
At 26 years old, Mel Aquilina is celebrating his first year at Bleutrade who forms part of the Marketing team, particularly in the field of social media marketing and content creation/planning. On this special day, Bleutrade is shining its spotlight on Mel, to let him write some words on his life journey up until now and his experience on working with Bleutrade.
“I remember this one particular day in secondary school, I must have been around 12 or 13, when our school organised a careers day. After waiting in line for what felt like my entire lifetime behind all my friends to talk to a complete stranger, it was my turn to face my future. As soon as I sat down in front of him, intimidated to say the least, he asked that dreaded question,and I froze. I knew I wanted to work in business just because I aspired to be as great as my mum could be since she worked in a bank, that is all I could think of. At the end of the day, I left more confused than ever before.
As soon as I entered Junior College, I knew however that I had made the right choice. On a bright yet cold summer day in Autumn, I had my first ever marketing class and that changed everything. I’m not as yet sure if it was the subject that caught my attention immediately or maybe it’s because we were assigned with the best lecturer one could ever dream of. Mr. Mifsud was a gem! We used to sit in class and debate the subject rather than him just reading lines after lines and us just scribbling away in our note pads. He made the subject feel like it controlled everything out there, which is why I loved the field so much. What we studied in class, you could see happening in the outside world.
During this time of my life, new social media platforms were being introduced. Ironically I was very hesitant to create my own profiles. I distinctly remember my teenage years when MySpace was incredibly popular with all my friends yet I never felt the need to join. Oh how the times have changed. My love for marketing continued to flourish when I started my Bachelor of Commerce course at the University of Malta. I will always cherish those 4 years of meeting assignment deadlines, preparing for what felt like a trillion presentations and exams each year, doing all nighters to study for particularly difficult subjects and sitting at cafes with friends while working on group reports. I remember feeling a sense of melancholy as we stepped out of our last exam at the end of our 4th year as this journey had, unfortunately, come to an end.
In a few days ago I will be celebrating my first year at Bleutrade and what an experience this has been. Not only am I working within an industry that is clearly creating the path of how future technologies and applications will be executed, I am also surrounded by insanely talented colleagues. I had the opportunity to meet the rest of the team in Brazil which was the highlight of my year. Being immersed in a completely different culture allows oneself to think outside the box and reach new levels of creativity. Furthermore, I get to work with the Marketing team particularly within elements that surround social media by creating engaging content through different platforms for our audiences.
I guess it is true what they say; find a job that you’ll love and you’ll never have to work another day in your life. If I have one piece of advice for anyone out there struggling to find their way in life it would be this; take your time. It doesn’t really matter that it takes you longer to find exactly what you really want to aspire to be. Find exactly where your true passion lies and work with that. Life has a funny way of guiding you in the right direction if you work hard enough.”
