I re-met someone I used to know, today.<\/p>\n
It was about 8.15am.<\/p>\n
I was sitting on my desk, putting together a network diagram for a lump of infrastructure I’m working on.<\/p>\n
A shape wandered up to my desk and said my name.<\/p>\n
I refocused my attention away from the technical drawing.<\/p>\n
The person said ‘We were at college together’…<\/p>\n
*Scooby Doo flashback*<\/p>\n
I was fairly new in to a role, and it didn’t take my employer too long to realise that I would probably benefit from some work-related education.<\/p>\n
So I was signed up for a two year, day-release course at the City of Bath College, aiming for an HNC in Business Studies.<\/p>\n
‘Day release’ is an interesting label in this context.<\/p>\n
Yes, I was given a paid day away from the office, in order to attend college.<\/p>\n
But the day started at 9am and the last module concluded at 7.30pm.<\/p>\n
Add on to these hours\u00a0the two project-based assignments\u00a0we had to complete\u00a0each week.<\/p>\n
Additionally, my employer\u00a0expected me to keep up with my normal weekly workload, during my four days in the office.<\/p>\n
If I left that job within two years of completing the course, I was expected to pay back all course fees.<\/p>\n
So really, my employer was doing fairly well out of this arrangement.<\/p>\n
The course achieved its goal.<\/p>\n
Not only did I come out of the far end of the process a better-educated person, I also had more awareness about technical-, and business-related niceties.<\/p>\n
I also had\u00a0an understanding of hitherto unexplored areas such as marketing, law, media, and so on.<\/p>\n
The course gave me something else.<\/p>\n
A desire for more.<\/p>\n
I came straight out of that course and began preparing for the next things I wanted to learn more about.<\/p>\n
Not a career path – that’s always been an unplanned passage.<\/p>\n
No, I was planning my next course(s).<\/p>\n
Cookery.<\/p>\n
And then plumbing.<\/p>\n
And then, after a year of these practical, hands-on studies, a return to more academic, post-HNC subjects.<\/p>\n
This\u00a0internally-driven interest to learn stuff\u00a0still hasn’t finished.<\/p>\n
I continue to peck away at a degree in English Literature and Language with the OU.<\/p>\n
Just for fun.<\/p>\n
I really need to sit down and crack on with that.<\/p>\n
I reckon that if I took six months off from work, I’d have it nailed.<\/p>\n
And I’d have the grades I want.<\/p>\n
Because a pass is not good enough.<\/p>\n
I’m very competitive.<\/p>\n
Against myself.<\/p>\n
But for me to give that course the full attention I feel it deserves, I would really need to have no other distractions on my radar.<\/p>\n
Yeah, right.<\/p>\n
But I would like to finish it.<\/p>\n
I have a very entertaining paper to write on Blake’s Jerusalem, in which I rip to pieces the widely-held misconception of the true meaning of the lyrics, and nail the song firmly to the mast for what it is: one of the greatest revolutionary, anti-establishment works ever written.<\/p>\n
Hint: If you think it’s really about factories, look at it again.<\/em><\/p>\n That would annoy a few people.<\/p>\n The Last Night of The Proms-goers. The fervent jam-makers at the WI.<\/p>\n And a political party or two.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I re-met someone I used to know, today. It was about 8.15am. I was sitting on my desk, putting together a network diagram for a<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10569","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-stuff","two-columns"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10569","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10569"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10569\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10569"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10569"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10569"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}