Unleashing Potential: My expectations, my journey and my future
I’m just coming up to the end of my apprenticeship at Unleashing Potential (a charity tech consultancy) and I thought I’d take a minute to reflect on it, but where to start?
The team I work with are bananas. We’re all very different but somehow, together, we just work (it’s a strange thing, believe me!).
We have the nerdy, fix anything and turn it into something crazy while he’s at it, type (he currently has ear defenders/warmers as headphones).
The all out weird, confusing and damn right strange type.
The exotic breakfast/lunch-loving, silent but focused type.
The guy who’s really into sports, but still manages to get injured every time he plays, type.
The boss who reckons he’s “down with the kids”. Still to be decided, but he’s getting there.. (I know he’ll be reading this, and if it makes it into the final blog, I guess you could say he’s accepted that).
And then there’s me. The only normal one of the bunch.
My mentality going into my apprenticeship, is different to the one I have now.
Very different.
My original expectations were that I’d be looked down upon by those higher than me and tasked with the rubbish jobs. You know, the fetching tea and collecting papers from the printer type of jobs?
But it’s been quite the opposite, with ‘quite’ being a massive understatement. I didn’t think I’d be able to achieve as much as I have, over such a short space of time. I’ve always been the ‘shy until we get to know each other’ kind of person. But I now find myself doing all sorts of things that the old me would deem crazy and turn away from.
These include; giving training sessions to several organisations, hosting conference calls, attending events and meeting new people.
As I’m now approaching the end of my apprenticeship, it’s finally hit me just how far I have come and how much I’ve learnt over the past 2 years. With our new strategy and the challenges that it brings, I’m looking forward to my future at Unleashing Potential and how I’m yet to develop.
So, with all this in mind, I strongly encourage anyone who’s scared about doing anything or has their doubts, to just go and do it anyway (that’s what I did).
Admittedly, reading that last part back, it doesn’t seem like the best advice to give in certain situations but you never know, you could turn out to really enjoy it!
If you have any questions about starting out as an apprentice, or you’re just interested to hear more, feel free to post your questions for Sam by commenting on the piece. And don’t forget to recommend the post to others by clicking the heart button below.
