Tag Archives: Associate

Sad endings, Mary Poppins and shiny things

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Whether it’s dropping off the keys to my rented damp-ridden, avocado-bathroom-suite-complete-with-kitchen-cupboard-over-the-bathtub flat in Bracknell, leaving my Citroen Saxo with neon yellow and grey interior at the scrap yard because it had a tendency to be a bit of a death trap, or driving away from the boarding kennels as my cat gave me his best Puss in Boots wide-eyed pity face and I trundled off for a three-day conference in Belfast, I hate goodbyes.

So, with only a few short weeks of this KTP left, it’s probably no surprise that I have decided to break a Wisley tradition and not have a leaving do (let’s face it, we all knew it was never really up for debate). I’m going to do a Mary Poppins instead and steal away with my talking umbrella. But, besides wasting time stressing that whisperings in the corridors are preparations to ambush me with tea, cake and the horrifying words “speech, speech”, these remaining weeks have been very busy for the KTP team.

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Come Dine With Me, Sunday afternoons and project management workshops

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Discussing Project Management best practice within RHS Science

Discussing Project Management best practice within RHS Science

I am a great fan of the TV show ‘Come Dine with me’. For those of you who actually have stuff to do on a Sunday afternoon, the basic premise involves a group of strangers rating one another on three course dinners cooked and hosted by each member of the group over a five-day period. The person with the highest overall score at the end of the week wins a £1000 cash prize.  I’d quite like to be on the show but am put off by the fact that:

1) being filmed involves being on the wrong side of the camera all the time

2) my cooking isn’t that great, and

3) I tend not to like strangers wandering around my home, snooping in my cupboards and trying on my clothes

All this aside, if I was to appear on the show, I’d definitely do some early planning to minimise the social ridicule that would ensue if I came last. I’d decide what to cook and write a shopping list (including substitute items in case what I wanted wasn’t in stock). I’d practise the meals well in advance to iron out any problems early on. I’d write a timeline of jobs that needed to be done and would refer to this on the day to make sure I wasn’t late getting food onto plates. In effect, I’d be managing my ‘Come Dine with me’ experience as a project.

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Everything changes

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In my early (and I stress early) high school years, the girls could be split into one of two camps- the ‘Take That’ fan club or the ‘Backstreet Boys’ one.  I clearly remember arriving at school on the day Take That broke up. Friends were huddled together red-faced and teary-eyed, sobbing in classroom corners and whimpering in toilet cubicles.  Those were the ones that made it in- many were simply too distraught.

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Back to school

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As much as it may be cool to say I hated school, didn’t do my homework and never did any revision, it would be a lie. Keen as I may have been though, I wasn’t crazy, so on my last school day I appreciated the fact that I would never again have homework to do or exams to revise for.

Until last week, that is.

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Croeso i Gymru

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The title is Welsh – not, as some of you may have wondered, a case of too many biscuit crumbs in the keyboard, and it reads ‘Welcome to Wales’.

A handful of the Science Department drove past this welcome message on the M4 as we headed to Cardiff (in the pouring rain) to help out on the first of seven RHS Flower Shows.

 

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Preparing for LMC6

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Discussing Science at Wisley in 1967

 

Many months before a KTP project begins and long before an Associate has been recruited, a core project team get together and, in a room I picture as being windowless and smoke-filled but that I expect in reality is bright, airy and houses multiple smoke detectors, they devise a plan outlining how the project could develop during the allotted timescale.  The result of their efforts is one of the first things I received on my first day as a KTP Associate – the grant proposal document.  Read and revisited for much of that day – and for many weeks afterwards, this document was rarely far from my desk.

Almost two years on, and with the project well on track, I still flick through my grant proposal document but do so much less frequently- perhaps only twice in a three-month period. This week, I revisited it when preparing for LMC6.

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P is for Publishing

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In an earlier post, I mentioned the KTP Training and Development budget which encourages Associates to develop their skills and knowledge to help them now as well as post-KTP. With June 2012 marking two years of our three-year KTP project, I decided to direct more attention to my training and development and, last Sunday, in search of new skills, I headed North.

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Tick Tock

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You’ve looked at your watch about five times in the past hour.  It’s hot and stuffy and the windows have that horrible warm-room condensation they get which leaves you boiling indoors but needing at least 15 layers of clothing to be warm outside. You’ve noticed that the overhead light bulb flickers 16 times a minute. You’re too scared to open a window in case someone thinks you’re asking a question and the person next to you is munching a tuna sandwich and spending an absolute eternity eating crisps ‘quietly’.

We’ve all been there.  Lunchtime seminars. Sometimes you end up feeling that they’ve stolen an hour of your life you’ll never get back.

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Newfound interests

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“Can you tell what it is yet?”

I am, at this very moment, shouting this Rolf Harris catchphrase at the computer screen whilst wielding a wobble board fashioned from an identification key to millipedes.

Those less eagle-eyed among you could be forgiven for mistaking the picture on the left for the iconic image of E.T. and Elliot whizzing across the night sky on a bicycle – all lit up by the glow from  a full moon. It isn’t, and my mention of the key to millipedes was a clue.  In fact, taken through the microscope, this is a picture of a male millipede’s external reproductive organs (known as ‘gonopods’) – important when identifying some species of millipede.

I can honestly say that when I started my KTP eighteen months ago, I didn’t think a millipede’s gonopods would prove so exciting but there we are.  KTP projects, I’ve realised, are great at providing you with lots of new skills. Skills that you may have expected, and others that come as a nice surprise.  Developing project ideas, costing projects, initiating them, managing them, communicating with stakeholders and pitching ideas are all skills that develop through training provided by KTPs, mentoring received from the KTP project team (which includes senior managers and academics from your company and knowledge base) and on-the-job learning. But there will be other skills that Associates pick up which are likely to be more project-specific.

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Hello world!

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‘Hello world!’ – It was the default first title but, actually, it’s a pretty perfect introduction for me to a world of blogging and you to a world of KTPs!

Eighteen months into my KTP project, now seems like a really good time to give you all some first hand experience of what it is like to be a KTP Associate- a little-known but nonetheless, very exciting job!

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