*breathe out... and relax... again*

I'm transported back to a post I wrote back in the day about having finally finished and submitted a TMA.

So here goes... "breathe out... and relax". I passed my exam. It's subject to confirmation that I didn't try to cheat (they use your web cam and microphone to record your activity, so unless they think one of the cats was mouthing the answers to me I should be okay) but as far as the actual scoring of the test goes, I passed. By quite a good margin too.

I finished answering the questions with 17 minutes to go of my allotted 60. Foolish, you may think, that I exited the exam with so long left, but I knew if I went back through my responses I'd end up doubting myself and run the risk of mucking it all up. So I went with my gut and ended it once I'd given a response to them all.

Everyone who knew I was sitting the exam was sure I would pass, but for once, I genuinely wasn't. Perhaps my past failures have bred a more apprehensive nature in me. Perhaps I feel I've been away from education for too long now to go back. I cannot describe the relief washing over me right now knowing that I was wrong and everyone else was right.

This exam is the start of a whole new direction for me. After this I move straight on to the Practitioner level of the qualification which will see me gain the requisite skills to fully assist the project manager and potentially play more of a role in company-wide projects. But that's not all I've got planned.I have a burgeoning list of things I want to do - both qualifications I've got in the pipeline and methods, techniques and new skills I want to learn on a more auto didactic basis. I get far too carried away with myself and my incredible friend Hannah regularly tries to rein me in by telling me to concentrate on one thing at a time, and she's right. I know she's right. But I really do struggle with this.

I'm nowhere close to being in the kind of financial situation where I could afford to pick up my postgraduate studies again. I think that's a long way off to be truthful so for the time being I'll have to make the best of any alternatives that are out there to me. I have a couple of small qualifications in the running to follow on from the Prince2 Practitioner. A Green Belt in Six Sigma is next on the agenda, along with a Level 2 qualification in Lean Organisation Management Techniques. The latter is actually a BTEC. Who'd have thought - 34 years old and studying for a BTEC! The qualification is actually free via Vision2Learn and is worth 15 credit points so to be honest, I'm not going to look that particular gift horse in the mouth and it will teach me some good foundation skills for my new role. There are umpteen other things I want to do too, but I'm taking heed of Hannah's advice and concentrating on one thing at a time. I'll get these actual qualifications done and dusted first. Then, and only then, will I move onto spare-time learning and/or something bigger.

I've got to prioritise here, and episodes of learning that have tangible outcomes are by far the most sensible for me to allocate my resource to at the present time.

It's almost like I'm project managing my own progression.

A not-so-lazy Sunday afternoon ahead

I'm studying again. Well, I'm trying to study but my stupid ancient laptop keeps refusing to believe it's connected to the Internet which puts a rather big hurdle in my way. I'll have to find a way around it because I've got an exam on Sunday.

Hang on, let's rewind the calendar a bit. Let's go back to the beginning of the year.

In February I set up desk on my new team. It was a brand new team for the company working on a product unfamiliar to the company. It was quite an uncertain time to be honest; we weren't sure if the product would be a success or if our client would continue our contract beyond the initial 3 month trial period, so there was always a big question mark hovering over the team. Given this uncertainty, I tried to think of a way I could make myself slightly less dispensable to the company (having gone through redundancy less than a year earlier I didn't fancy my chances again). I looked at the company as a whole and tried to find a niche I would work my way into. That's not to say that I wouldn't go back to the team I had come from, but I preferred the idea of moving forward given that I was selected for this new team in the first place.

The niche I was looking for showed itself in the form of Project Management. I could see that some of the departments were starting to go down a project-centric route, and after a bit of research and discussion with a good friend who has a lot of PM experience, it seemed a logical and cost-effective route to go down. A website called e-Careers had an offer on their Prince2 Project Management course at the time, and so, armed with a justification in mind, I sought an audience with the Operations Manager, pitched my idea and asked if the company would be willing to fund my study. He said no. So I signed up for it anyway.

I feel I ought to add, the company did put me through a different PM course - the APM Introduction to Project Management course which proved incredibly interesting and has been quite useful, but I had already seen that a lot of PM jobs specifically asked for Prince2 so I considered it an investment in a more commonly used framework.

I sit the exam for the first part of the Prince2 qualification on Sunday, and frankly, I'm nervous. Given my sudden exit from education and the massive change in career path since, I have concerns over my ability to do this. I've fallen into the world of business purely by accident and find myself frantically waving my arms around trying to figure out where I am. What if I fail at something as basic as this? What if I've just been out of the education game for too long now?

If I manage to pass this first Foundation level, then I move on to the Practitioner level of the qualification which is slightly more involved. But given that I was made up to 'Training and Project Lead' only a month or so ago I really need to make this happen. My manager gave me this role with the knowledge that I'm doing my Prince2 course, so in my head the continuation of this role is contingent on me gaining this qualification. It's probably not, and even with the knowledge I have I can provide support to the Projects Officer, but I'll be of far greater use if I get this qualification.

I dearly hope I manage to pull it together on Sunday. There's more resting on it than I can bring myself to put down in writing just yet, and passing it will undoubtedly unearth the thirst in me that I thought was buried the day I withdrew from Durham Uni.

I have plans. Big plans. Once again I'm trying to forge a path into my future that leads somewhere and doesn't just meander through the troughs and valleys I'm so familiar with. Finally, someone has pointed a finger in a direction completely new and uncharted to me but the proverbial grass is so lush over here and I'm truly loving it.

I really need to pass this exam on Sunday. It's the catalyst for a truly exciting looking future.

A Little Miss Management

So once again I'm finding myself at another fork in the career road. Not long after making it to Deputy Team Manager (a role I had been coveting for a good few months), my ops manager threw me a curve ball. I had tried to prepare myself for a journey into management; joined the Chartered Management Institute and was about to start some volunteering, subscribed to some management newsletters and was trying to figure out ways of improving my technique so that I could make myself a better manager than I was giving myself credit for.

And then the curve ball hit. In the summer the company put me through a Train the Trainer course and I became one of a group of people the company could call upon to deliver training. I haven't actually carried out any company-wide training because of time-restraints within the team, but I've done a lot of training and presentations for my department, and it turns out I'm actually pretty darned good at it. Even earlier than the TTT course it had obviously become apparent to the ops manager that I have a bit of talent when it comes to writing training programmes, juggling departmental figures and coming up with ways to try and improve processes in the team, because about 2 months ago the ops manager asked if I'd like to take a side-step away from management and into training. It's something that the group who owns the company had identified as a 'high priority need', and given my knowledge of the department and my apparent skill at training etc. I seemed the obvious choice; after all, it's probably easier to back fill a management position than find someone else to do training.

I had to give it some serious, I must admit. The thought of standing in front of groups of people day in, day out, delivering training fills me with dread. Just because I'm good at something, doesn't mean I enjoy it. I'm much more interested in the juggling the figures side of it, and the - what I loving refer to as - fiddling about with spreadsheets. I was firmly assured that my expectations of the role were right and that I wasn't going to be delivering training constantly (although it would be a bit part of my role in various forms), so I graciously accepted. After a 6-or-so week lead-in so far with another 2 month handover to the new DTM ahead of me, on Monday 1st December  I 'officially' start my new role as Training and Project Lead.

In the 6-or-so weeks since I accepted I've written down a hundred different areas I want to focus on; areas I'm aware need some attention to improve processes / quality / efficiency on the team and I'm itching to get started and put my head-bursting amount of ideas to some kind of practical use.

The difficulty with it all is that it's yet another side step for me. I'm worried that I'm going to end up taking so many side steps that I'll never move forward. The saving grace this time is that I was actually INVITED to do this by a manager. Someone actually recognised some skill or talent in me and invited me to do this before it was even on the table as an option. I had been almost blindly following down the management path because I thought it was the only real option within the team and in my haste to get somewhere I just kept on going. It's only now that this new option was given to me that I see why it's a far more suitable choice and one I'm more likely to be able to develop into something better. THIS is my chance. The management route has developed me in ways I couldn't have expected within the last 10 months. It has given me a certain confidence in myself and an assurance of my ability to lead but it's not really for me. I'm not saying I wouldn't have made a great manager because to be honest, I think I would've. I COULD'VE done it, but as I said earlier, there's a difference between being good at something and enjoying it and I don't think I would've truly enjoyed management. I see now that I like getting to the end of the day and having something to show for my day's work. You rarely get that in management because most of your day is spent checking other people's work and making sure your team is doing their job and the client is happy. In this new role I'll have something tangible to show for my efforts - a new training material or feedback sheets from a training session I've carried out, or some completed documents for a project I'm working on. It's measurable, and I'm all about measuring progress.

I'm just hoping that my enthusiasm and skill for the job will keep me moving forward. It's really difficult at this stage to see where it might lead and I'm having to stop myself thinking too much about it because it will drive me mad. For the time being I'm just going to have to get on with it and make sure I do it well and hope that it will naturally lead to something in the future.

I preach to the analysts in my team that if you want to get noticed and if you want progression, the best thing you can do is carry on doing your normal job, but do it REALLY well. You're far more likely to get notice for doing your actual job better than anyone else than for volunteering for all and sundry but doing a half-baked job if it. It's about time I started practising what I preach.

The Laws of Serendipity

"Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there wondering, fearing,
Doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before;"

When hubby and I were on holiday a couple of years back we were walking along a beach on the Arbroath coast and saw an entrance to what looked like a cave.

We got to the entrance and stared into the pitch blackness in front of us. It could have been infinite. We had only the faint flash on hubby's phone to guide us through and had no idea of the terrain we would face under-foot or if it even led anywhere. We shuffled into the entrance, me squeezing his hand so hard as if letting go of it would see me somehow plunged into the murky depths of hell. Onward we shuffled, upwards, further into the darkness until we began to bear left, tracing the wall as we went. On a sharp bend in the wall suddenly it was there, right in front of us as if it always had been - light!

The S-shape of the cave meant that light couldn't pass around the corners and resulted in the pitch-blackness we entered into. In fact, the cave was very short and joined on to another secret beach at the other side which was like a little private oasis. What originally seemed like such a frightening prospect (I'm petrified of the dark) turned out to be short-lived and unworthy of such fear.

As my head begins to fill up with thoughts about studying business and how to go about it, I sort of feel like I'm at the mouth of the cave again. It's pitch black. I've no idea what the terrain is like. I've even less idea what's on the other side of it, but if I stay where I am I'll always be where I've always been.

And so I'm taking this leap of faith and stepping into an unknown world. Having experienced what can be on the other side of the cave, I freely admit to feeling a bit excited at where this might lead, but I'm also fearful that with no glimmer of light to guide me, I might just lose my footing.

... Of Mice And Men

"The best-laid schemes o' mice an' men

Gang aft agley,

An' lea'e us nought but grief an' pain,

For promis'd joy!"

My life never ceases to astound me.

In the last eighteen months it has become an unrecognisable beast barely resembling its former self. I just had to roll with the punches as they were blown at me, ducking for cover when needed and grappling to adapt to the new arena I found myself fighting in.

I didn't finish my Masters degree at Durham uni. I had to withdraw from my second degree at the OU. I don't work for the building firm I'd spent nine years at and I'm now a married woman.

A lot can change in eighteen months. I found that out during what turned out to be the most dichotomous time of my life. I won't go into detail because it's neither necessary nor interesting. Suffice to say my life is somewhat different now, some in a positive way and some in a negative way. But even the negatives aren't necessarily bad.

In February 2013 I got made redundant. The firm I'd been at for just shy of nine years no longer had a place for me and so I was given eight weeks to find a new job. After five weeks I started a new job as an analyst for a private medico-legal firm and as of this month I find myself a newly appointed deputy team manager looking after a team of thirty on the path to becoming a team manager.

Where did that come from? How did I find myself suddenly involved in the world of business? One minute I'm studying with the hope of becoming a social science researcher and then I find myself doing daily MI reports and worrying about SLAs and talking about my team in terms of FTEs. How did my career take such a big turnaround, and most importantly, how do I feel about it?

The truth is, I'm annoyed. I'm annoyed that I'm enjoying this job far more than any I've had before. I'm annoyed that I'm looking forward to what the coming months have in store for me. I'm annoyed because I'd never considered business as a potential career option before and I'm actually really enjoying it.

I remember my schoolmates taking Business Studies as a GCSE option and me sniggering at them behind their backs because it sounded so boring. Twenty years later they're having the last laugh because now my thoughts are turning toward resuming my efforts at an education but - to coin the American phrase - switching majors to Business.

A great and inspirational friend of mine has an MBA - the ultimate accolade for an aspiring business student. She works for The Open University and so was able to gain the qualification at no cost - one of the many perks of working for such a brilliant institution. Unfortunately for me, an MBA would come at a very high price, somewhere in the region of £15,000 (which I simply cannot afford). So for now, a self-funded MBA is out of the question.

So. If I want to continue my educational journey and delve deeper into the world of business what are my alternatives?

Dear anonymous student

Dear anonymous student.

No, you don’t know me. You may have seen me or my face spewed somewhere on the Internet but you don’t really know me, but I know you. I’ve followed your progress for a number of years now and wanted to let you know how inspiring you have been to me, albeit unknowingly.

You’ve achieved so much with so much left to do; I’m in utter awe of you for your mindset. I wish I could be more like that – driven, determined and capable but instead I have only stubbornness and jealousy to push me on. They have worked sufficiently well thus far however I fear my grace period may be coming to an end and if I want to succeed it will require a completely different kind of person to any I could ever possibly hope to be. This, my anonymous friend, may be the end of my road.

People often say to me things like “I don’t know how you fit it all in!” referring to my work/studies/extra-curricular activities but in truth I’m just trying to be more like you. My impatience to catch up forces me to flood my life with more than I can realistically cope with but I’m so desperate to get to the end I’ve convinced myself I can manage. Is there an end? Am I chasing a myth? I wouldn’t expect you to respond to me and even if you did your words would probably provide little relief to my anguished state.

You seem so composed and able to cope with it all, is this truth? Behind closed doors do you battle with self-doubt and feelings of frustration like the rest of us? I have a pristine image in my head of you as untainted by the negativity that blights my own progress but the reality is no doubt different. I suspect this because I know it to be true of my own self - despite my weekly ramblings about struggling with motivation and my continual self-deprecation people focus on the positives and see that I am in fact making progress in spite of myself. How do they do that? How do they choose to ignore the negatives? Perhaps the same way I so admire you; I want need someone to ‘look up to’, someone to compare myself to so that when the doubt begins to set in I can refocus my efforts by looking to someone like me who CAN cope.

It’s funny though isn’t it, that you don’t know me. It occurs to me that I’m presenting myself in a somewhat stalker-like manner but let me assure you that’s not the case. My progress thrives on comparisons and emulation so please, consider it a compliment from me that I respect your ambition and intellect. I hope to one day be in a similar position and would be beyond thrilled if someone were following my progress and finding inspiration from my doings so take assurance that my admiration for you is just that.

The last two years of my life have been a cyclone of activity and they have seen an incredible shift in my attitude towards my remaining days on this mortal coil. I will be a long time working and I don’t relish the prospect of waking up full of resentment every day until I retire. This proved to be my greatest epiphany and I owe thanks, in part, to you.

Your silent and unknowing support has been beneficial to me in ways you will never discover. You have helped me make sense of the myriad mental images floating around in my glue-filled head of the different versions of myself I have dared to imagine over countless unfulfilled years. I can now focus those thoughts into something resembling a coherent plan and although I still have a lot of emotional mess going on up there I’m beginning to cope with it all and can now see the light at the end of the proverbial tunnel.

Thank you, anonymous student. I am indebted to you.

Yours, with admiration,

Me.

Good news and bad news all rolled into one.

It turns out that mountain biking was a very fruitful hobby to have taken up those many moons ago and has provided me with some very clever and useful brains to pick regarding PhD applications.

The initial group of mountain bikers I went out with in 2006 included a young lad who was studying at Newcastle University, he was 25 years old, a great mountain biker and intelligent beyond his years. He's now 31 years old and is a lecturer in Economic Geography at Northumbria University and more importantly he has agreed to help me through the painful PhD application process. I invited Dr Jon Swords over for tea (that's 'dinner' or 'supper' depending on how posh and non-Northern you are, not simply a cup of tea) with the agreement that I could barrage him with questions and to his word, he's answered all of them honestly which means I got both good and bad news from his visit.

The bad news is that I really need to be completely realistic about how competitive the studentship competition is. I knew that already, I mean you can't ignore how many different places and people tell you how much competition there is for places but it's something I need to reinforce. I need to be thinking about what to do post-MA now based on the assumption that I won't be starting on a PhD. The rapidly approaching prospect of being made redundant in March just adds extra impetus to that need.

Another potential negative which I've only just started thinking about recently is that I don't know exactly when I'm expected to finish my MA. The Durham uni website says that part time it takes "2 years plus completion of dissertation". What does that mean? Is that 2 years or 3 years or 2 years plus an extra term?? When am I due to finish it? If I get an extra term or longer then I won't have finished it by the time the PhD would be due to begin thus surely meaning I wouldn't be able to start it? That's something I need to find out for definite from the PG office because ultimately this may scupper my plans entirely so I've emailed the PG secretary to find out but she's unavailable until Monday. Slightly missed deadlines scuppering my plans wouldn't surprise me at all, after all, they're the reason I couldn't do my MA/MSc with the Open University (they withdrew all PG Soc Sci provision just as I was about to finish my BSc - I missed the final registration by 6 weeks). Sometimes it really does suck being a part time student; very little is coordinated properly to suit you and you get far less of the benefits of being a student (many associations don't grant you concessionary membership rates unless you're a full timer, as if somehow those of us who work full time, study part time and pay our tuition fees up front must surely have the financial wherewithal to pay the standard rates).

So there are two negatives - one potentially plan-blowing but I'll not dwell too much on it for now otherwise I'll just upset myself.

Oh the plus side, Jon seemed to think there might be some mileage in my ideas. The two ideas I have don't seem to have been directly researched so a literature review will have to draw on adjacent research to show how mine would 'fill the gap'. Each idea could go in about a dozen directions so that's something I would need to narrow down. He's suggested that I get in touch with a potential supervisor asap - as he rightly said, if applications close in February then allowing for time off over Christmas then marking in the new year etc. it doesn't leave a lot of time for an academic to speak to students so I'll get an email sent off to the lecturer I have in mind this weekend.

Huge thanks to Jon for his sound advice, I don't think pizza and belated birthday cake quite made up for the wisdom he passed on so I greatly appreciate it.

It's all a bit much for me at the minute truth be told. Imminent redundancy and the need to start serious job-hunting, the fast-approaching deadline for PhD applications along with the possibility of not even being eligible to apply, and ongoing studies with looming assignment deadlines are all just sapping away my emotional stability and will soon leave me a gibbering wreck. The job situation is the worst. I fear I may be served my notice any day now and to be completely truthful I'm not qualified to do anything yet so I don't even know what jobs I should be looking for.

I'm in limbo. No man's land. That awful place where I need a new job but am too far away from having a qualification which might just enable me to get a job I like. At the minute I'm not really qualified to do anything, and I suppose to be honest, even if I was the job situation in the North East of England is dire at the minute so you never know, next time you call into Greggs for a corned beef pasty it might just be me serving you.