I really enjoyed the training I received at EDC. I worked in part of a “jedi-style” management structure, where I acted in effect as the single apprentice of the digital marketing co-ordinator, spending all day every day working under and alongside him.

As mentioned above, I discovered an eye for photography that I didn’t realise I had before. I grew particularly confident using Adobe Lightroom to take mediocre photos and make them impressive and suitable for use in commercial marketing. I eventually became confident enough to account for the difference I knew I could make later in Lightroom as I was taking a picture, meaning I could take more risks when shooting and yield a higher reward.

I also developed skills I had in forward-thinking and planning. Reworking the logistics around the some of the college open nights to ensure that applicants waited the minimum amount of time possible before speaking to members of staff.

One particular challenge I faced was in the management of content on our social media channels. Not unlike the newsgathering process, the college would have peaks and troughs of activity, so it was often difficult to balance maintaining content reserves to ensure we always had something to post, whilst also protecting the timeliness of the stories and news I was sharing.

This was overcome through planning and understanding the content I had. For example, I knew there were certain regular, posts that I needed to publish. These generally had templates so took less work to produce. This meant I could schedule these to cover points during the week when I was tight on time, such as first thing on a Monday morning, or posted over the weekend (assisting to ease the rush of activity on a Friday to try and source enough posts to cover the weekend). This taught me the value in taking time to identify and understand working patterns allowing me to pinpoint times where I was stretched and adjust my working pattern accordingly.

There were so many!

I’ve always loved working with young people, so it was always a particular pleasure to work with the students, helping them with their own projects and supporting their learning. I worked particularly closely with the Business and Catering students, both classes of which were full of enthusiastic and genuinely fun to be around young people.

Perhaps my fondest memory is being given the opportunity to start and lead the college’s first mental health awareness week in collaboration with the college’s student engagement and wellbeing officer, Kirsty. We had a great time co-ordinating a range of fun and whacky events, but most of all I’m proud of the talk delivered to male students studying technical and construction courses on the importance of men’s mental health. This is an issue I’m passionate about and it was incredible to see the lads engaging and tackling this issue in an open minded and honest way.