Over the summer I managed to get a 2 week internship at a leading Manchester Digital Media agency called The Reading Room. I applied following a free guest lecture by their Director Garry. The lecture should have been of interest to at least 200 students, but unfortunately at least 195 of them were busy that day. This was the chance of a brief lecture on how to get a job in digital media, being offered to digital media students, free of charge and on campus, but only 5 of us turned up. Fortunately there were 4 members of staff to boost the numbers. Part of me wondered what on earth was wrong with people, but most of me just thought that I'd stand a better chance of getting an internship if most of my future competition had better things to do.(Getting a bit mercenary in my old age)
When I was 13 I wanted a career in hairdressing and signed up for 2 weeks work experience at a local salon. By lunchtime on the first day I knew for a fact that I most definitely did NOT want to be a trainee hairdresser. By default trainees, particularly those on work experience, are not allowed to do much. It's mostly sweeping up and brewing up. The most important part of work experience is spending time in the environment that you intend to work in. You probably won't get lots of hands on experience, but you'll learn a few things and in most cases be able to gauge whether you're aiming for a career in the right field. Following my brief foray into hairdressing I decided that I wanted to be a car mechanic. Trainee mechanics do a lot of sweeping up and even more brewing up than hairdressers. (There is also lots of arguing with other trainee mechanics in a bid to get out of both.) Being allowed to gap spark plugs and change oil filters whilst wearing a hideous boiler suit and steel toe cap boots isn't for every 16 year old girl, but it was for me.
We all make mistakes as we go through life. The trick is not to make the same one twice. The 2 weeks I 'wasted' sweeping up hair and making tea for clients potentially saved me a couple of years at college and I was determined to experience digital media first hand and make sure that I was heading in the right direction. My time as an intern at the Reading Room in Manchester have thankfully confirmed that a career in digital media is for me, which is good news because if it wasn't I'd have to I tell my husband that I've wasted 4 years at university and now want to do something else.
My motivation for getting into the digital media field comes from my time as a frustrated retailer. I had a website for my business which didn't do what I needed it to do. The problem was that I didn't know what it needed to do when I ordered it. I handed over a big deposit and a copy of my logo and a couple of months later I got my website back. At which point I did my happy dance. There was my shiny new website. The logo looked ace and my kids were on there modelling the clothes I was selling. What was not to love? Unfortunately when I decided to close the bricks and mortar side of the business and focus on e-commerce I discovered a few things. Mainly that my website was crap. I knew nothing about web design at the time and was so busy doing my happy dance that I didn't notice a few things. For example a third of the screen was taken up with my super cool logo, customers didn't know the cost of postage and packing until they were at least half way through the checkout process and don't get me started on how annoying it was to look at other items in the same department. Unfortunately to the company that built my site making these changes classified as a rewrite which I simply couldn't afford to do. The bottom line is that the site didn't perform. That's not all down to the design, but if you're running an e-commerce business then the design is pretty high on your list of priorities. Would you place an online order without knowing the P&P charges? Would you waste time making click after click to get back to a part of the site you've already been to? I wouldn't. At the time I didn't know what usability was, but when I tried to use my site as a consumer I did know that it wasn't easy to use. I also knew the site needed to change and that I couldn't afford to get somebody else to do it for me, so I enrolled at university. My intention was to create my own sites and rebuild my retail empire. The plan got a little off track once I got here because I'm a lot less in love with retail than I once was, hence the switch to a career in digital media. (I'll save the tangent on the changes to independent retailing for another post)
Spending time working with actual digital media professionals helped me clarify a number of things, firstly my desire to be a Web Developer is too vague for the simple reason that web development is too big a field. I don't want to try and be a jack of all trades. I live in the world of front end development. If back end development was my true vocation I'm pretty sure that I'd have discovered it by now. I fully intend to meander into the world of back end development from time to time, but it's not where I live. In a big agency it's easier to see the demarcation. Designers design. Front End Developers create sites and the scary but cool stuff is done by the Back End Developers. It's a simplified view and there is obviously overlap between the areas, but this time last year, I planned to learn everything about everything and do it all myself. This time last year I was an arse! This year my plan is to become an employee. I'm good at being an employee. I'm punctual, efficient and conscientious. My entrepreneurial skills could still do with a little work, so my current goal is to be an employee, preferably a well paid one. This is also my husband's goal for me, on the basis that employees get paid and can therefore afford holidays and contribute to household bills etc. (I think we're starting to see why the blog is called Tangent Land)
I was very apprehensive about the prospect of starting my internship but I'm pleased to report that everybody was lovely. The whole team made me feel really welcome - and I didn't have to sweep up once. There are two people that I'm especially grateful to the first being Di Eskine who explained the project management side of things to me and gave me some useful info to refer back to and secondly the legendary Darren Cousins, who quite literally had me perched next to him for days on end whilst I bombarded him with endless questions. I'm also grateful to them both for allowing me to actually get hands on and do some coding whilst I was there.
Two weeks may not seem like a long time but when people are willing to spend a fortnight going out of their way to show you new things, teach you new techniques and answer your boring questions, then that's a huge investment, which will be appreciated long after I finish my degree.
