Advice Please - Looking for an apprenticeship/job

Mart909

Hello,

I am 17 years old and currently going through a little tough patch in my life regarding employment...

After finishing school in 2015 with 2 A's, 7 B's and 1 C, I then decided to continue my education at my local college. IT has always appealed to me, so I figured I could peruse this one of my A levels. Both History and Film also stood out at me as topics that I could excel in.

However, college just didn't work out for me. I didn't like the atmosphere and the whole thing made me miss secondary school. What made the situation even worse was that History A level was simply horrific and the IT lessons were very dull. After about a month into college, I really started to consider looking into apprenticeships and dropping out. At this point, I could not change any of my chosen subjects as it was too late.

The first month of being free from college seemed to be too good to be true. I was more relaxed, spending time with my family and apprenticeships looked like something you could just walk into. Unfortunately, I was wrong and just ended up drifting around for about 4 months. However, after a mass of interviews and constant decisions on whether to take a certain apprenticeship or not, I finally landed myself a role in my Local Council as an IT Project Co-ordinator.

I started off by completing around 8 weeks of unpaid (basically voluntary ) work. After this, my manager decided to keep me on and offered me a 9 month contract. The pay was excellent and I really was pushing myself as this was an amazing opportunity to kick-start my career. Although I was the youngest person on my team, I had a variety of options in the council, a supportive manger and a new environment that I could see myself striving in. After a month of learning the ropes, I quickly became a hit on the department and impressed my colleagues equally. However, the work gradually started to become more complex and I truly learned the meaning of 'project co-ordinator'. The job started to turn into not only the management of IT equipment in my County, but the running of all of its events as well. Long story short, the whole thing became too much for me at such a young age (the pressure, the hours, the office lifestyle etc), leading to a massive melt down of sorts.

After 6 months of the job, I decided to throw in the towel. However, I am still suffering from panic attacks and an overall lack of confidence now. It's coming up towards 2 months since I left my job at the council and I'm not exactly sure what my next steps are.

Sorry for going on a bit, but any advice would be greatly appreciated! I'm considering going for a smaller job in a shop perhaps and building my confidence up from there. However, I feel as through I need to impress those around me by really pushing myself with an impressive job/apprenticeship.

Thanks

IAmWales

You need to get back into education or some kind of formal training. I don't understand why you didn't do this before term started.

In reality few people get far with only GCSEs. There will be exceptions but far more people are staying in education etc now, you'll always be behind them.

You need to accept that sometimes education and work will be boring. Mindlessly so at times, but you take the good with the bad.

fairy_lights

I'm finding it somewhat difficult to believe that a council would give an unqualified 16 year old a job as an IT project co-ordinator.

Mart909

IAmWales wrote: »

You need to get back into education or some kind of formal training. I don't understand why you didn't do this before term started.

In reality few people get far with only GCSEs. There will be exceptions but far more people are staying in education etc now, you'll always be behind them.

You need to accept that sometimes education and work will be boring. Mindlessly so at times, but you take the good with the bad.

Thanks for the comment. My initial intention was to receive various qualifications while I trained. I am still very interested in pursuing my education, but through an apprenticeship instead of college.

Mart909

fairy_lights wrote: »

I'm finding it somewhat difficult to believe that a council would give an unqualified 16 year old a job as an IT project co-ordinator.

Thanks for the comment. I was 17 years old at the time and a lot of companies/organisations hire school leavers under the 'work starts' scheme. This is what my local council provided for me and I gradually built my way up to a Project Co-ordinator over the six months.