My life

First years as a lab tech

Time really does fly, I have now been working as a technician in a school now for a whole year, something I am not that happy about.  I wanted to have moved on by now.  But the 12 months have been quite an eye opener to a completely different world.   I was brought up in the suburbs and had very little to do with inner city children.  The life they lead is completely different to what I expected.  I stood in the back of a classroom listening to the pupils talk.  I was in there for about 10 minutes and I probably understood less than 10% of what was said and they were speaking English!

The work as a technician was sort of what I expected but a bit harder.  It feels like no matter how much you do teachers always expect you to have done more.  I think that this is mainly because as a teacher it is not just a job it is their life.  They teach all day and mark work in the evening, and they expect me to be as dedicated.  In truth I am not, I do my hours and then I leave they do not pay me nearly enough for me to do extra, and I think it is the same for all support staff.

My job is very varied (anything from fixing a leg on to a broken skeleton to photocopying 100 exam papers) but one thing I do not like is using the phones.  The school has phone system like that is used in a big business where everyone has a different extension to contact them on and no one know anyone’s number.  I must received 3 phone calls a day from angry staff members because they are trying to get though to some one in an emergency and they number they have is wrong.

The one thing I do really enjoy is being in charge of all the A level physics.  The school has not had a technician that is good with physics for many years so it has been a quite neglected subject and is in desperate need of new equipment.  This means that at least once a week I get to spend a couple of hours making new equipment or trying to fix something that is broken.  With out these times the jobs will be really boring.

In guess this is the same in every job, there will always be bits you like and boring bits, unless you have a really good job (zoo keeper, even clearing out all the poo would be good if you get to spend time with elephants).