Michael's Story - Overcoming Expectations

When I was at sixth form, a lot of people expected me to go to university. Personally, I didn’t like the idea of paying tuition fees and I didn’t like learning approach – I prefer being able to apply my knowledge to real-life situations. When I weighed it up, there were more benefits to doing an apprenticeship and that would set me up better for my future.

I have one friend that is also doing an apprenticeship. We were able to talk about it and we were on the same wavelength. My family expected me to go to university as they’d never considered anything else. When I was first applying for apprenticeships, they were a bit worried but once I got my place at Crimson and they saw what I would be doing they were over the moon.

Finding vacancies took a lot of independent work – there wasn’t much support from school or online. I had to manually find vacancies and work out how to approach the application process by trial and error.
During lockdown I did another burst of applications – that was when I found Crimson. I progressed through the application process quite quickly and within a month I had the job.

I’m enjoying it. I was nervous at first but once I got to know people I settled in quickly. I enjoy the work I’m doing so it doesn’t feel like a chore.

I’ve changed a lot as a person already, more than I expected. I’m doing things now that I wouldn’t have had the confidence to do a few weeks ago.

Right now I want to take every opportunity and gain as much skill and experience as I can. I feel that will set me up to go down any path I choose to in the future. That’s my main objective for the next few years – to work on me and be the best that I can be.