Personal Blogs

Things i want to achieve in the long term:

• Financial security for my family
• Happy children
• Own a bigger house with lots of space for the kids
• Become senior engineer/ team leader

Things i want to achieve in the short team:

• a degree through the OU
• achieve a minimum of IEng if not MEng
• Get my children settled in primary school

The positive comments i chose were:

• I did well and am proud of my recent attempt at a planned maintenance on a main station TV site. I had never done this before and the implications if something went wrong would be huge so it was high pressure work. That being said everything went well and i proved to myself i can do things i haven't done before or perhaps i'm not as comfortable with.
  
• I handled well a serious fault I had to deal with at a customer's radio studio. The radio station had been off air and the customer was not happy and in my face about getting it fixed but despite this i managed to maintain my professional attitude and get the fault fixed quickly which pleased the customer and scored some bonus points for my company.
  
• I felt I had achieved something when i completed my OFCOM DAB commissioning course. I felt proud as it was something new and took a lot of studying to pass the course. I also felt good after completing my first commissioning on site as it proved i could put into practice what i had learned whilst training.
  

The negative comments were:

• I couldn’t get to grips with an IP training course i went on recently. I was okay with the basics but then when it got more advanced i struggled to keep up.
  
• I felt frustrated about spending a long time training my apprentice on a certain piece of equipment only to find out a week later he was going on an official training course for it making what we did a waste of time.
  
• I felt I had achieved nothing after spending hours trying to fix a complex fault on a main TV site but nothing was working despite what i did.
  

From my positive comments it seems that i gain satisfaction from a job well done or putting something that i have only learned the theory for in to practical use. 

From my negative comments it seems i get frustrated when i put time and effort in to something that amounts to nothing at the end.

Comparing the two it seems i like to do things right and get frustrated/annoyed when i find something difficult to learn or get to grips with or just ends up being a waste of my time.

I currently work in broadcast engineering, fixing and repairing industrial equipment associated with TV and radio broadcast across the UK.

Examples of my career development so far:

• Passing my initial apprenticeship - 2 years of day release at University with the rest of the time learning on the job. 
• Passing my companies internal apprenticeship - After the 2 initial years, i had 2 more years of on the job working/studying which was completed with a day of theory and practical tests/exams, failing would mean losing the job.
• Meeting the criteria to enable me to join the teams "on-call rota" which meant lone working with potentially dangerous equipment.
• After my annual reviews at work, my manager and I agreed goals for me to hit to get a promotion from Broadcast Technician to Broadcast Engineer. After a year or so of working at it i achieved this goal and was promoted to Engineer.