How to be lucky
The reason I have been thinking of this is because someone recently told me how lucky I was to have successfully gotten a social care job and I actually felt a little bit put out because luck really has nothing to do with it. I did my leaving cert at 18 and made an absolute mess of it. I won't tell you how many points I got because I never counted. I was so upset with my results that I balled them up and threw them away. I shouldn't have really been all that surprised. I had changed schools after my junior cert due to bullying and I found it difficult to adjust in my new school. The year I did my leaving cert I was suffering quite badly from anxiety and depression so I was too busy going out drinking and writing melodramatic poetry to accurately plan for my future. Naturally this meant not a lot of studying was done in the run up to my leaving cert. So it wasn't the shock of the century when not studying lead to poor results. Probably the logical step would have been to have resat my exams except I hated school so much that I refused to back. I hated it so much that I had nightmares for years after I left where I was back in school.
With repeating ruled out, I ended up doing a Fas course in childcare for two years. I got a placement in a school for intellectual disabilities as part of this and loved it. By now I had a vague idea that Social Care might be something I would like to do but without a decent leaving cert result my only real option was to wait until I qualified as a mature student and so the wait began.
First I went to Switzerland for a year as an au pair which was the experience of a lifetime but also very tough and lonely. When I returned I worked as a childminder for a year, looking after a very strong willed three year old boy. That too proved a little too isolating and I left that job after a year to work in Chartbusters. It's a video chain that no longer exists but that was fine but a little boring. I made good use of my 5 free rentals a week and built my love of world cinema and sneakily ate a lot of free pick a'mix. By now I had decided that I wanted to go to college and study Social Care and really I was just killing time until I was old enough to apply.
I left Chartbusters to work in Slattery's electrical. I was on the till and it was very boring, I think I was there a year before I could apply to Waterford IT and I stayed on part time for my first year in college. So Finally in 2006 (6 years after I sat my leaving cert) I had gotten in to college and to study Social Care to boot. I was fully aware of how much work had gotten me to this point so I was determined not to mess it up. I somehow managed to strike the balance of being a diligent student and have a decent social life.
After that I worked in Boots for 6 months until I decided I didn't want to get the bus home every weekend. As retail jobs go , I really liked it. We got a lot of freebies, the money was good and I got great discounts.
So I was about two years into college that I got my job in AOL. This was my best paying job to date which is great for someone paying their own way through college but by God was it soul destroying. I hated taking the calls and the pressure to make sales and all the very angry and unhappy people I spoke to each day. It was also around this time I started volunteering for Childline. I was thinking ahead to my potential future in Social care and aware that aside from my two work placements (in a special school and in a youth centre) that I didn't have a whole lot to offer in the way of experience. Childline was tough, a real eye opener but Im glad I took the time to work with them. Between there and work I certainly honed my phone manner and listening skills.
I left AOL when I finished college. I had lots of big plans. I had just graduated with a second class honours degree in Social Care ( not too shabby if I say so myself) and I had worked my ass off to get it. It was here things went a little off the rails. I moved to Edinburgh getting a job in Blackhorse Finance (another Callcentre) with a view to moving into Social Care work once I got settled but somehow was convinced by the guy I was dating (who had moved over a few weeks after me) that I should come home so I abandoned all my prospects and moved back to a grotty little house in the city centre and found myself unable to get a job. In my defence I did believe I was in love with him at the time and so had turned a blind eye to the fact he was controlling me ( I've gone into this in more detail in previous posts) After 6 months I did manage to secure work in you guessed it, another call centre. The terrible relationship came to an end and I continued working in another Call centre job I hated. My confidence had taken a knock and the longer I was out of college the more I felt more qualified people than me were going for the jobs I wanted. I had just begun to drive because I'd noticed most Social Care jobs asked for a full clean driving licence and when I left college I was just a pedestrian relying on buses and lifts. I did begin to interview for Social Care jobs at this stage but I didn't have a lot of faith in myself.
My next job was in The Book Centre. I stayed here for over two years. At first I was very excited about this position as I love books but it wasn't particularly mentally challenging so I was frequently quite bored. I must have been applying for Social Care jobs for a year and a half before I left. I can't even count how many Interviews I went to . I got very accustomed to receiving rejection letters or just radio silence and assuming after a month had passed that I hadn't been successful. I hated interviews. I used to feel a bit ill at the thought of going for them. When I did decide to take the position with Bluebird Care it was a bit of a risk. Namely that I was working full time and they were only offering 20 hours as a pa. I took it because I felt like a bit of me was dying in retail and if I didn't get my foot on the ladder now then what was the point of me even going to college. The Pa work led to working with a wider range of clients in a wide range of settings and it was great experience. I also got a lot of extra training through them. It was during this time (December 2015) that I finally got my full driving licence. The hours were uncertain and long and the pay wasn't amazing plus without becoming a nurse, there wasn't any room for progression. So I had started to apply for other jobs and finally secured one in the residential centre I now work in.
I had originally applied for a Social Care position but it was felt that I didn't have enough experience and I was offered a Health Care Assistant role instead. I had no prior experience in residential plus the pay was better and there was room for development so last May I started in this new job. It took me some time to adapt to this new position. I went from looking after one person to being part of a team that looked after ten. I did as much training as I could and eventually got offered set hours, then later was asked to become a keyworker. Nine months after I started in this job an Internal Position for a Social Care worker came up and I applied and was successful.Only seventeen years after I left school did I finally find myself on the right track and considering all the effort it took to get here, I don't consider myself lucky for it.
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