| 12:58p |
So I haven't written in a while, but hey.
What's new? Um...probably not much, and most people stalk me on Facebook these days I guess so they know what I'm upto and where I've been etc. My weekdays are generally spent in Bury/Bolton working (have finally started for Bury doing Community Playwork last week), and weekends are generally spent in London mooching around with El.
I actually just came onto LJ to post my 'personal statement' that I've just written for my NVQ youth work college file. Quite enjoyed writing it.
Personal Statement
I am 23 years old and have lived in Bury all my life, apart from when I went to University in Loughborough to study Sociology with social psychology. I did A levels in French and Psychology, and AS levels in Chemistry, Physics and Sociology at Holy Cross College in Bury. This demonstrates that I have had an interest in understanding relations between people for a number of years, and enjoy academic learning and challenges. Through playing sports socially, I got involved in coaching children and playwork at the age of about 16, and these are areas that still interest me. I’ve always enjoyed being able to pass on my own knowledge and learning to others because helping people to gain confidence and progress their skills is positive for their development as well as being rewarding for me. The skills that I think I bring include the ability to communicate with a variety of people in a variety of ways, a desire to listen to people, energy, passion and enthusiasm for a wide variety of activities and topics, as well as the beliefs that everyone has valuable opinions and talents and can improve.
When I started as a youth worker 18 months ago I didn’t really know what to expect from the settings or how I was expected to behave and feel. I knew that I wanted to be a positive role model and that through my own experience I had learned valuable life skills that I wanted to pass on in order to help others. In my opinion I don’t have enough life experience as an adult to be much use to anyone who isn’t younger than myself, and I personally value young people’s thoughts and opinions because these people are our future and I want the opportunity to develop their abilities and confidence while they are still at a good age to take on new knowledge and change behaviour patterns for life. In addition, I recognised some of the social issues involving young people such as alcohol, drugs, sex and relationships, self-esteem and bullying, and felt that I had valuable knowledge and experience around these subject areas that other people might be able to benefit from. My motivation for wanting other people to benefit from my experience was mainly because I have learned from my own and other people’s mistakes, and would myself have liked more comfortable opportunities to talk to adults informally. I have now got knowledge about job-specific behaviours, mainly from learning while working and getting tips from colleagues. This experience has seen me gain confidence in interacting with young people who often display behaviour that is difficult to control, knowing what is expected of me and how to be a better youth worker.
Looking back on my motivation, I may have been a bit misguided about what youth work should actually involve. Of course in doing my job I will be affected by my own values and experiences, but I have learned that youth work is more about helping to facilitate the positive development of young people in ways that they choose, not necessarily involving everything that I think is key, and sometimes involving things that I took for granted or hadn’t considered. I am doing this NVQ 2 in youth work because it was a requirement of my job, and while I would have liked to do something more intellectually challenging, free qualifications are always good for my CV. I’m currently doing youth work and community play work, as well as casual jobs in football coaching and residential childcare, and have also recently done a level 2 certificate in fitness and gym instructing and hope to progress in that field additionally. I feel that working with children and young people in non-school settings is still the right path for me, but I don’t know what career progression I want as it seems that the higher one progresses up the career pyramid the more one becomes an administrator and manager and the less you have contact with real grass-roots people in their everyday lives. That is what I personally value most, find enjoyable and rewarding, and I would like for people higher up the career pyramid who make policies and other things that influence communities to be more in touch with grass roots people and their issues, so that I can be more sure that what I report back and what grass roots people report back will actually be listened to and acted upon positively. I recognise that I am angry and frustrated with ‘the system’ because I have seen people be let down by it, and I am motivated by my desire to be a good useful ‘cog’ in the ‘machine’. I intend at some point in my life to go back to higher education and continue my academic development, but I haven’t yet found a specific research topic area that I feel I would dedicate myself to. Additionally, I would like to gain more experience working with preferably young people in as many settings as possible to broaden my horizons and find more potential paths for career development that I might not currently be aware of, even though I don’t really see it as ‘my career’ as such, because I have realised I value horizontal progression (getting my fingers in more pies) more than vertical progression (moving upwards in the same field) in terms of my own development. |