Work Experience Gone Wrong? ANEFHS

Hello lovely readers!

I have two dissertation deadlines next week as well as 18 hours worth of reading for my Icelandic sagas course, so I thought now would be a fine time to update my blog! I wanted to give a brief overview of the volunteer work I've been doing since I started university, because if I started at the beginning we'd be here all day! Maybe one day I'll get round to that story, but today I'll start a few Novembers ago when I began volunteering with the Aberdeen and North East Family History Society, or ANEFHS for not-that-much-shorter.

ANEFHS

Between November 2011 and May 2012 I volunteered at the Family History Centre here in Aberdeen. This came about after I went to the university careers fair and got the fright of my life at the lack of options represented. At this stage I had 'narrowed' my career options to either historical research/genealogy type work, or the third sector, funnily enough in pretty much that order! However, I went to the MA Careers Fair at uni and was terrified to discover a room full of men in suits from oil companies and investment firms, trying to get me to join their graduate programmes. Money, profit, expansion, growth...these things have just never appealed to me despite years of parents and teachers trying to persuade me how much money I could make in a nice secure businessy job. My heart nearly jumped out my mouth when for a few hours I thought these might be my only options! In a panic I began to think of ways I could escape that fate, and what else I could do, and my brain alighted on the Family History Society, just 10 minutes walk from where I was standing. I immediately marched down King Street to their premises, took a deep breath, and walked in.

'Can I help you?' an older gentleman asked me.

'Hi, I'm a History student at the university up the road. I came to ask if there was a way I could get involved with the society?'

And that was it. They were always looking for volunteers and within a week I was helping Jean in the bookshop, alphebetising invoices, sticking price stickers on publications and checking stock levels. It wasn't exactly thrilling stuff but I didn't mind: I was meeting people, I was learning how the family history societies were established and how they were connected throughout Scotland, how they were funded, and how they ran. And, my sticker sticking skills must have been up to scratch because around Christmas I was approached by Gavin, one of the society's members, who wanted to involve me in a project he was running at the city archives.

Gavin's job for me was very computery and admittedly I was pretty scared to begin with. He took me to the archives to meet the staff (because after the first day I'd be going solo) and explained my job to me. He would give me copies of databases he'd created, and I would fill them in with information I found in the Aberdeen City and Shire Poor Relief records. He sat with me for a couple of hours while I got the hang of it, and to my surprise I am more computer literate than I thought, and managed fine. Gavin was very easy going about a time-scale for the project and understood that uni came first, but nevertheless I would spend two or three hours a week in the archives with my databases. I found it a very strange environment to work in. Obviously I had to be very careful with the records themselves - there were book rests to place them on so I didn't get my arms or sleeves all over them, and I could only use pencil if I wrote things down. It was also a very small, quiet office and I was frequently the only one there, other than the staff. The staff were cheerful enough, though not exactly chatty, and to be honest, the thing I found hardest about the whole experience was interrupting the staff constantly to ask them to fetch me the records I needed. Of course I understood why it worked that way but it felt very rude. "Summon me the document for 1862 please serf! And don't take all day about it!"

On the other hand, the wonderful thing about working in the archives was the records themselves. The handwriting was gorgeous, if sometimes illegible, and though the information in them was brief it was also quite revealing. The format and information varied from book to book, but generally they were lists of people who had applied to the church for financial aid in times of hardship. There would be their name, the date they'd applied, the reason they'd applied, how much they'd been awarded, and then the date of and reason for the cessation of payments. Unfortunately, the reason the money stopped was often death, and only rarely was it due to happier circumstances like getting a job. It always took me longer than it probably should have done to get through each book, because a certain entry would catch my eye and I'd think about poor widowed Mrs Maclean whose children were starving, who spent 7 years on poor relief before she eventually died and her eldest son took over the payments. Then I'd be thinking about Eldest Child Maclean and how old he might have been and what his life must have been like... and I'm probably an overly imaginative, overly romantic head-case, but all the same, that was the real attraction of the archives for me.

The other valuable thing I learned from volunteering with the ANEFHS was that people are, in general, very willing to help you out. Of course, I was helping them out too, and for free no less, but I was welcomed into the society from the minute I walked through the door, and even though I was by far the youngest person I ever saw in the place everyone always chatted away to me, kept me right, made me feel comfortable and, most importantly, fed me chocolate cake. Gavin, too, was a huge help. He invited me to the society's AGM so I could learn more, and when I applied for an internship in the Special Colletions at uni, he was more than happy to be a reference for me, which was super dooper appreciated!

In the end though, historical research was not the career for me. The environment was too quiet, the work too detailed and meticulous, but most importantly I just didn't have the passion for it. I love hearing and discovering other people's stories but I don't think I could spend all day in an office, trifling over minor details in old records or deciphering handwriting. And this realisation coincided firstly with the end of term and the start of a new job which would make finding time to volunteer difficult, but also with the start of a new volunteer project, Team Cultivate. I emailed Gavin and the rest of the society to thank them for their time, and of course I finished the batch of database entries Gavin had given me, and then I successfully crossed a career in history off my list of possibilities. On the face of it, this might sound like a bad thing - I had started my ANEFHS volunteer experience in a panic as a way of finding a career which wasn't in finance or administration, and in the end that's not what I found. But as I've talked about, I did learn from my experiences, and arranging it gave me something constructive to do, which took the edge off the panic long enough for me to take a step back and consider my options again. Once I realised I wasn't getting what I wanted out of volunteering with ANEFHS I started to look at other options, and that took me back to the charity/third sector, which is where I have begun to find my niche.

But this is a long enough story already and much more might kill us both! Its also probably as good a time as any to round off, as I have hinted at where most of the rest of my blog entries will go: my volunteer experiences and finding my way into the voluntary sector.

As usual, feel free to connect! I welcome comments with enthusiasm and my about.me page has loads of links and ways of following me! The more the merrier!


Over and out!
Much love,
Naomi

Welcome

Hello lovely readers!

Welcome to my world! ;) I've designed this blog primarily because I'm involved in quite a few volunteer projects at the moment and I think it would be good to have one place where I can talk about what I've been getting up to and everyone can keep up to speed. Hopefully though, if I've managed to promote this blog with any degree of competency, some of you lovely readers will be people who don't know me directly but can maybe learn from my experiences in the world of volunteering and/or building a career. Or, you might want to read just to learn about spaceships, which I in my wisdom know absolutely nothing about but spend half my time talking about anyway.

So to begin, here's a wee bio of yours truly:

I am a final year English and History Student at the University of Aberdeen. I love my subjects, but I'm finding more and more that I'd like to use the skills I've picked up from my course in a more practical way. I am keen to get into the voluntary sector after graduation, and to get a better understanding of myself, the world of work and my career area I have been getting involved in a few volunteer projects. I have just received an SQA Award In Volunteering Skills (level 4) and I'm currently working towards a Saltire Award for 200 hours volunteer work, and these are both things which I thoroughly enjoy and am very proud of. I am an avid learner and am always on the lookout for new opportunities to develop my skills or enable others to develop theirs. I am passionate about ensuring everybody has the chance to speak their mind and feel that their voice is heard, and try to ensure that others feel valued and confident.

My main volunteer role is as a Team Cultivate member with Arts Development. As part of the Olympics Inspire Initiative, Team Cultivate was created to complete a series of individual and group challenges, culminating in a "Port" themed Parade. As a team we were able to learn about what it means to be a volunteer as well as how voluntary work impacts the volunteer and the Volunteer Involving Organisation. Using this as a basis, we were challenged to create large puppets from willow and cardboard in order to perform with them in the project's culmination - the Port Parade.

Since the parade, the team has moved on to become involved in the Creative Communities project, where we attend pop-up events and end-events in regeneration communities, and support the project's artists team in providing cultural and artistic opportunities to those who may not normally be involved in such things.

We are also beginning to organise our own project, Skirts & Tales, drawing on all we have learned so far and putting it into use in an enterprise which will become part of the programme for the Aberdeen International Youth Festival.

I have enjoyed every second of my time with Team Cultivate so far, and I have met some truly wonderful people. The Arts Development staff, too, have been amazingly encouraging and supportive, and I owe them a great deal.

As well as continuing to learn with Team Cultivate, I have a few other volunteer projects up my sleeve. I've just become Aberdeen's newest Voluntary Arts Ambassador, where I try to encourage people to get involved in voluntary arts projects as well as support voluntary arts groups. There's a better introduction to VAA-ing in this post here, so check that out before you leave. I'm also elbowing my way into involvement with Aberdeen's City of Culture 2017 bid, having been part of the Cultural Awards Panel and, more recently, being one of the first volunteers to get involved in Seventeen, a cultural hub and the 2017 bid's new home.

I will wrap up the introductions there, but please feel free to comment below! I'm more than willing to hear your thoughts or comments on anything I bring up :)

You can also follow me on twitter, @NaomiBegg1, and check out my about.me page for links to my linkedIn and google+ pages as well as some other ways of following me and the things I get up to!


Over and out!
Love to everyone,
Naomi