I was born on the south coast of Hampshire in 2004. I grew up with my older sister Milly along with my parents Nathan and Lisa. I attended the local comprehensive schools and after I finished my exams I started my college course and apprenticeship in September 2021 and qualified in May 2023. Ever since I was a kid, I’ve loved making things. Every time there was a parcel delivered to the house I’d be using the cardboard box to make a superhero helmet, or an alien blaster. My imagination was endless. I knew from an early age I wanted a job where I could make things. I also learned the piano as a young lad and the basics have stayed with me for life.
My parents always supported my ambitions and continued to raise me with brilliant moral standards and a great understanding of people and life. I was shown the proper way to interact with people at an early age. My creativity continued to grow as I got older. I used music as an outlet and learned to play the guitar in school. I made the questionable decision to grow a mullet around the same time I started my apprenticeship. I was practically asking for insults at that point! Anyway, I was enjoying the work, and being a carpenter started to feel like I had always dreamed it would. However, almost as soon as I started I began to face some of the hardest challenges of my life. It was a difficult period of time, mostly because at 17 I had absolutely no idea who I was! Was I meant to be like everyone else I met on site? Was I supposed to keep the morals I had been brought up with or was this the time to leave that behind? Whilst also trying my best to learn carpentry, my apprenticeship ended up being the time where I learnt who I was as an individual. It was like being thrown, not just into the deep end, but into the middle of the Atlantic Ocean on my own.
Fast forward to 2024 to an airbnb in Guilford. I had completed my apprenticeship and had moved on to working for a high end firm in Surrey. I was staying up there regularly for work, and one cold February Friday night I was thinking about how far I had come from my apprenticeship. I started to think how much I would have benefited from having all the knowledge I have now back then. Not just skill, but rather how to deal with all the pressures apprentices face. Then it hit me. A million ideas all at once rushed into my head, and after gathering my thoughts, ‘Etiquette for Apprentices’ rolled off my tongue. I wasted no time and began typing all my ideas out onto a blank word document. I suppose my ultimate mission is to help others navigate their way through their apprenticeship and to help turn them into excellent versions of their self, avoiding the mistakes I made but encouraging self belief and growth.
