How did your experiences with education set you up for a career? What choices did you make? What advice can you give to people starting out at the beginning of their working life?
Posted by: John Gibbs-Newton | 16.08.2009 10:58am
I suppose I am nearly at the end of my careers - but who knows? However I still remember the day I was inspired for my first career. I was 14, it was on a school trip, in 1961 at Easter when we were taken to Pompei in Italy. I can still taste the dust, feel the heat, hear the broken English of the guide and see the incredible sight of the town buried in ash nearly 2000 years earlier. What builders the Romans must have been to have planned such a beautifully laid out town with all the facilities that anyone could need and do it so well that it would survive so intact after all those years. 5 years later I found myself as a builder's labourer, migrated into management and later into many other things (computing, engineering, logistics, business consultancy). But it all started on that day, although I might not have realised it at that time.
It is therefore ironic or perhaps fate or even the reason why I do what I do now - head an organisation that has at its core providing real experiences in for young people in real places of work for the purposes of education and career information. The Industrial Trust has done this for over 185,000 teachers and students. And we know from the feedback how successful this is in providing insights to the reality of the world of work, the relevance of classroom learning and opportunities available for careers. Videos, websites, textbooks, leaflets all have their place but real inspiration comes from exposure of all the senses to reality.