The Background and Beginning

My first lecture, over zoom at that, was an interesting experience. On January 12th, 2021, I was sat in front of the camera, dressed smartly with a cup of coffee next to me. I entered the call 3 minutes early to see what the other students were like. To my surprise, the first 4 that joined in were in their 30’s; confused is not the word. It took me a little while to realise that about a third of the people on my course were already professionals in their fields and were looking to improve their current ability and knowledge, another third of them were with BAE systems and/or Maritime Services – these people were looking to become project managers companies such as the navy, with regards to ships and/or submarines. This blew my mind a little and I will soon explain why.

My course in project management firstly defined what all aspects of it are, so the first lectures were not very difficult at all, the University of Portsmouth also has a very good system of delivering information which helps incredibly, which included PowerPoints and Kahoot quizzes.  You see, my work itself has little to do with project management at his point in time, but it will be soon. Some background information on me, I’ve worked for building companies since I was 14, I’ve been on all the rough jobs you can imagine on sites, whilst also having a peer into the trades. I’ve worked Saturdays since 14 and every full time through the holidays when I could. Therefore, a degree apprenticeship made sense to me, a constant split of work and education.

The day before this was a normal working day, boots and high visibility jacket on, getting rained on outside. the idea of taking the day off for lectures was already an interesting thought in my head. I remember I was cutting out window openings ready for the bricklayers to lay them again for the windows to be put in ASAP. There is a theme at work of me trying to do things that I’m not quite qualified for, so I was also trying to lay some in myself and swiftly got told to get on with my own stuff.  Fast forward 24hours and I’m in a group of people around my age who work on submarines for the navy, who I later discovered had clearance did blow my mind a little, after all, I was just a labouring man looking to move up in life.

We learned first about what projects are, by definition, and how they are managed (yes that sounds obvious for a course on project management). This was just a very brief overview of what to expect along the course. we had a very easy morning in my mind, starting at 9,  and having a break to ‘get coffee’ at 10:30 for half an hour and then continuing until 1 o’clock, where we had whole hours break for lunch. Our second lecture was about us, a whole module dedicated to learning who we are and how we can become better. this to me sounded so silly at the time, I remember thinking “why does it matter what we are like if we just get on with it?”. we had to overtime make a portfolio with the focus of what we are like, and what we have done followed by sections on what we want to be like and what we want to achieve. Ironically this was the hardest part for me, finding out about myself, and I recommend you try as it’s not as fun as you might expect. Throughout the day I must’ve gone through 5 coffees, and a whole load of biscuits- and anyone here reading from the course, that’s what I was up to when my camera flickered off…

“Surely”, I thought, “it can’t be this easy, can it?”