One of the main things I neglected in my younger years was my education. Academically I was predicted to do well from the early national curriculum tests or ‘SATs’, but for one reason or another, I never took my education seriously. For brevity, I left school at 15. I got accepted into college on an IT course based on my predicted grades but dropped out after finding a part-time job.

On reflection, when I look back at my school years, I think I just used to get bored more often than not, especially being forced to learn subjects that did not interest me. I ended up working on different dead-end jobs, not that there is anything wrong with general labour. In fact, I miss the honest ‘graft’ and getting outdoors. Unfortunately, the prospects for progression are limited, and the lack of job security can result in avoiding more long-term commitments, particularly financially. After the turmoil of working these different kinds of jobs with periods of unemployment mixed in, I knew that something had to change. In 2011 after the summer bank holiday, my luck was about to change. I accidentally landed on my feet, securing an office job on a Service Desk that has now materialised into a career.

A couple of weeks into my new role, I was asked if I would be interested in fixing the faults instead of taking calls to log them. Getting off the phone and trying to solve problems appealed to me, I was then told about the CCNA and the NOC team we had for support downstairs if we could not provide a first-time fix. After finishing my shift that day, I went home to look into the CCNA a bit more. Much to my embarrassment, I realised that Cisco was not spelt Sisqo after the infamous thong song. I noticed that my local college had a Cisco CCNA NetAcademy Discovery course that ran one night a week for two years. I signed up there and then. While an expensive and time-consuming pursuit to obtain a CCNA, it was a worthwhile investment that became an excellent foundation for me to build on in the coming years.