There’s nothing more amusing than picking up your American former-College-roomie on her first trip to London and apologising for the dreadful weather, only to be told, “but this is exactly how I pictured it!”
London, your reputation precedes you.
I whisked her on a whistlestop visit of everywhere touristy I could possibly think of…with a few pit-stops at my favourite coffee shops, restaurants and markets. Thankfully the snow flurries held off until this morning, but it was bitterly cold as we trudged around the Tower after the Beefeater giving the tour.
This blog has lately been history trips interspersed with cookie recipes, so I’m not going to wax lyrical about the tales from the Tower…even though it’s absolutely my favourite thing in London.
Well. Maybe second favourite…
Ali admitted she could eat ice cream in a snow storm (or something), so I immediately dragged her up the Northern line to Camden for get Liquid Nitrogen ice cream at Chin Chin Labs. Yes it was amazing, yes it was Instagrammed, no, I don’t care that you’re too cool to Instagram your food.
And, apart from the moment where I thought I’d potentially broken all the toes in my left foot leaping down from the Trafalgar square lions, everything went smoothly and we had one amazing weekend. Also, Ali is now a fully-fledged Studio 60 fan, so, my work here is done.
Ali, come back soon, for I’m cracking open the smuggled Dunkin coffee and I need my cookie partner in crime to excuse the five I’m about to eat! Or maybe I should make the trip out to North Carolina…yes. Yes, that should happen.
I hope it’s soon!
x
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Annnd, after than a longer-than expected delay we are back with another Career.isms…this time, US-native but one-time honorary Brit, Jennelle Dronkers, is here to tell us about her role as Regional Marketing Manager of a large university…
What was your job title?
Regional Marketing Manager
What did that actually mean?
I promoted Brunel University programs to students from East Asia (China, Hong Kong, Vietnam, Myanmar, Malaysia) and Latin America (Mexico & Colombia) through advertising, event management, business relationship management, and by releasing success stories to international media outlets.
How long were you doing what you did?
4 Years
Was there a typical day?
No way 
Due to the various business cultures and time zones I worked with, each day’s work had to be conformed to different business styles, times, languages, and for about 4 weeks a year my work was performed overseas. My business trips always included at least 2 country visits. I always found it fascinating that I was flying to these countries for the same purpose, however I felt like I had completely different jobs when in different countries. Meetings held in China were conducted in a very serious manner with PowerPoint presentations, firm handshakes, and a very formal exchange of business cards. Upon landing in Vietnam, clients immediately wrapped their arms around me and linked their arms through mine as we walked through their office to discuss Brunel over a cozy cup of iced coffee. One business lunch in Vietnam turned into a giggly wine session, which prompted us all to hop on moped Vespas and ride to the nearest Karaoke bar.
How did you get into it/first hear about this sort of job? Did you always know it’s what you wanted to get into?
During the summer of 2008, I accepted a job offer as a part-time office assistant for Brunel University’s international department. I worked in the Admissions office and my duties were pretty basic; making tea, filing student files, answering phones, etc. The Director of Marketing popped into the Admissions office one day and asked if any of the assistants knew how to use Excel. I raised my hand and was then placed in the Marketing office to assist with a client database clean-up. Very glamorous, I know. I was surrounded by marketing managers making international travel plans and writing promotional copy for international publications.
These people were paid to travel the world and promote university programs. I had no idea that this kind of job existed beforehand, but I thought that it might be something that I’d like if I didn’t make it as a famous journalist (Sorry, Sarah Niblock!) About 2 weeks prior to handing in my dissertation, one of the marketing managers asked me what I was studying. I told him Journalism and his response was,”Oh, so you’re getting a Masters in nothing, then.” He laughed at himself and then told me that if I ever needed any PR work experience that I’d be welcome on his team whenever. I took him up on his offer about a month after I submitted my dissertation. I started my unpaid placement for Brunel on a Wednesday and by that Friday, the Director had offered me a full-time job.
If someone wanted to do this job, how would you suggest they go about getting into the industry?
An undergraduate degree in a communications or business discipline is usually required. I found with most of my colleagues that they started working in international education in some capacity first. Like admissions or student services. Starting in a different capacity is a good way to test your interest in the industry and to give you enough experience and material to use should you decide to pursue a promotional role.
What are the most important skills and personality traits for someone doing your job?
As for skills, you need to be extremely organized, as you’re having to plan international trips, event,s and manage country budgets. Also,strong communication skills such as writing, public speaking, graphic design are good skills to have. Personality wise, you need to be outgoing, extremely open minded, have an interest in foreign cultures, be able to adapt pretty quickly from one culture to the next, be patient, have a passion for building and maintaining working relationships, and be passionate about international education. I am extremely passionate about networking and building relationships and partnerships, it’s something that I have always been very good at. I suppose this is a trait I didn’t realize would be an asset in the real world, but it turns out that having the ability to build and maintain professional relationships is extremely valuable.
What’s the best thing you get to do, and what’s the worst?
Meeting with a student for the first time overseas, then meeting with the student’s parents to answer crazy questions, communicating with all parties via email throughout the application process, seeing that student arrive in London 6 months later enrolling for his/her classes, and then finally seeing that student graduate. So in a nutshell, knowing that all of your work, whether was publishing a success story or taking a client out to dinner, helped a student gain an experience I know is valuable. The worst part of the job was meeting with students overseas who couldn’t afford to study abroad. Brunel doesn’t give out too many scholarships, so students coming from my assigned regions usually came from very wealthy families. Traveling to countries like Myanmar or Vietnam, where students are not only interested in studying abroad, but also in emigrating to the UK following their course, was often emotionally draining when I knew their chances of doing so were quite low.
Is there anything about your job that you think people don’t know? Or any common misconceptions about what it is you do?
International travel is a fantastic perk to any job, however it is very tiring and not as glamorous as it may sound. Of course there are trips that include a few days to sightsee and you see things that shape your view of the world, however many of the trips are spent inside planes, taxis, hotel rooms, university exhibitions, or in offices. While most evenings are spent at lovely dinners with very interesting people, they are work dinners after all. You’re allowed to play, but you’re required to work harder. Also, it’s important to remember the harsh reality of your target audience. The overall objective is to bring in students, and the majority of these students are from big money. Some of my colleagues had the ability to turn off all emotions, but for me, it was always difficult being driven through poverty ridden streets of third world countries, and not being able to pull over and help every person I saw. Especially the young students that approached me at open exhibitions and asked me about scholarships or different ways to leave their own country forever.
Thanks Jennelle! The lovely Ms Dronkers may pop up later on in the series, as she’s now relocated back to the US (sob) to take up a position at a Chicago university, doing something different but equally interesting, co-ordinating a partnership between the uni and an under-funded public high school that’s launching a Digital Journalism course…so keep your eyes peeled for that soon…
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…and I am overly-excited. Maybe “overly” because England never really seems to see a ‘summer’ of late, and maybe “overly” because I actually prefer winter to summer. But Don’t Save Me by Haim has got me dreaming of denim cut offs and beaches and British strawberries and general sun-related shenanigans. It’s been nice to watch the sky turn citrus on an evening and know a time when you don’t have to wear your huge winter coat is coming.
Other than that, I’m in love with this Flickr page of colourful quoteage.
And these cute IOU letterpress cards.
And the notion of making a ‘Food Passport’ book as a way of finding new and (hopefully) delicious places to eat in my city…
And another Career.isms post is coming tomorrow.
And one of my FAVOURITE AMERICANS EVER is coming to visit at the weekend (yay!)
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Clockwise from Top left: 1. parkas • 2. Boyfriend Jeans (with heels) • Pointed pumps (still got love for slippers though) • and upcoming Liberty x AG (sprucing up the chambray shirt)
* There’s another Career.isms coming up soon, but I thought I’d spare you the text-heavy post for a day or two…
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Being the Jane Austen fangirl that I am, and heartily ignoring the giant cliche in the room, I wanted to start this final weekend-recap post off with a quote…but I actually fear that I’d be sidetracked and just end up picking up my copy of Northanger Abbey and this would sit here. Unfinished. ForEVer.
Actually, though this is the culmination post, we started off the weekend with Bath first, having vaguely threatened each other that we would, in fact, vist. At some point. Next month. Next year. That was actually five years ago now, so we finally decided to just hire a car and bomb it down the M4 (M3? I have no clue). What they gave us wasn’t so much a car as a purple monstrosity. Dear Peugeot: what possessed you? I don’t know what’s worse: that they actually made a car that crap or that they looked at me in the hire place and went, yep, purple car that one.
Anyway. Digressions.
So. How ’bout them Baths?
Aren’t they beautiful?
You know what was my favourite bit? Other than the ducks that were all floating around in the inky spring water like aint no thang, this ma ancient bath yo, was the curses. Imagine you’re a Roman having a nice dip in the baths…but ohp, you’re not rich enough to own a slave. And your favourite cloak is stolen! You know it was that covetous cowbag Aureliana, and you want REVENGE! So, what do you do? You scratch a good old-fashioned curse onto a tablet, fold it up and throw it into the spring for the goddess Sulis Minerva to do with it what she will.
In other words, 2000 years apart, we’re not so different, them and us.
We spent a good chunk of the day wandering around the baths, wringing the audioguides dry of information and trying to visualise real, living people in between the stones. Other than that, we slowly made our way around the town, stopping for a coffee at Society Cafe (almond milk! A teal espresso machine! Board games! Literal well-designed coffee house heaven) after wending our way back down the hills from the Royal Crescent.
It turns out Bath is a city steeped in Farrow & Ball paint. And history. But mainly Farrow & Ball. I fell a little bit in love with the creamy buildings and the uni/professional town vibe that sat somewhere between York and Brighton…duly adding it to the list of cities I could happily live in. So you see, my good opinion once lost is lost for – I mean - let me recommend Bath to you …it would certainly be wholeheartedly.
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If you’re ever in the market for a 17th Century coaching inn, nestled in a tiny village surrounded by high hedges and winding roads…you could do much worse than the George at Nunney. The staff were lovely, the food delicious, and even the weather gods obliged us with an atmospheric mist to wake up to.
Make sure you look around Nunney before you drive away (in the Ugly Purple Car, natch – more on that later). There’s an amazing shell of a moated castle built – according to the English Heritage sign – by a man named John de la Mere, a knight of ‘modest’ means (lulz).
Before you cross the moat, peer into the innards of the shell through the North wall, destabilised by Parliamentarian cannon in 1645 but which didn’t fall until 1910. Inside you can still make out the track of the staircases that curved around the towers. Can see the traces of burnt stone in the fireplace arches.
And even in the damp mist, stepping through mossy stairwells open to the sky, there’s something a little magical about knowing people lived there so many years ago…that it’s still here, in some form, to marvel at and imagine soldiers on the battlements and Royalists sleeping in the top floor bedrooms. You know, the ones with the most ornate windows.
Crazy to think that what remains only remains because the Roundheads were all ‘ah, they’ve surrendered. I GUESS we won’t destroy it then…’. Talk about the whims of men…
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Despite the no entry signs and the restraining ropes and the be-Jack Will-ed rah girl sulking because she didn’t feel that a 5,000 year old structure was as magnificent as she’d been told (wut) …still.
Wow.
The first Henge was a ditch, dug with the shoulder bones of cattle. Before that there was Wood Henge…and it turns out Eddie Izzard wasn’t even kidding.
There were stones standing on the site two and half thousand years before the Romans arrived. And they were moved over 150 miles, mainly from the hills of South-west Wales.
That’s 150 miles with nothing but man-power and some handy tree trunks.
Despite the cars streaming by on each side, it’s not difficult to gaze around the undulating land and imagine stately processions haloed by the sun bleeding through the sarsen stones. Watching it rise or set here must be something spectacular indeed.
But what’s most frustrating (or ‘tantalizing’, as the audioguide had it) is probably that we have no concrete idea what Stonehenge is for. Is it an ancient observatory? A mere show of power? A calendar, a burial ground, all of the above?
Whatever it was used for then, it is certainly a stark reminder now. All this is as fleeting and temporary as you can bear to admit. Or perhaps that’s a comforting thought…maybe it’s a way of letting the news wash over you. Oh, Terry Deary, your favourite childhood author renounced libraries, and the spectre of a triple dip looms at every quarter’s turn and even thinking about what is happening elsewhere in the world gives you a headache?
No matter.
Everything is temporary.
Everything but these stones.
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‘I am all sulphur and tinder, the heart ablaze
with those gentle words of hers I always hear
so hot within, so glad to be on fire,
living there, and for all else caring little’
Forget M&S ready meals, forlorn bunches of roses and that film with Taylor Swift in it…Petrarch’s Il Canzoniere is what it’s all about. Happy Valentine’s Day!
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This weekend involved a flit back up to Yorkshire to say hi to the family. We always end up going for a walk in the Sculpture Park and the bit above is one of my favourite parts of it…mainly because on certain moody, misty days it shapeshifts into a Scottish loch…
Sister, her boyfriend and the nephew-dawg came to say hi too… he’s completely adorable. Until he starts howling some time around 6.30am because obviously, he’s had enough sleep so SO HAS EVERYONE ELSE GET UP HAROOO. Dear everyone with pet-babies and actual-babies: I’m sure they’re lovely, but I would rather have a lie-in.
And we woke to a fine layer of snow on Sunday morning, which had duly melted by the time our afternoon train rolled around…only to apparently be replaced by a much deeper layer soon after we’d left (why, snow! Why couldn’t you just wait for me…). Saying that, it’s currently misting a few flakes of it here in London as I type, though it’s about as likely to stick as…well, it just won’t. It never does. I’m very close to being a little jealous of my East Coast friends who are snowed under from Nemo, though judging from the weekend’s instagramming, I’m sure they’re less enthused.
Next weekend: a jaunt to Bath (yay!)
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Recently I’ve been thinking a lot about careers…my own, sure (because who doesn’t take a little time to reflect and take stock at the turning of a year?) but also what interesting, cool things women I know do for a living. Sometimes I think I’d never even really know that job existed before I’d chatted to them about it. Or if I’d seen the job advertised I would have never thought there would be aspects of it that are as varied and intriguing as they are.
So. Today I’m starting a new mini-series. Twice a month (maybe a little more, depending) I’ll be talking about the awesomeness of jobs of women all around the UK and US – and maybe further afield too – about what they do, why they love it, and most importantly: what you need to do if you’re interested in following them into that field. Because of recent Richard III-shaped revelations (OMG WHO WAS WATCHING THAT PRESS CONFERENCE?) let’s kick it off today with Karis Raeburn, originally from London but currently studying an MA in Public History in Ohio…and once a Custodian of Eltham Palace for English Heritage.
So Karis, what was your job title again?
Custodian for English Heritage
What did that actually mean for you?
I took care of a Eltham Palace, so when the palace was open to the public I sold tickets, worked in the shop, gave guided tours, answered visitors’ questions around the house and if the weather was bad, demanded that people put on natty blue plastic shoe covers before coming in. When the palace was closed I did preventative conservation work, looking after the objects and fabric of the building. This included cleaning them using specific equipment and techniques, checking for damage and monitoring the temperature control systems. Plus I got to work on weddings, film shoots and events…my main role was basically ensuring that nothing got damaged while these were happening.
How long were you doing what you did?
2 years (2008-10)
Was there a typical day?
Open days - Always started with a staff meeting and cups of tea (EH runs on tea and biscuits) (Sounds familiar – Toz) where we went over anything specific happening, such as tour groups, or meeting rooms being used by outside organisations. Depending where I was working I may have then done “Moat Gates”, which is opening up various gates around the grounds. If working in the house taht day I would then unlock everything and place objects that were kept in cupboards overnight on display, remove dust covers from objects, open curtains…wake up the house. If I was working on the ticket desk, I would be getting out audio guides for visitors. Once the palace opened, I’d be greeting visitors and telling them about the building and some of the rules (please don’t sit on the furniture or take photographs!) or may be conducting a medieval guided tour of the grounds (which I wrote and created). When we closed we then had to ensure the building and grounds were empty of visitors, put objects away and lock everything up, as well as cash up the shop and ticket desk.
(Has anyone ever got stuck inside the house or somewhere and you didn’t know they were there?! Like overnight or anything?
No people – we had people just randomly follow a rubbish truck through the gate when we were closed and start walking in the gardens though. We politely asked them to leave (so British – Toz) The only thing that got stuck in over night was a robin that flew into the Great Hall one day in January and hid under a sideboard – it came out in the morning and we showed it how to get out of the door again)
Closed days - Started with more tea and more plan-making (there are fewer staff on closed days). There are particular preservation tasks that have to be done at certain times in the year and a record has to be kept of what’s happening in each room of the house – so we might have been checking bug traps for uninvited guests, cleaning the books in the library one at a time (takes about 3 weeks) or cleaning a specific item of furniture. We’d try to get around the whole house during the year and would be closed completely in January to do a “deep clean” of the building – curtains get taken down, skylights get removed, and you’d spend half of the time putting scaffolding up and down (I am a trained scaffolder!) It’s hardcore!
Special events – Weddings and film shoots usually meant that furniture needed to be moved and stanchions need put around things that couldn’t be. Once that’s done, everyone coming in is monitored everyone (caterers, florists, film crews) and so is the event to ensure that no-one is doing things we have asked them not to. We’d also wear earpieces to stay in contact with one another and pretend we were spies..
Was anything ever broken that was really precious?!
Not while I was there, but before my time a staff member did once swing a ladder around and smash some pottery by accident.
I love the scaffolding picture; also that you’re a trained scaffolder! (Did the EH train you in that or was it something you learnt elsewhere?)
Yep, I got my scaffolding training from EH.
How did you get into it/first hear about this sort of job? Did you always know it’s what you wanted to get into?
I wanted to work in a historic building because I love them, and so specifically looked for jobs with English Heritage – I have a masters degree in Medieval History.
If someone wanted to do this job, how would you suggest they go about getting into the industry?
Considering that English Heritage’s budget has been drastically cut in the last few years and many staff have lost their jobs, the best way in now would be volunteering (either with EH or the National Trust) or considering a masters degree in Museum Studies. If you go for this route though, be warned – the level of pay is not what most people with a masters would be looking for!
Did anyone you work with (or maybe know of) do your job or similar but without a history degree? Or is it unlikely that would happen now?
There were certainly people there who didn’t have degrees, but they had been there a long time – all the younger staff had degrees in a related field. I think that if you didn’t have a degree, you might be more likely to get a job at a site that was outside London.
What are the most important skills and personality traits for someone doing this job?
Good interpersonal skills, being able to think and adapt to changing situations and a real love of historic preservation – cleaning curtains for five days straight is enough to test the patience of even the most ardent history lover.
What was the best thing you got to do…and what was the worst?
I loved giving tours and sharing knowledge, and seeing an object looking in great condition after we’d finished with it. The worst thing was dealing with people who were disrespectful of the building and thought that the cost of hiring it gave them the freedom to treat it any way they liked.
Is there anything about your job that you think people don’t know? Or any common misconceptions about what it is you do?
Probably that you don’t do anything when the house is not open to the public – that’s when we were busiest!
(Any questions for Karis? Leave a comment!)
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