I was grateful to have been pointed to the James Dyson How I Built This podcast last week. If you haven’t heard it / aren’t familiar with the series, it’s pretty awesome. Each episode contains conversation with a person who built something amazing that changed the world in some way.
The Dyson episode was nice to listen to as I started out my engineering life on the site of what is now the UK Dyson headquarters. Also, as a young mechanical engineer Dyson’s engineering team offered me a job as part of the production design team, I was honoured (though didn’t accept).
I came from a single parent family where money was tight. At the age of 16 I had to find a paying job as staying in education wasn’t an option (my mum needed money from me as the state cut off any child benefit at age 16).
I didn’t actually want a job, I wanted more education. I dreamt of academic learning, being a student and figuring out what I wanted to do in life. Unfortunately that wasn’t what I was dealt and I needed to go out and make a living.
My mum had never planned this life for myself and my brother. Sadly, after marrying my dad, her own father all but disowned her and cut her off. When my parents split up and my dad went off to Seattle, no financial help came…my mum was on her own. Luckily for my brother and I she was strong. We had a mum that negotiated a mortgage and various loans on a benefits income, learned and did house maintenance (electrical and plumbing) and understood the importance of spending what money we did have on the best food available. All this while volunteering in the community helping the elderly and fighting deep depression.
So when it came to leaving school she helped me make the best of the situation. Knowing how I liked making things as well as learning, engineering seemed to fit and funnily enough it’s also what the school told her I should do.
She helped me find an engineering apprenticeship in the town of Malmesbury, 6 miles away. With an apprenticeship (at least at the time time) I could learn while earning decent money. I was up against others yet somehow became the top runner. They offered me a position, one where they’d pay for my education as long as I used my learning to enhance their engineering systems. I turned them down. I didn’t want to cycle 6 miles through the countryside to get there for 7:30am.
So I took a different engineering role, an automotive one with a company closer to home. It sucked, I was working with people I didn’t click with as well as having very little in common socially. I wanted to be surrounded by smart people I could learn from and this job wasn’t it.
One day I got home and my mum sat me down, telling me she’d seen I was sad, she went on to explain how she’d phoned the previous company in the hope the original role was still available. This was 3 months later, so it was a terrific surprise when she told me they hadn’t found anyone else they’d wanted to work with. I was welcome to start as soon as I could, they’d also agreed to help me get to them and college by subsidising the cost of transport, amazing!
And so began my love of applying mathematics and physics into the real world. I learned from others smarter than me, surrounded myself with like-minded people and most of all I got to make things, actual things that were useful to the world.
This taught me 3 valuable lessons in life that I’ve carried with me ever since.
1. You can make the most out of what your dealt in life. Choosing not to be a victim is important and most of all do appreciate the support of those who want to help you
2. Don’t be scared to make a big change in your life. We only get one life, don’t waste it in a job / with people you don’t want to be with (in and out of work)
3. If you don’t ask you may never know. My mum asked the original company about the engineering role on the off chance, and it worked out. I’d assumed they had given it to someone else. Find a way of asking for what you want in life, you may be surprised..
I don’t remember and act on the above 3 every day. I fail at times, after which I find myself pondering on my engineering apprenticeship. The lessons I received from that era in my life are still as important today as they were back then.
End note: One day I’ll have a shed in my garden with a lathe, welder, milling machine and all the other kit I crave in order to build and make things again, it’s going to be awesome.