IBM APPRENTICESHIP
There's
something I haven't told you. During the past few months I have been
beginning my apprenticeship with IBM. I started on the 29th
September 2014 and it's been quite a crazy beginning to my career.
During
the first few months of A Levels, when I was busy thinking about UCAS
and writing my personal statement, I thought I wanted to go to
university and study English Literature. At the same time, my dream
was to go into a job and not have to study full time any more as it
just didn't really interest me. Shortly after deciding not to do
English at university, I dropped it as a subject at A2 as it was
providing a lot of stress along with applying to apprenticeships. IBM
was so exciting for me and I knew about what the company were doing
to introduce the newest technology and I wanted to be part of that.
So after
the stress of A Levels and a nice 3 month break before work, I had my
induction with IBM. I had no idea what to expect when I turned up at
our hotel and conference centre, New Place. Nonetheless I was looking
forward to meeting the other apprentices after already having a
conference call with everybody to introduce us. There were 26 of us
on the course and everyone was really lovely, there were 4 girls and
22 guys. Over the two weeks we did a lot of presentation skills and
bonding. Notably the boys took me out clubbing for the first time. I
don't drink, so it was definitely a very weird experience and it was
hard to turn down the 80p vodka and cokes! A good lesson there was to
not go to work the next day on 4 hours sleep and so far I have stuck
to that rule. We went to Oceana in Southampton and because it was a
student night it was pretty good – 20 rowdy apprentices barging in
was good fun.
After
our induction, we were all sent off to our different areas of the
company onto our first roles. My first role is a test data analyst,
which is handling requests for data from projects. I'm in Swindon and
have to commute about an hour everyday which I've definitely gotten
used to. The community of apprentices here are really great and I
also have 2 'buddies', which are apprentices from around the company
that are there for you to give advice and for crisis coffee when you
need it! A really cool experience for me is when I went to visit one
of my buddy's in Hursley (Winchester) for the day, and I was able to
have a tour and meet his team which are completely different to what
we do.
Recently
I went back to my school to collect the physics prize for year 13
(because I am so great at physics) and it was really strange to go
back to my school and see other people from my year. I was positive
about the apprenticeship experience so far and everyone was asking
after what I'm doing as they're all at university. Of the people that
were from my school I only know of one other person that went to do
an apprenticeship but we weren't really friends so I don't talk to
him.
I've
found that since joining the apprenticeship scheme I've learnt these
things:
- Sometimes you have to stick out the bad things to make way for the good things;
- School is just a gateway to everything else, don't stress too much over it;
- If you fail your A Levels, the world won't collapse;
- People are curious, if you're interested in them, they'll probably show interest in you;
- Commuting is boring and hard work;
- Getting up before the sun rises is hard work;
- Extra-curricular activities make all the difference when it comes to applications;
- Building and retaining a network of people is one of the most important skills to have...unfortunately when you're out of school it's who you know, not what you know.
- Work experience provides the world of good when you're showing what you know;
- If you don't shout about how great you are, nobody will.
