Laura's amazing love story with Tim (which I only heard for the first time last night) has meant she is relocating and so, is changing jobs.
Leaving this team and these amazing people is something I know all too well, having left myself only two months ago. Even though I was only there for four months I made some great friends and enjoyed everyday with the team, and everyone I came to know at Andover. While I love my new job, I miss the Andover and Sparsholt Team everyday, even Student Support and Admissions (insert office humour). But especially the Andover Team of Rachel, Drew and (another) Laura.
I have kept in contact with the team, but when you are used to seeing people most days, its not enough to see them every so often. I suppose that is life though, isn't it? We all move and change, our lives are rarely fixed. While I maybe sad to not see these people as often as I would like, without these changes I would not have had the chance to meet them in the first place. This is the joy and sorrow of moving and changing, I guess.
I suppose it is easy to meet people. The telling point is when it is not easy to see someone each day, are you both still willing to put in the effort to meet when it is less easy or convenient?
Andover itself was a great place to work. The campus was nice and easy to navigate. Although I did arrive early to work to avoid the traffic, so had time to walk around the campus most mornings before starting my day. This was a good opportunity to stretch my legs and see what was going on around the campus. I enjoyed dropping by the Reception, the Learning Resource Centre, Additional Learner Support, Reprographics and the Sixth Form Office.
One of my favourite tasks was to provide personal campus tours to perspective students, parents, community groups and visiting school students. This was a great opportunity to talk to perspective students, as well as their families and friends. Finding out about their hopes and aspirations and showing them how Andover College could support them in achieving that dream.
I enjoyed the regular visits to Childcare, Hair and Beauty, Art and most of all hearing our students talk so positively about their experience at Andover College.
Possibly my best experience of this was seeing an almost full applicant cycle for one perspective student.
I received an email from a parent asking for a tour for herself and her daughter, lets call her Sarah, to be show around the campus. I replied inviting them to Andover College stating I would happy show them around the campus and asked if there was any particular courses or general subjects Sarah was interested in, along with a couple of other questions to support the tour. From Sarah's mum I found out, Sarah was currently studying at a local secondary school in Year 11 and was concerned she was not sure what to do next year, but had an interest in Childcare and Beauty related courses. With this information I was able to organise a visit to the two subject areas, within the general campus tour I would provide. On the day I introduced Sarah and her mum to the Lecturers, who spoke briefly about the course and the current session. They then handed over to some current students who spoke about the course from a students point of view, their timetable, travel arrangements, part time jobs and time management.
At the end of the visit, and after seeing the rest of the campus, Sarah and her mum said thank you and left the College with a lot of information and discussions were well underway.
Within my role I also send text messages to applicants when their formal application for full time study is received, so around 10 days later I was very pleased to see Sarah had decided to apply to Andover for one of the Hair and Beauty courses she had seen on her tour. Then two weeks later I saw Sarah again at one of our Interview Evenings for perspective students. We spoke briefly as I guided Sarah (and her friend this time) around to the Sixth Form Building where the interviews where being held. She even popped back over after her interview to say goodbye. I am under no illusions, to be involved in each of these stages, especially so close together is, I'm sure extremely rare. That is possibly why it stands out so much for me, to be involved and support someones decisions through that process. That personal approach and being able to discuss and understand someone else's point of view was ugly rewarding for me. To know you have helped to inform someones decision, which they are so pleased about.
One of my other favourite tasks was organising an Open Evening, but I don't have time to tell you all the work that went into that.
Appearing in the Open Evening video
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