What I wish I had known before my first week on site
The small things nobody told me: what to bring, who to ask and how long a day feels.
Latest posts
A new post every Sunday: the planning, the studying and the first months on site.
Counting the evenings: how I planned my study
How I counted the free evenings in a year and shared them between the course and the rest of my life.
What my old job taught me that I still use
Five office skills that turned out to matter on a building site.
Telling my manager and my family
How I chose the words, the day and the order, and what I would do differently.
A normal day in my first year
Up early, a van, a half-finished flat, a lunch on the roof and an hour at the study table.
Why I kept the blazers
A wardrobe of old work clothes next to the new ones, and why I am not ready to give them away.
Studying after work without running out of steam
A few habits that made the evenings easier: a fixed place, a short start and a stop time.
Choosing between two training routes
The questions I asked about each route before I picked one, laid out side by side.
The people who helped me on the way
Who I asked, what I asked them and how I said thank you.
The day I decided
The lunch break on a rooftop when I wrote the list that started it all.
Notes From the Switch
A short letter every Sunday from my lunch break: one thing I learned this week and one thing to try.