A new life, career, soul...

Hey! Welcome to my new blog! 

Soooo.. after 5 years of inability to blog about my academic career due to a ridiculously insane workload at my last workplace (building the plane while they were flying it, which unsurprisingly crashed) and having to deal with a vindictive manager (and HIS lovely manager, the Director of Education and Applied Research) who both unsuccessfully attempted to systematically sabotage my academic career, I'm back online!

Both managers were surprisingly still in charge there when I left despite numerous employees' complaints to HR over their bullying.

I am well back on my feet and back to succeeding academically in a company that truly appreciates and supports me. 

I still can't quite believe that they could go from gearing me up to nominate me for the Prime Minister's Award in Tertiary Teaching to a written warning over an embarrassing incident of their own doing where they were fully intending to break the law for the sake of money and threw their toys when I stopped them. 

I understand the director driving the entire thing found herself without a chair when the council rejigged the senior management, so I guess they figured it out too late. 

Ironically, during my visits to workplace counselling while I was on 6 weeks of stress leave from my previous employer, my counsellor advised me that my previous employer was famous in mental health circles as one of the top two employers in Christchurch for workplace bullying. Given the department I worked in turned over 25 staff in 10 years when it had a nominal staff of 12, I'm not surprised. And I really wish Worksafe had rolled out bullying being a workplace hazard faster, because I absolutely would have taken them to task about it. I have zero time for bullies. 

But.. life moves on..! 

I started at my new employer in May 2017 and spent 18 months getting refamiliarized with working on the tools again and gaining experience working in distribution, transmission, and generation assets.

My employer, being a Tertiary Education Organisation as well as an infrastructure company, teaches and assesses unit standards just like my last employer! Upon seeing the experience, capability and awards on my CV, they were happy to draft me into the Assessor role and recently into the Trainer role.

Ironically, the same nasty manager at my last job tried to sabotage my career at my new position as well, but my manager at my new employer laughed it off and set him straight and as a consequence, we don't deal with that institution any more. I'd actually developed a presentation to encourage students into the supply industry to present there, so I guess I'll just use it at their competition instead :) 

I also now support and Assess 27 electrical apprentices nationwide. This is really fulfilling as I can support them as well as mark their on and off-job assessments. I also support people wanting to gain NZ electrical registration who have come from overseas or unlicenced workers who have university education. I'm only now finding my academic feet again and now blogging again as a result. 

My experiences in 2011 and resulting blog ( https://thunderboltnz.blogspot.com/2011/06/ ) were amazing and set me up well for a career in the power industry. I firmly believe I am exactly where I should be in my career and can contribute to the industry well with my relative skills. 

So where to from here? I've developed numerous resources to assist in the recruitment/induction/support and mentoring of apprentices. The biggest was drafting a 35-page guide on 'How to do apprentices right'. This document is currently in the process of consultation with senior management, HR, and payroll. 

I've also produced resources for training mentors, delivery of unit 4098 (workplace assessment), staff induction, a new secret project(!), and have just learned to teach MEWP (Mobile Elevated Work Platform) units and refreshers. Oh, they gave me a flash new company vehicle, too!

So anyways, new beginnings and I feel (again) like a seed that's been planted in VERY fertile soil (again!).

Take care in COVID-19 and catch ya again soon!

AM :)

This is the result of building a plane BEFORE you fly it!! 😅😅😅