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Mar. 13th, 2008 11:53 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
chrisvenusThe topic of this entry is: "Key decisions in your life so far. Which choices determined the course of your life? What options did you pick and why?" as requested by ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
bateleur
This post is really quite tricky to work out what to say. The reason being that most of the key points in my life haven't really involved decisions so much as me falling in teh right direction almost accidentally. I think the most crucial decision in my life at the time didn't seem like it at all...
I've had things like GCSEs and A-levels and the obvious decisions there. But for me the decisions were no brainers. Or possibly just pointless. I've always been a sciencey person. Looking at GCSEs the main things I wanted to do where sciences and maths. All of which were compulsory anyway. For my options there I chose Geography, History and Latin (+ancient greek). These were chosen by a process of elimination as I ruled out things like Art, languages (I had to do french but I could have done something like spanish too) and I forget what else was even options. Latin was chosen because it was sat a year early and then we did ancient greek, thus giving me an extra GCSE to my name. But at the end of the day this choice really wasn't important.
A-levels were a mark of how I was going to progress but the choice was really a no brainer. Double maths, physics and chemistry. A fairly standard set (at my school at least) and pretty much the subjects I enjoyed most and was best at. Maths was always going to be a breeze. Physics pretty much was as well. And chemistry was less so to the extent that if I'd scored 1 mark less on any paper I'd have got a B. But though technically this was a choice it pretty much is a key point that hasn't involved a decision.
University was the next biggest factor. I was likely to be doing maths (mainly because I am good and it hadn't occured to me to do anything else - I was interested in computers but more for gaming than anything else so a computing degree which is the only other thing I might have done never really came up). I hadn't given much thought to where I was goign to go. I went to see oxford for an open day mainly because it was a day off school. Likewise I'd been to exeter for a week pretty much I think to their maths and physics open days. I dozed in their lectures and again used it more as an excussse to skive though I think that is probably where I ruled out physics and opted for maths.
The choice for oxford really came about when my careers teacher at school asked me if I'd finished my UCAS application yet because oxford needed them nice and early if IW as applying there.
"What?" said I. "Should I be applying there?"
At school I never really thought I was all that. My GCSEs came in at 1A*, 4As, 6Bs and a C. Given the number of people who got nothing worse than an A I figured that they were the oxbridge types and I'd go to a good university somewhere else. But no, apparently I was told I should have applied to oxford the day that the forms really needed to be handed in.
So at lunch time I went off to get the postal order or whatever it was that was required and filled in the form. I had to put a choice of college down and Keble went down as something along the lines of first into my head and one I had a vague recollection was quite good...
And that's the story of how I ended up in oxford. Last minute being told by teacher at school that I should apply. It never occured to me not to really and of course havinng got the offer I wasn't going to turn it down.
There was of course lots of exams. Oxford entrance exams in those days were sat at school before interviews. My careers teacher told me long after my interviews and offers that she'd seen my scores and that on the two papers I'd scored high 90%s on both. Given the papers were "best four questions marked" and I reckoned I'd done about 8-10 on each paper as well as I could I'm not that surprised really. It does explain why they let me in so readily though. :)
During my time at oxford was when I made probably the only real decision that affeted my life. And it wasn't intended at the time. At university I'd started getting more into computers. I'd played around with making web pages (garishly awful ones that are probably still available on the way back machine) but i was interested. So whenmrlloyd sent out an e-mail to a mailing list asking if anybody wanted a summer job at the place he worked I made that key choice. I said "yes please."
So that's how I got my foot in the door at domino systems. One summer job where I learnt how to properly do asp, javascript and of course the base HTML. I enjoyed it a lot and went back to help out a bit more in other holidays. Then the key thing that happened is that towards the end of my time at university when the prospect of having to get a real job was loomingmrlloyd approached me and made me an offer I couldn't refuse. So I ended up working full time for Domino Systems and my career choice just kind of seemed to have happened.
The other key result of this choice is that it meant I stayed in oxford. Something I would have liked to do anyway but this is the main reason because otherwise I'd probably have ended up in london, to be honest.
I left domino after 2 years because I wasn't enjoying it much. There was a combination of lack of support and pressure and of course the awful morale because by the time I'd left it haad been about a year since we were last paid on time. I opted for voluntary redundancy and had aimed to mooch for a week or two and then job hunt. Instead I got offered contract work by an ex domino employee the day after I had finished at domino. Contract work for the BBC no less. And me without a job and talk of £150/day wages I quickly accepted.
I then spent about a year "contracting". This wasn't as successful as it could have been and I did lose a fair bit of my savings during this time due to lack fo work. I did however watch a lot of daytime TV (a lot of the work could be done from home) as well as gain valuable experience of all sorts. And played a fair bit of puzzle pirates which was much fun. :)
Towards the end of that time I decided I wasn't getting enough contracting work and was needing more so I started temping. I'm trying to think if I did work for anybody but the key people I worked for where Blackwell Publishing. There I further honed my web skills but also worked as an assistant producer which meant being involved in the process of gathering content and seeing more than just the end part of the life cycle. Again, valuable stuff.
I finally got this job as a default thing. I had two interviews for .NET development roles (I'd decided from my time at domino that I liked .NET when I was playing with it there in its early days - much better than VB6/traditional asp). The interview here at Infobasis went very well and I missed the other interview due to losing track of time at blackwells and on asking if I wanted to reschedule just decided I liked infobasis enough to say no thanks.
And that's when I ended up here.
My next big step is buying a house. Something I decided to do long ago but have just not got around to managing yet. Hopefully soon that will happen though... soon... maybe...
bateleurThis post is really quite tricky to work out what to say. The reason being that most of the key points in my life haven't really involved decisions so much as me falling in teh right direction almost accidentally. I think the most crucial decision in my life at the time didn't seem like it at all...
I've had things like GCSEs and A-levels and the obvious decisions there. But for me the decisions were no brainers. Or possibly just pointless. I've always been a sciencey person. Looking at GCSEs the main things I wanted to do where sciences and maths. All of which were compulsory anyway. For my options there I chose Geography, History and Latin (+ancient greek). These were chosen by a process of elimination as I ruled out things like Art, languages (I had to do french but I could have done something like spanish too) and I forget what else was even options. Latin was chosen because it was sat a year early and then we did ancient greek, thus giving me an extra GCSE to my name. But at the end of the day this choice really wasn't important.
A-levels were a mark of how I was going to progress but the choice was really a no brainer. Double maths, physics and chemistry. A fairly standard set (at my school at least) and pretty much the subjects I enjoyed most and was best at. Maths was always going to be a breeze. Physics pretty much was as well. And chemistry was less so to the extent that if I'd scored 1 mark less on any paper I'd have got a B. But though technically this was a choice it pretty much is a key point that hasn't involved a decision.
University was the next biggest factor. I was likely to be doing maths (mainly because I am good and it hadn't occured to me to do anything else - I was interested in computers but more for gaming than anything else so a computing degree which is the only other thing I might have done never really came up). I hadn't given much thought to where I was goign to go. I went to see oxford for an open day mainly because it was a day off school. Likewise I'd been to exeter for a week pretty much I think to their maths and physics open days. I dozed in their lectures and again used it more as an excussse to skive though I think that is probably where I ruled out physics and opted for maths.
The choice for oxford really came about when my careers teacher at school asked me if I'd finished my UCAS application yet because oxford needed them nice and early if IW as applying there.
"What?" said I. "Should I be applying there?"
At school I never really thought I was all that. My GCSEs came in at 1A*, 4As, 6Bs and a C. Given the number of people who got nothing worse than an A I figured that they were the oxbridge types and I'd go to a good university somewhere else. But no, apparently I was told I should have applied to oxford the day that the forms really needed to be handed in.
So at lunch time I went off to get the postal order or whatever it was that was required and filled in the form. I had to put a choice of college down and Keble went down as something along the lines of first into my head and one I had a vague recollection was quite good...
And that's the story of how I ended up in oxford. Last minute being told by teacher at school that I should apply. It never occured to me not to really and of course havinng got the offer I wasn't going to turn it down.
There was of course lots of exams. Oxford entrance exams in those days were sat at school before interviews. My careers teacher told me long after my interviews and offers that she'd seen my scores and that on the two papers I'd scored high 90%s on both. Given the papers were "best four questions marked" and I reckoned I'd done about 8-10 on each paper as well as I could I'm not that surprised really. It does explain why they let me in so readily though. :)
During my time at oxford was when I made probably the only real decision that affeted my life. And it wasn't intended at the time. At university I'd started getting more into computers. I'd played around with making web pages (garishly awful ones that are probably still available on the way back machine) but i was interested. So when
mrlloyd sent out an e-mail to a mailing list asking if anybody wanted a summer job at the place he worked I made that key choice. I said "yes please."So that's how I got my foot in the door at domino systems. One summer job where I learnt how to properly do asp, javascript and of course the base HTML. I enjoyed it a lot and went back to help out a bit more in other holidays. Then the key thing that happened is that towards the end of my time at university when the prospect of having to get a real job was looming
mrlloyd approached me and made me an offer I couldn't refuse. So I ended up working full time for Domino Systems and my career choice just kind of seemed to have happened.The other key result of this choice is that it meant I stayed in oxford. Something I would have liked to do anyway but this is the main reason because otherwise I'd probably have ended up in london, to be honest.
I left domino after 2 years because I wasn't enjoying it much. There was a combination of lack of support and pressure and of course the awful morale because by the time I'd left it haad been about a year since we were last paid on time. I opted for voluntary redundancy and had aimed to mooch for a week or two and then job hunt. Instead I got offered contract work by an ex domino employee the day after I had finished at domino. Contract work for the BBC no less. And me without a job and talk of £150/day wages I quickly accepted.
I then spent about a year "contracting". This wasn't as successful as it could have been and I did lose a fair bit of my savings during this time due to lack fo work. I did however watch a lot of daytime TV (a lot of the work could be done from home) as well as gain valuable experience of all sorts. And played a fair bit of puzzle pirates which was much fun. :)
Towards the end of that time I decided I wasn't getting enough contracting work and was needing more so I started temping. I'm trying to think if I did work for anybody but the key people I worked for where Blackwell Publishing. There I further honed my web skills but also worked as an assistant producer which meant being involved in the process of gathering content and seeing more than just the end part of the life cycle. Again, valuable stuff.
I finally got this job as a default thing. I had two interviews for .NET development roles (I'd decided from my time at domino that I liked .NET when I was playing with it there in its early days - much better than VB6/traditional asp). The interview here at Infobasis went very well and I missed the other interview due to losing track of time at blackwells and on asking if I wanted to reschedule just decided I liked infobasis enough to say no thanks.
And that's when I ended up here.
My next big step is buying a house. Something I decided to do long ago but have just not got around to managing yet. Hopefully soon that will happen though... soon... maybe...