B
Big G
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- #31
I started off not having a clue what i wanted to do, but i got into computers from an early age and decided that's what i wanted to be involved with career wise.
I was only 4 and i tinkered with a Commodore 64 before starting school, then moved to an Amiga at 11 and then the PC at 14 (that was in 1994). I wanted to do Electronic Engineering when i was in 1st year at high school (without knowing jack about it, only cos my elder sister was doing it) but as i got older i decided i wanted to do computing science. However, i changed schools in 5th year and had a hard time settling down in my new school so my grades suffered and i couldn't do either at uni. I left school with 4 highers (BBCC) and still didn't know what i wanted to do. I got laughed at in 6th year by the school head 'cos i said "i dunno what i wanna apply for at uni".
My mother decided to do something about it and brought home details of "HNC computing" at a local college. I went for it and started in college the following autumn. It was pretty easy stuff, so i sailed through the HNC then into the HND, finishing both no prob. After that, i was lucky to find that Napier uni in Edinburgh offered a "direct entry" into a final year uni course. I choose to do Multimedia Technology as i was good with HTML and Flash. I completed that successfully and decided that I wanted to be a high earning web designer.
Then i left uni and then the real world situation about IT kicked in.
There are FUCK ALL jobs for those without IT experience, regardless of what degree you have (certainly in Scotland anyway). I applied for job after job and sent off speculative letters to so many companies with no luck. Even bog standard 12k a year jobs doing some basic PC support weren't interested as i had "no commercial experience" even if i could configure PC's, LANs, linux, NT etc etc blah etc. Eventually, I gave up and went to work for a well known Internet bank doing some basic admin work, processing applications. The aim of that was to perhaps break into IT that way.
Eventually I did, and now i'm a developer - managed to get into IT through sheer luck and being in the right place at the right time.
I wouldn't change anything i've done, but looking back it might have been more beneficial to have gone into a piss poor IT trainee role at 16 years old and worked my way up as opposed to rotting away at university.
Soz for the essay
Gaz
I was only 4 and i tinkered with a Commodore 64 before starting school, then moved to an Amiga at 11 and then the PC at 14 (that was in 1994). I wanted to do Electronic Engineering when i was in 1st year at high school (without knowing jack about it, only cos my elder sister was doing it) but as i got older i decided i wanted to do computing science. However, i changed schools in 5th year and had a hard time settling down in my new school so my grades suffered and i couldn't do either at uni. I left school with 4 highers (BBCC) and still didn't know what i wanted to do. I got laughed at in 6th year by the school head 'cos i said "i dunno what i wanna apply for at uni".
My mother decided to do something about it and brought home details of "HNC computing" at a local college. I went for it and started in college the following autumn. It was pretty easy stuff, so i sailed through the HNC then into the HND, finishing both no prob. After that, i was lucky to find that Napier uni in Edinburgh offered a "direct entry" into a final year uni course. I choose to do Multimedia Technology as i was good with HTML and Flash. I completed that successfully and decided that I wanted to be a high earning web designer.
Then i left uni and then the real world situation about IT kicked in.
There are FUCK ALL jobs for those without IT experience, regardless of what degree you have (certainly in Scotland anyway). I applied for job after job and sent off speculative letters to so many companies with no luck. Even bog standard 12k a year jobs doing some basic PC support weren't interested as i had "no commercial experience" even if i could configure PC's, LANs, linux, NT etc etc blah etc. Eventually, I gave up and went to work for a well known Internet bank doing some basic admin work, processing applications. The aim of that was to perhaps break into IT that way.
Eventually I did, and now i'm a developer - managed to get into IT through sheer luck and being in the right place at the right time.
I wouldn't change anything i've done, but looking back it might have been more beneficial to have gone into a piss poor IT trainee role at 16 years old and worked my way up as opposed to rotting away at university.
Soz for the essay
Gaz