Misadventures in Marketing Blog: August
Ever had an arch-nemesis?
Someone or something who has inadvertently annoyed you? The Barista who gets your order wrong constantly, the guy in the office who never blows his nose, the shirt that you want to like but is too itchy and your too stubborn to get a new one?
Well dear readers it appears through my dawning of 3rd full month at Ritherdon I have discovered mine.
But what is my nemesis, the evil creature I will take great pleasure in sending back to its fiery hellscape?
The answer is of course ENGLISH AND MATHS.
Okay, let me explain. You see, my apprenticeship requires participants to do regular sessions of Maths and English, having us check in every few months to ensure we are working to a certain educational proficiency.
Naturally, being educated to postgraduate level and scoring relatively well on the first few check-ups, I smugly went into these tasks, smile on my face, confident in my skills and ready to be done quickly with a task that I assumed would be a walk in the park.
It wasn’t.
It took me a month. Every single module was punishing to both my brain and my pride. It dawned on me, later than I care to admit, that I would be unable to coast to success on vague memories of high school teachings to complete my tasks, that despite my level of education I would be unable to rush, that I had to sit and listen to every video intensely and not half-heartedly.
It also didn’t help that the pre-learning for each module was long. Very long. While the learning materials themselves were comprehensive, a combination of my ego, impatience, and lack of understanding of how the testing worked, led me to have to review all the materials again.
Eventually, I managed to pass the check-ups at acceptable levels, my experiences burnt into my mind as well as a festering need for vengeance against all forms of Maths and English.
In all seriousness, my experiences here have been quite eye-opening. As well as learning more about Maths and English I have also learnt a lesson about pride. That, despite your education, you should approach every task with a degree of humility and never underestimate them.
Thankfully, the month also had its positives as well. I managed to put my historian skills to the test, digging up information on the company and surrounding areas for the nationwide Heritage Open Day, where we are opening the factory to the local community, giving tours, that both celebrate our history and shows who we are and what we do.
The video side of the business has also begun to take off, with our resident artist Nicola Ellis, agreeing to work with us to produce a vlog of one of her projects. I have also begun to look at and re-edit our old video tutorials for reupload. While mostly quite straightforward, the hardest task was taking out all the slide transitions, so it didn’t look like a Star Wars movie.
All in all the month has been quite a stressful but necessary one, learning about keeping cool under pressure and multitasking despite slow progress.
Now I am approaching the quarter mark in my apprenticeship, it seems that I will have much more lessons to learn and tasks to look forward to.
Here’s to next month!
Interested in an apprenticeship? Check out Apprentify.
