In our latest College Life at Home blog we hear from Marketing Assistant Greg Clark who has adapted well to his new home working life and tells us what he looks forward to coming out of lockdown.
Being in lockdown has been an interesting time to say the least. As a team, we have been very lucky in the sense that there is still plenty for us to do. A wise man (me) once said “Marketing never sleeps” and I think that statement has never been more accurate during this time.
Marketing is now one of the main points of contact between potential students, current students and the college. I am responsible for answering the Facebook inbox and for many that is the place they go to looking for answers and when this all started you can imagine there was a lot of questions from people and we didn’t have all the answers. However as it often does the whole college pulled together and we were able to create a information page with a list of FAQ’s very quickly so we had somewhere to point people to get their questions answered in the first instance.
Upon being sent home for the foreseeable, I set up office in my kitchen and after a quick dash back to the office to pick up my chair (before lockdown measures were introduced) I found I adjusted to home working life quite well. I have since relocated upstairs to:
A- Sit at a desk rather than a kitchen table which was destroying my back
B- Keep away from the fridge!
One of the biggest tasks the team undertook was our first ever virtual open day which was a massive learning curve for us all. I ended up editing over 20 online videos with not a lot of previous experience and I’m now looking at learning more about video editing and production.
I am really proud of how we managed to pull it off with not a lot of preparation time and although there are things that we will improve on for next time, the event was a great success with just under 200 sign-ups! It really was a great example of what can be achieved when the whole college comes together.
Personally it’s been a bit strange, I haven’t seen my girlfriend Gail since March as she stays in East Lothian. We’ve adapted though and take part in weekly quizzes and movie nights.
More recently I’ve been able to spend some time in my Mums back garden which she has spent most of lockdown working on and I have to say it looks amazing! (Well done Catherine!) it’s been lovely to just be able to sit and chat to somebody in person. You don’t realise how much you miss human contact until it’s taken away from you and while I am quite happy in the house with just me and Young Prinny the cat, I can really see how people would find it difficult to cope.
Looking to the future, I have some time to take off work at the end of June. I was meant to be on a weeks all-inclusive in Greece but I’ll settle for 7 days in the Costa del Broxburn!
Hopefully during the summer there will be some more positive developments and we will be able to dip a toe in the waters of “new normal” and if that means being able to go for a pint again, I’m all for it!
West Lothian College Blog 