I thought that I would currently be in my second year of college studying Health and Social care with hopes that I could eventually become a midwife. That was the plan anyway, but that's not how things played out for me. Instead I have a job, responsibilities and barely any fun.
Now I didn't do very well in school, I think I have said before that I barely passed five of my 13 GCSE (General Certificate of Secondary Education) exams and I know that this happened because I put in little to no effort, at all. Looking back a little over a year later I can see how foolish that was of me.
Living in this world and finding your place in it is not an easy task, to know what you want to do and what you will enjoy for your entire working life is one of the most daunting tasks anyone will go through, EVER - even if you think you know what you want to do. I thought that I knew what I wanted to do with my life - I thought that I wanted to deliver babies into the world or to aid the premature-born to survive and ideally that would have been perfect for me.
I started at college (And educational facility for the two years between secondary school - 11 years old to 16 years old - and University - 18 years +) just like the rest of the people in my year at school did, with the intentions to like it, make new friends and learn things that I wanted to learn about (and not have to argue on a daily basis about why I am going to need Pythagoras theorem and poetic techniques to survive in life). I found that as much as college gives you more of a choice about what you can study, everything else about it reminded me of school. Every other person there was no different to the people I was in school with a few months before and I really couldn't get on with it. I started testing the boundaries, how far each teacher I had would let me push them and soon I stopped attending classes altogether.
It took some time getting my mum to understand that I wasn't happy at college and that I wanted to drop out. I wasn't all too clear with myself let alone with her about why I wanted to drop out and that made it hard for her to see my point of view. Once I had realized and told her that it was because I didn't like my course and the people on it she came around to the idea that I wasn't in education anymore, she let me know what responsibilities I would then be taking on - I would have to start looking for a job and basically become an adult.
After applying for a few apprenticeship posts and having two interviews with a few more set up I was offered a job in which I would get the opportunity to get a level 2 NVQ (National Vocational Qualification) in Business and Administration. A level 2 qualification is equivalent to a GCSE and being that I didn't have too many of those to brag about, I grabbed that opportunity with both hands and that was the best decision I have ever made!
Now the 'barely any fun' that I referenced at the beginning of this post is that I am in a professional environment for most of my day so I rarely get the chance to intermix with other people my age - this then means that I only have the friends that have stayed in touch with me from school who all have their own new friends, lots of course work and part time jobs to do, so seeing them happens less frequently than a full moon!
In spite of this I have really been able to see the amount that I have grown as a person, it's incredulous to me that I have been able to achieve even the smallest of things like pick up a phone to a strange purposefully and keep my shit together. Now, I feel that I am nowhere near where I want to be in life - partly because I don't quite know where that is yet however I now know some of the things that I want to be able to do and to try out with my career - now its just to figure out my next step.
Natasha
