After an absolutely horrendous month of waiting (2 weeks to hear if I’d got the job and 2 weeks to hear if I was going to suffer if the government funding was cut) I finally have my answer and it’s good news. It was announced on Monday that SMarT funding is going to stay at its current level of £12 million per year until at least 2015. This money goes towards the training of British Merchant Navy officers and as far as I’m aware it supplements training to the tune of about 40%. Then the company that sponsors you picks up most of the remaining costs, though they do get tax breaks for this.
I’m lucky in that I’ve been offered sponsorship by a pretty interesting company who own their own vessels which operate all over the world. They also actually employ qualified British Officers as opposed to some who will train British Officers for the tax breaks but don’t actually employ Brits in their fleet. There’s a fair amount of debate about this and to be honest I don’t know enough to comment as it’s possible to have a mixed experience with any company. I do think it’s nice to know that there is the potential to be offered a job in the end and they also seemed genuinely interested in the quality of the training and making sure their trainees got the most out of it all which is nice.
I’ve been offered interviews with other companies but I’m happy with my original offer as it’s a good package on the table so to speak. It means that subject to passing a medical and sorting out all of the paperwork I’ll most probably be off to Southampton come September. I won’t pretend, I’m majorly excited and it can’t come soon enough. I finally have a career type job and one that I actually see myself in 10 years down the line not just for the next few months at best (like now.) I am however going to have to brush up on my maths and physics. Those two have not been a part of my life for a long, loooooong time!
Anyway, that’s all of my life in a nutshell right now. My current job is decreasing by the week, this coming week I’m working 6.5 hours. Seriously, what the fuck use to me is that? I am however on a countdown, only about 93 days until I’ll be leaving and believe me I’m counting down and crossing off each day in my diary. In addition to this I’m also thinking when I should announce my leaving at work (end of April) as I wouldn’t want a request for a reference to appear before I’ve mentioned this…
