Avid readers of my blog (thanks mum) may remember I was asked to conduct some mock interviews at St Gregory’s school in Bath at the start of the year. I was pretty pleased with myself when the school emailed me to ask if I would come back in March to help with their Career Insights day for their year 10 pupils.
The first thing I had to do was work out how old year 10s were. It’s been a few years since I was at school, 26 years in fact. It appears that year 10s are 14-15 years old, that was 4th year in my day. The horror struck me then, I was horrible when I was 14 AND 15.
I know, I know “What’s changed?” I hear you cry well quite a lot actually my hormones have settled down a bit since then and my skin is much better thanks, although the fashions of that time seem to have returned. The biggest change is that I’m considered a good role model now and St Gregory’s actually value my participation and what I can tell their young people about their future prospects.
So, swollen with pride and remembering how much fun it was last time I went to St Greg’s I booked myself onto a really valuable Glove Factory Breakfast Seminar on Powerful Presentations from Louise Ladbrooke and got myself ready for a morning of trying to engage and motivate the St Greg’s year 10s.
Armed with Louise’s top tips, some engaging gifs and my best pseudo teacher attire I arrived at school for the second time this year.
Everything was much more familiar this time and I felt quite at home there, I even recognised some friendly faces and have made some new contacts from the experience.
I have groups of about 10 pupils blinking up at this silly old fool who thinks he’s funny and cool with his popular references and his turned up jeans. “Did he really just say on fleek?” Twenty minutes per group doesn’t seem long enough to inspire them and again I feel a huge weight of responsibility but we talk about their personal journeys, their passions, their motivators and their ability to conquer the world. I hope I helped at least one of them, they seemed so young to be making choices now that could affect their futures but of course some of them have their journey all mapped out some are still having a think and it’s really exciting to be reminded of what it’s like to be 14 again.
At the end of the morning I was exhausted, elated and again amazed at what an engaging, interesting, fun and delightful group of young people these are. You do great work St Greg’s and if you’ll have me back I’ll be there like a shot.
Maybe I should’ve been a teacher.
