Office jobs were my life right up until I decided a change of career was required in the middle of 2019. I did an intense one year Access to Higher Education course at college, before 3 years studying BSc Computing at the University of South Wales. In my 3rd and final year, I attended a careers fair which lead me to the graduate job with Transport for Wales I have today. I did my first year of university in lockdown of 2020. My only work experience comes from the "pre-covid era" as I call it and that was a very different world to the one we live in now. Thankfully my current job has given me plenty of time to adjust and the staff at Transport for Wales have been very supportive.
I have been a working professional most of my adult life. I obtained my first NVQ way back in 2010 and I used that course to gain work experience as an administrative assistant ever since. I've also gained a few more NVQs along the way and one Level 2 VRQ in Beauty Specialist Techniques, just because I wanted to brush up on my people skills and try my hand at something a bit different. It's a vocational qualification but I decided not to pursue that career option after all. The skills still come in handy though, especially when it comes to painting my nails and doing my make-up!
I have a LinkedIn page you can visit here (opens in new tab), so I won't bore you with the details on this page. The photo I use on LinkedIn is a bit out of date but I wanted to capture my joy of graduating from University in 2023.
My father also had administrative jobs when I was growing up, so I think my love of paperwork comes from him. My mum and I are very close and she's had lots of interesting experiences in her life which keeps me quite open minded to new opportunities. My affinity with computers was also clear from a young age, it just took a while for me to acknowledge it myself. My colleagues often relied on me to fix their simpler IT issues. Sometimes I also had a hand in upgrading paper-based systems to electronic ones such as archiving old paperwork.
If you want to know more about my hobbies, there's a page for that here. If you'd like to know about my personal development, there's a page for that here. My party days are behind me, if I do go out on weekends it's mainly to go shopping and then come home and chill out. I also like to attend anime conventions and craft market events when I can. A lifetime of living with anxiety and running on adrenaline has also left me quite exhausted, so I have to be careful with my activities outside of work so it doesn't impact my ability to get work done.
