I own an Eastleigh shirt?  My dad spent a large part of his teenage life living in the Hampshire town, my grandparents lived there for over forty years, and my Grandad proudly built spitfires there during the Second World War.  In my childhood, Eastleigh was our holiday place, the destination of that annual August pilgrimage to Grandma and Grandad's and, on one such trip, we took in a match at the Silverlake Stadium, watching Eastleigh versus East Thurrock.

Fast forward fifteen-or-so years, and back at the Home of Football on the English Riviera, our beloved club has dropped out of the Football League for the second time in ten years.  Some view it as a crisis, but whilst I'm not ecstatic at the prospect of Conference football, I must admit there's a certain exoticism about Nuneaton, Welling, and Alfreton Town that you certainly won't find in the Football League.  You might be able to detect the slight hint of sarcasm in that last sentence, but the fact is that this is a (non) league populated by familiar foes with proud League histories, and we'll be locking horns with some decent clubs next season - Cambridge United, Grimsby Town, FC Halifax Town (the incarnation of the Shaymen of old), Kidderminster Harriers, Macclesfield Town, Wrexham, Aldershot Town, Hereford United...  My point is that the enjoyment of football needn't end with exit from the Football League; underneath is an interesting, intriguing world in which, for the first (nay, second) time in our history, we will be one of the bigger fish in the pond.  We should embrace this opportunity and re-build, tackle it head-on, hold our heads high, fight to regain our place in the 92, and look for a quick bounce-back.  And why not - we've done it before!

The events of late have led me to delve into my little box of football history for a trip down the memory lane.  Following the Gulls has never been an easy ride, and things seldom happen the straightforward way at Plainmoor, but in amongst the pain and suffering there are gems, up there with the best feelings that any supporter of any club will ever feel.  Through nearly twenty years of old programmes, newspaper articles, old tickets and photos documenting promotions, relegations, cup runs and come-backs, are memories spanning the whole spectrum of what the Beautiful Game is all about - one minute your team are running out at White Hart Lane, the next you're marvelling at just how bad York City's toilet facilities (I mean, a damp old brick wall) really are.  It all adds up the genuine football experience that is totally lost on the corporate, money-centric business that is the Premier League, but I know what I'd rather have - my little club, down by the sea, doing it the hard way, but doing it with plenty of heart.

 They say that it is always darkest before the dawn, so keep the faith, Yellow Army, remember your history and keep on fighting, for the sun will rise over Plainmoor again - We will be back!

Back to where it all began

"Was I to believe him in earnest in his intention to penetrate to the centre of this massive globe?  

Had I been listening to the mad speculations of a lunatic, or to the scientific conclusions 

of a lofty genius?  Where did the truth stop?  Where did error begin?"  

(Axel, in Jules Verne's classic, Journey to the Centre of the Earth).

Come with me on a journey, back before time - before houses and cars, before agriculture, before spaceships and television, to the dawn of modern man, to a place where our forefathers hunted big game on the plains, where Homo sapiens lived alongside Neanderthals, and people shared their homes with bears, mammoths, and sabre-toothed cats.  It is a place little-changed over millions of years, a place we could almost ignore as we travel around, absorbed in our daily lives.  Yet, it is a place of stunning beauty, international importance, and a deep, humbling reminder of our fragile existence and our ever-changing time.  On a day when the sun and clouds played out an almighty battle in the heavens, Lizzie and I took a tour of the palaeontological, archaeological, historical and geological jewel that is Kents Cavern in Torquay.  

Our early forefathers

Kents Cavern is just about as old as it gets; there is nowhere in the UK where we could possibly step any further back in time.  This observation alone is enough to focus the mind, but what also strikes me about this cave system is its staggering beauty.  Nature has created, over vast amounts of time, a stunning showcase of its power. Stalactites cling fast to the ceilings, stalagmites grow slowly, but surely and steadily, from the floor.  Rainwater penetrates the cave, permeating the Devonian limestone with little urgency, creating the constant tap-tap of water droplets, each particle leaving its own microscopic mark on the cave's structure and appearance.  It is this rainwater that delivers minerals into the cave, and from which the cave derives its reddish-brown colouring, the result of Iron Oxide deposits.

The deepest part of the Kents Cavern system

Stalagmites in the cave

How wide-eyed must the first modern explorers to this cave have been, upon seeing the wondrous interior. Father John MacEnery's team, who conducted the cave's first excavations between 1824 and 1829, would of course have worked by candlelight, scarcely noticing the interior in all its glory.  What they did discover, however, were flint tools, found in the same contexts as the bones of extinct prehistoric animals, and a prehistoric human upper jawbone, recently dated to be over 40,000 years old, the earliest anatomically modern human fossil discovered in Northwest Europe.  MacEnery's work was unpopular and controversial in its day - he left the cave in 1830, and never published his findings.  It would be another 16 years before the caves would be explored again, when William Pengelly brought his own systematic excavation to the cave system.  Over many years, Pengelly undertook a full exploration of the cave, plotting the position of every bone, flint and artefact he discovered - a method of archaeological excavation that put him decades ahead of his time.  From his tireless efforts, our knowledge and understanding of our common origins, and the international importance of Kents Cavern, were established.  Pengelly is recorded as a true hero, both to archaeologists and Devonians (although he, of course, was Cornish.)

McEnery

Pengelly

It almost seems like a cruel trick of nature that what lies within Kents Cavern would not be open or accessible to the public, had it not been for the fantastic efforts of Victorian archaeologists, and I wonder how many unknown caves still exist in our landscape, how much is still undiscovered, even on our densely-populated island, with all the technology we now have at our disposal.  We're lucky - really lucky - to have this resource right on our doorstep, and I'm looking forward to repeat visits, whenever the urge takes me to take a trip back in time, to where it all began.