I am now back in Devon, after spending a brilliant six months in our London office. For many fellow trainees around the country March spells the months of change. For some it will be their first seat rotation, but for others, like me, it is the final rotation. I am a week into my final seat in our Projects team, and looking forward to another six months of interesting and varied work.
My life, for the past 18 months, has been compartmentalised into 6-month blocks. When you start in a new seat you feel, in all honestly, a bit clueless about what lies ahead of you. I will always remember a partner telling me, when I first started the training contract, to take reassurance from the fact that that there would be many days, throughout the training contract, when I would think: “I really do not know what I am doing or how I have got here”. Those feelings are all part of the learning process, they are familiar feelings, but they are becoming less frequent! If you do not feel like that at some point during your training then perhaps you are not being challenged enough!
As a trainee throughout your training you are constantly acquiring new skills, and you become involved in a broad range of practice areas. I have been very fortunate in the experiences I have had, and I do not see my final six months being any different. As you progress you build on the knowledge and experiences gained from the previous seats, and from the wealth of knowledge you acquire from your colleagues around you. Much of the skillset you acquire as a trainee is transferable with each seat move, so although you may not be wholly familiar with the actual content of the work you are doing, you will not be as nervous in your final seat as you were going into your first seat or first rotation. This is because the things you were initially apprehensive about have been overcome, and those things have become a part of your professional life on a daily basis.
Being on the final rotation my thoughts are on my current seat, and qualification. It is incredible how quickly the time disappears on the training contract, and I still cannot believe that in a couple of months I will be thinking about the qualification process and the next hurdle…