Decoded - Career Paths Translated: This season of Decoded is brought to you by Morgan Walsh Consulting, supporting businesses and their leaders at moments of transformation or scale. For more information on services, head over to MorganWalshConsulting.ie. I remember going to a project once in Malawi and there was a man on the flame side, he was from Dunagal, he worked in cooperatives and I said, what do you do? He goes, I'm the spud man. And I said, leave it alone, I won't ask anymore. I'm Laura Morgan-Walsh and you're listening to Decoded, the podcast where we translate our guests' career path. What were their CAO choices? What part of their career journey would they go back and change? What's the good, the bad, the perks and the boring parts of their role? And how will their role be influenced by AI in the future? My guest this week is Brian Stokes from University of Limerick to the European Parliament to Dahl-Erin to Deputy Principal of Cork College of Further Education and Training. Brian joins me to talk about the importance of spuds, taking chances and creating magic. Here's our chat. hope you enjoy. Brian Stokes, Deputy Principal of Cork College of Further Education and Training. You are most welcome to Decode It. Thank you, Laura. It's great to on. Well, I tell you, it's lovely to be here because I didn't think that I was going to interview a teacher as part of this series. I won't lie. I thought... No, they take a very direct line. Most of them know at the time of leaving primary school, I want to be a teacher. But that is not the case with you. No. You took a different route ⁓ to becoming a teacher. ⁓ First of all, tell me, ⁓ What does the Further Education and Training College do? Okay. So Further Education and Training is that space after your Leaving Cert, where you have the opportunity to go on a few different tracks, separate universities. So you come out of Leaving Cert and there's a few different types of people in the Leaving Cert space. Those that achieved points, but wanted a year to figure out what they wanted to do or test something. those that maybe weren't too clear to commit to anything and want to do a study in an area they're interested in and maybe take the opportunity to use the progressions to go to third level. And then there's those that want to go into the training and apprenticeship space where they want to go on a career path with the earn and learn approach and model. So in our college, have them, you have every September, it starts afresh. It all happens in a year. You're launching a ship while building it every single year. And you can see it with the students because it's a Hurtlinean change. So in our campus, for example, you'll have people who are on tertiary programs, which are new for the last three years, where they can go straight onto the university track, but start their first year in a further education college. And they're doing level QQI level five content, but it's mapped to university content. then they complete their first year. if they hit the certain grades that you have to in college to pass to progress. You just go into the first year of a certain track or second year, it's all mapped out. And we have that in things like occupational therapy, nursing, social work, logistics. All those spaces are coming on track and creative media in our sister colleges. So it's really interesting. for example, if you were someone who thought I might want to be an occupational therapist and you do or don't. get the points to do the degree course. You might not get them or you might get them and think, yeah, but I'm not too sure. You can go into an FET college and then you do the first part of the curriculum that then will complement. That's exactly it, Laura. It's twin track. So you could do the whole year and say, no, not for me at all. And you go out with a certification at level five for an occupational therapy assistant. which is mapped. You can use that thing for progression to a different course in college if you wanted to apply. Or you could stay on the track if you're progressing and work through. So that gives great flexibility. Then you have your traditional level five courses, level six courses, the PLC space. And again, you might be looking at business computing. You do it for the year. You might decide to go to take that and go to work if that's the kind of area you're in. Or again, you take those final award and you can apply on two different tracks with us. One, can use it towards CAO and apply using your points. And in Cork, there's the Lynx program where all the colleges, CCPS, where UCC and MTU will recognize direct entry. If you hit a certain standard, you can apply for those spaces too as well. So it's a double shot. ⁓ And then you have what we do deliver is everyone knows about apprenticeships. And of course, the last 10 years have been transformative in them. So you can do an apprenticeship now from like level five all the way up to level nine in university. And you can apply different points. And sometimes the language, there's always a problem with language. There's so many acronyms and phrases and you can just about handle CAO sometimes holding onto the desk. But like they're called post 2016 because they happened after 2016. But they're in a range of areas. So you can go into computing, accounting, auctioneering. a huge demand for that one and huge employment for years now. And they're two year programs and they're earn and learn. So they're day week or two days a week on college and the rest of work. And you're getting salaries throughout your time and you're getting at the end of it, your full certification and you're getting an industry qualification and you have employment. So you get a great mix of people coming in to that college setting every September. And that matches the teachers we have who all went on, most of them circuitous routes to get there because you have to have that vocational experience or that professional experience to teach a lot of the subjects. So as you mentioned at the beginning, some teachers go on the straight track, A lot of teachers, including myself, went on a more indirect channel. where maybe what you discovered was you were good at communicating or you were good at breaking ideas down and sharing with teams, or you took on roles in a different area where you spent a lot of time onboarding people and teaching comes into the array there. Sometimes part-time, sometimes at night. and they do it in their specialist area. So if you're an accountant, you might end up teaching taxation to account technicians at night or something. And then you go, teaching, I'm in my 40s, I'm in my 50s. Maybe it's time to pivot. And we get a lot of people in that take that opportunity and come and work with us. They become teachers, instructors, lecturers. And the university space has changed in the last few years. So now there's part-time courses to convert to teaching. a of the colleges are now offering part-time diplomas and further education for teachers. So you have people who are working and doing your part-time and the weekends and doing their placements. The people that did not start off at 17 saying, I want to be a teacher. But they find themselves at 27, 37, 47 going, I'd like to try that. So you get a great mix of students who are looking at their options. get teachers who have relived experience as well of that area. teaching in the room as well. it's a great combination. Yeah, it sounds like a really unique environment in the non-traditional sense and yet working within the traditional system. having said that, take me back to when you were 17, filling out the CAO form. Did you say, I don't want to be a teacher? Or what was Brian thinking about when faced with that form? He was doing a lot of thinking, but he wasn't doing a lot of talking. So I don't think I was able to express that I did not understand half what those options were or where to go or who to ask. And I was very lucky. I was humming and howling about the CEO thing. I wanted to go to university, but obviously nobody in my family had gone. It was a rural school, so great mixed co-ed convents. So the school was great. The nuns were great. The teachers were great. Everybody was great. But there was... a certain cohort that were going to college and the rest just traditionally not. So you're in that 2001 space at 17, 2002, leaving certain. And everyone is now going to college. Even though they're not going straight into an honors, they're going into a level seven. Everyone's suddenly going to college. The free fees thing had locked in at that point. It's like 500 pounds to go, 600 euros kind of mark. It's doable. And I wanted to go and I just didn't know what the jobs were and I didn't understand what the courses were. but a really good guidance counselor, Mary Cockland, ⁓ who filled out my form from behind my back ⁓ and sent it off. And it was public administration in UL, because I was interested in politics, I was interested in history, but I wanted a job, so the civil service was kind of calling in my head because you can't just go to college not to have an impact. Your memory had run you. So I did that and I got the points. Not quite sure how... ⁓ A lot of study done, maybe not very effective. Yeah. No one talks about it. No one talks about how to study. honestly, it came up on It is and it came up on a previous chat I had with Michelle Nighavaud, where talked about that transition ⁓ of I've done Leaving Cert. I know how to I figured out how to study. But actually me enjoying something or being good at a subject doesn't necessarily translate into points. And then there's even a further transition into first year in college, is studying with nobody watching. Night and day. I mean, that in itself is a learning and a path you only understand if you've traveled. So we compared notes on the fact that I loved learning. I worked hard. didn't necessarily translate into, you know, groundbreaking points, but then really struggled in first year in college because I didn't know how to study without people watching And it wasn't that I didn't work. wasn't in the UCD bar every night. It's just that I wasn't studying the right stuff. I didn't know the system and there is a system to study in. There's a system and there's a different system to study for the Leaving Cert. The Leaving Cert in the end is not predominantly about all the knowledge, because if that was the case, the people that love topics would fly. There's a format, there's a structure, there's a way they're asking you the question, there's a way they want you to produce the answer, which is absolutely fine. That's what formal education is, taking, know, distilling, synthesizing and passing it back and say, look, I think I've got a sense of this. it's fine to get that model maybe just about right or half right. But if you go into the university space and you weren't really winning at the leaving search space of study skills. the other, like the research skills, that's non-existent. Now a bit more now in the last few years, the changes in the English language, but it's still quite non-existent. The gap is huge, which is where FE helps actually, if you see the further education space, because you're building up people's ability to research and frame stuff and it gives you a chance. So you transition into that skill. So I'd like you, I went into college the first time in UL, great course, great lectures, everyone was loving. And it was a bumpy ride academically. I got there, it was... and it wasn't from lack of work, you know, it wasn't from trying. It just wasn't landing. And then I took co-op, which is cooperative work placement in UL, which is what UL was famous for when nobody else was sending you to work to get paid, you were going into the industry. And I went to the European Parliament to work with Brian Crowley. In Brussels? Yeah. And can I just give this as a word of support to anybody? I was, I got in... in junior third honors French and was put into the higher honors class. And within 15 minutes, the teacher said, was a mistake. I need to go to the regular honors class. And then gently slid my way down through French to the point where I got in leaving third French and somehow found myself living in Brussels and put up a stone and a half and worked fine so I could eat and survive and work. So my French was good enough. Hey, is good enough to ask for food, so the... Yeah, if you survive, you can work. And I did my co-op in the European Parliament. That was just after the accession. So if all these new European countries come in, it's 2004. What was that like? It was mind-bending. I found that I fell in with the Portuguese. ⁓ The mindsets were, you could see all the mindsets play out. ⁓ And it was incredible. were so, there are, there were there were, there are so many opportunities ⁓ to in ⁓ European institutions. And you mentioned that, you know, to about like, you know, what your mom said about languages and things. My wife's cousin works over there. Never would have landed on us. And there's so many opportunities to go over there and live. And then you travel. You're in Brussels. Every Tuesday morning, you used to watch the train pull up for St. Petersburg. At the train station, you kind of go, hmm, will I? Not today. That changed my mindset on things, being over there. Yeah. And it's funny how travel... does that. ⁓ And I had mentioned to you offline that I was studying French and German for my leaving search. And while most parents would say, ⁓ you know, do you want to be a teacher? My mother was like, yeah, the European Commission now is where I see you or, know, the. Good honour. You know, ⁓ absolutely. And, you know, we weren't we weren't short of vision in our house, which is probably where a lot of us got to where we got to. I think. where you aren't given that, I think you can put yourself in a position to then see that vision. So, you know, when you're in the heart of Europe and you're meeting people from all walks of life, from all different countries, with all different mindsets, and seeing the differences, seeing the similarities, and like you say, just standing at a train station where you see where that train's going, you're like... ⁓ my goodness. Like all I have to do is step on that. On your commute and your normal, like, you know, we grew up five miles to the Liberty Junction. The trains didn't go to too many places. So it always stuck with me. That chucks the position of you can sit at the junction and get blown out of it. And you were going to Cork, Dublin, or maybe Wadford. And then suddenly, you know, you're at a normal train station. And the biggest thing I took from it is Erasmus. When you're in college, take the chance. Yeah. But just take it because in college is that space, there's funding, there's connections. That'll stand to you even just in terms of your own personal confidence. Yeah, I would wholeheartedly agree. I think my position when Erasmus came around, I wasn't in position to take it up. The funding wasn't there. wasn't going to cover it. I was the eldest of six children. So it just wasn't going to happen. But what I did instead was I got a credit union loan. I took the year out. I bought a plane ticket to France. I found a person who had spent their Erasmus in Lyon in France. I'd never been there, but I connected with her and I said, where did you work? Where did you stay? Would you recommend it? She gave me name of a fella who ran a bar and I packed a bag and I went and I worked there. And then seven months later said, I better go and figure out a bit of German here or I'm in trouble. So I contacted the girls in arts who were on their German Erasmus in Aachen in Germany and ⁓ packed the bag again, booked a Ryanair flight and off I went. So there's ways and means of doing it, but I think that doing it is the most important. That's where it requires someone at home to say, just go do it, even if they can't help fund it. Because since then, the funding got a lot better for Erasmus. It was Leonardo, think, when we were there. And it was very partial. I think they bought you a flight over and back. And they might have given you essentially 500 euros to not die on the first week. And that was kind of it. But you see, we were getting paid. So that's the only reason I could do it. But it's like you need someone at home to say, just go for it. And that provided every opportunity for me in the end, because I got offered a job while on that. So then I took leave of absence. Oh, so tell me now, hold on a second. You got offered a job. you're... When does the co-op happen? In what year? Yeah, it's go... It's, it's, it's Terger. It's... Terger, okay. Yeah. So you're nearly... first semester, Terger, at time for campaign. At the time. But you're nearly at the gap on a degree. Oh, you are, yeah. Yeah, you can kind where we're going. They're lining you up for the runway to introduce you to the world of reality and work and kind of, know, college is a great cocoon. and their timing for co-op was really good. ⁓ Because you're realizing this is, you better start making some plans. ⁓ Yeah, the timing is good for the co-op except when somebody comes and offers you a permanent job. Yeah, which is always a risk. I still see it today inside in the college when people come in with three months to go and I go, no. But yeah, was TD contacting me. I think he thought I was doing something far more competent and capable in Brussels. And he offered me a role as a parliamentary assistant to Nestor House. So I started and I just came home. I met him the day before Christmas Eve, I think. And went home and told nobody and... and then told my mother that I'd been offered a job and I was dropping out and all that. But the lecturers didn't let me drop out. They made me do a leave of absence. They kept it going for years. So then I never lost my place. I just took a college break. Weren't you lucky that you had somebody being your safety net? Yeah, Breed Quinn. ⁓ And tell me, like I have to say now, if I was faced with I have another three months to do a full time job, I don't think I'd have given it a moment, Sarah. I would have said, no, no, I finished the degree and then I'll hope that I can get it. So what was it? in my mind, Gaara, was it was what you, it was the best job you could imagine doing out of the degree. OK. It was made for us. So they invented the job that you would really, really want to do. So you're kind of going, what am I doing the degree for? So ⁓ why would let it pass here? And it was kind of zero cost. Okay, it doesn't work out. You've lost the year. ⁓ Even then could kind of see it would be okay. Because in third year in college, you see people hit a few bumps on the road. you kind of are in there long enough to know that people come back. So I ended up working as a parliamentary assistant in Instra House. Ended all from 05 up until 08. Tell me about that. What is a parliamentary assistant? A bit of everything. You do all the constituency stuff. You do all the research. You do the media. You work on marketing. You work on reviewing questions and papers. You work closely with the TD, so you get a profound sense of what is going on in your community. You're essentially there to provide the full support for them to deliver for their constituency. at the local and national level. So it was a great intermix and get involved in the party stuff. So then you see how the challenges are there to put things through the pipe. So I personally, I have never gotten into professional, I'm always fascinated with planning and developments because it takes so much courage and imagination to make an idea and it takes decades to get it through. But on the day-to-day basis, you see why, because everyone in Ireland gets a chance to put their toppings in. And in the way we have our electoral system, communities are very much involved. So I got a real interest in community development from that. And from there, schools just started to come into my existence. I was looking at schools from a different angle. I was seeing the work of principals and deputy principals and boards of managements and buildings. there was a lot of pressure at the time. Gael scholars were trying to produce Gael filáiste. There was huge numbers going into schools. Schools were appearing a lot. And you're also getting that whole space of acknowledging that students have different needs and the state is finally trying to put the resources in. And that was Micheál Martin back in 97 with special needs assistance. But special needs assistance were welcomed. That's great. And then you're getting into the mid noughties and things are getting more complicated. people are coming with unique issues and challenges and you're coming to you looking for help because the systems aren't there. The structures aren't there. So that was really interesting. So then the more I saw of that, was like, education is really interesting. it just started. a slippery slope from there. It did, it clicked away. you know, then I became a personal assistant when he became junior minister. So I ended up in Irish Aid, which is the development agency linked to the Department of Foreign Affairs. ⁓ And Ireland is, know, Ireland is an absolute leader on global development. ⁓ And within that space, I got to see some amazing people, work with other amazing people to allow people live and prosper and get education. And I remember going to a project once in Malawi and there was a man on the flame side, he was from Donegal, he worked in cooperatives. And I said, what do you do? You know what? He goes, I'm the spud man. And I said, leave it alone, I won't ask anymore. And then a few days later, we end up in a hill in the middle of nowhere in Malawi and he is the spud man. because they don't eat potatoes really, Maloey. They didn't care. But the weather worked for it. And he had figured out that if you get them to grow potatoes and show them how it could work in the landscape, you could sell the potatoes for cash to South Africa to make crisps. And then they started digging ponds. like the age was knowledge and experience. It wasn't massive money. Like I think we bought a few shovels and bags and bags of seed potatoes kind of thing. But then they were linking people in. And the bit, goes back to education again. So all this money's rolling. People are eating, they don't eat the potatoes, but they grew ponds to irrigate. And then they could keep fish. Then you're getting protein. Then you could grow slightly better crops beside the pond. And then as children were getting a more diversified diet, they were able to do school. Yeah. Because they literally had the attention span because there was money coming in for selling potatoes for crisps. They could pay for school. And suddenly kids were involved. And the two and... The Mary Mackleck College was involved in supporting teacher training education in Malawi, which at the time, was the second-largest poorest country in the world. And you were kind of going, it's a man from Donegal with a bag of spuds, a few spades, and suddenly kids are going to school. It's education again. And it's generational change, because once you get kids into school, they're doing better than their parents would have you just, they're on the track, you know, the flywheel starts. Seeing that angle of it. And you're kind of going again, you this does change things. So we get to 2011, we may have driven the country into a wall slightly. And I was thinking what I wanted to do. So it was a time of law change. So I actually said I wanted to do history and economics in UCC. So I got to jump into second year there and of course, AXIN is a three year. So I did economics and history and the big linking back to study. All those years working, report writing, research, deadlines and running that nine to five mentality of, know what, today is a day of work. would go to college at eight o'clock in the morning. I would work. There would be lectures in my day. They wasn't, they weren't my day. There were lectures in my day. and then suddenly you start knocking out first class honours and you realise you're not any smarter than you ever were. It's just showing up, attendance, paying attention and as that bitch you said, being able to work it up being watched. ⁓ Can I ask why history and economics in particular, was that always a love? I always loved history. So what can you do with it? know, if you said at home. think that's where I wanted it to be. And economics, I despised economics the first time when you were. I just couldn't get my head in around it. And it was always abstract. It was apples and oranges. And if you were, if you're the cool teaching assistant and you ended up saying, you know, cider and pizza, I was going, I don't like pizza and I don't need drinks. Like it just wasn't connecting. And then went back. and it was work and it was back to all those years and it was the crash and working inside government. And you saw, I get this. is, this is big stuff. The small, those little graphs and charts heading off, that's just what they do. It's the concepts. And that's where I enjoyed it. I really enjoyed it. So I did that. And then of course I wanted to do teaching. So I was sitting in that sec, I wanted to do secondary school teaching. And I did history and business. because no one does economics and really at that point. And I'd never done a set of tea counts or anything. So had to go off and learn accountancy while teaching it, which was not the first time it would have to happen. ⁓ And I did that, did the year. I did it in the year, I did my dip in the Earthling Convent of Blackrock, Sister Jean, she was fabulous and they were great kids. And I remember one day, you know, when you get older, you're more practical. And it's back to those examples that are pointless, you know, they're, They're very veneer like. So we were on about the Stone Age and in houses and she goes, you know, how big could it have been? ⁓ And I said... fairly big, like a wigwam doing this. she goes, what a wigwam? was like, ⁓ God. So this lesson had failed. And I was out that night at home and I was chatting to someone and I met a forester from Quilltree next to me. And I said, you wouldn't have spare wood, you? So we went up with a trailer and we thank you Quilltree for listening, for helping the education of Ireland. And we took a trailer load purely for educational purposes. Yeah, no whiskey change tans, I promise. And we built a full-size stone-edge house. were all first-year girls. They built it. I didn't. I just shouted a lot and did that thing. I did football coach. I didn't get involved. And we built a full-sized one. it was a lovely Dutchman in halfway in Cork, Rosotos. I say he made a lot of willow. And they had to weave it around. And then they clad it in grass sod. And there's a competition in Cork for history. at Ciaran McCarthy, he's a counselor, runs it. And they won best junior history class that year. But it was great fun to see them doing something and you didn't defect. So I realized I liked that constructivist thing of building lessons that are doing or letting people have a chance, even if it's a theory, to apply it. So did a bit of sobbing, went to teach in England for six months, really enjoyed it, was very good. I came back ⁓ and I got an opportunity to serve in a further education college which I knew nothing about. ⁓ And I could not get over the magic of further education. The ⁓ magic it. People come in, they don't really know what they want to do. They have an idea. only have like a year. And somehow in all that, we bring them in, we let them know they're doing something seriously meaningful. You train them up in areas they'd never done, their learning theory, they're applying it, they get to go out and work experience. You're engaging them with their options, progression, work, next steps. And you're getting them all out the door by the first of June. And they just do so well. And they're like what you said, Lara, they want to be there. ⁓ They don't have to be there, they want to be there. And then they go off and they progress to third level, they progress into employment, they go back and do a different course because they realize it wasn't the area they wanted to go into. And you can support them. And it's more community. Like there's about 1,500 people every day on our campus, just on our campus. And If you're to work in a real world experience education space, you need to have as many experiences of the real world yourself from a vocational or employment space. So when you're saying like, you you didn't foresee, you know, speaking to a teacher. I'm a teacher, I trained as a teacher, I educated as a teacher, I qualified as a teacher, but you're a bit more of everything in further education and training. get to stretch, you get to invent programs, you get to work with universities to build things that never existed. It's so flexible because the learner's needs are flexible. And changing all the time as well. It sounds like you can read. is becoming a virtual reality like we... We do a huge amount of soft skill delivery through VR. that started off, you know, at the moment we're working on robotics, that'd be great. So people coding would have been courses for software development, but with the change in AI, you need to provide those skills in a different space, more practical. So we're switching those coding skills to robotics. And that's only come about in the last few months. And it's the reinvention. It mirrors your learning journey. People come back at all ages. It isn't just post-leaving sort. It's the full pathway. It's lifelong learning. matter what job you go into, there can be something that piques your interest there can something that you kind of go, geez, have a cap there. ⁓ you know, I'd like to know a little bit more about that. And I don't think I was prepared for the fact that things would continue and my learning needed to continue if I was to not just do well, but be fulfilled and be confident as well about what I was doing in a job. ⁓ So I think FET seems to be a lovely environment to encourage that so that it's not a one and done. You may come back, you may not. You may come back in a couple of years time. You you talked about auctioneering there. I didn't think that was a qualification. didn't think that was something that you did. So it's whole locked in profession. Yeah, there's so many jobs that you don't consider ⁓ in terms of third level and also needing further education. that is other side with Laura, when you're there doing that job now, Like if you're thinking about a parent watching their child go down one pathway and they had a vision for them or they can see a skill in them that they're not acknowledging, like myself, the teaching thing. That's assuming, by the way, I was any good at it. Just bear that in mind. But... We'll give you that. Yeah, pretend, yeah, notionally. But to take that, you you can always jump on later. Yeah. You can take on a trade, you can take on a skill, you can take on a profession. You know, you could be someone who's gone into engineering and you're working and you're going, God, I'm sure they're good engineering, but they would have been a great teacher. At some point, they might need to go back and lecture in that. There's always those opportunities. You know, like if you're looking at advising people and they're torn between two ideas and one of them's teaching and the other is something else, I'd say do to something else first. And you could bring that into teaching. know, there's, know, teaching isn't if to be 23 and get into it. It can be any age. And again, when you're back at 17, 18 and you're not sure, Teaching is a skill that you have to have and you can hone and be educated in, but it also helps if you have content and background. Now this does not apply to primary school in the same way. That's a different track. But when you're looking at post-primary onwards. You know, you can bring that knowledge and experience in. And as I said, you can upscale in that while you're working as well. Yeah, I think it's a great shout. Do the thing. ⁓ Between two, do the thing. And then there are other options outside of that. That can always come later. Tell me, with the scenic route that you took to where you got to, what's the one thing you changed? I wish I said yes more when I was working in... the parliamentary assistant job. You know what it was? See, now it's easy. I see the stages. At the time, it was looking like a job and a career. And I started to put the college thing, it became a bit of a chip in my shoulder. Because it does, like, you know, it does. That's the other side of it. Like that leap of absence sounds amazing. Now, looking back, at the time, it became a bit of a chip on my shoulder. You know when people say they did those leaving sort dreams? I never had that. It tells you how little interest I really gave to leaving sort. I think I was meant to be scared, Wickless, and I wasn't enough. But the college thing started to get at me. And I wish I had just done it part-time. I don't know at the time, part-time and blended and online is the best gift that came out of COVID. All of these bits that came out of COVID are incredible. There was a lot of talk always about flexible learning, part-time learning. It wasn't, it was there to suit the schedule of the organisation and they didn't want to know about you. And I couldn't see any way of finishing my degree part-time. Like I would have knocked it out in about a year and a half, part-time or two years. It just wasn't there. Now I'm sure I could figure it. But I think that's the bit I should have probably pushed more, I wish. That I should have seen it as said yes more to I need to get back to college. And then I could have come to that end point maybe. But it probably would have sent me a different track. you know, when we're talking about careers and getting onto college tracks and getting onto career tracks, and it goes back the most important thing is you only know who you know and what you know around you and who your family know. ⁓ And a bit like yourself, it's great that we got to college and it's great that people... back to us along the way at the time, which sounds so weird now when you've got everyone going to college. And it was not that long ago, but it's, but the, dispute doesn't change. You see it in further ed as well. Your ambitions and your experiences are limited by your family's knowledge and experience of who they see. So I never knew a doctor. We knew that doctor. And in my wife's family, we're friends with their doctor because she grew up in the town. I used to find that amazing. You knew a doctor. But then I knew no other doctors. then randomly now I know four. And it's given me a whole other take on the job. I would have had it a certain way because it's knowledge, experience, meeting people. And it's funny those careers. But again, if you'd asked me 10 years ago, who would I send my child to for work experience with TY to give them a chance? They're limited to that network. So the one bit of advice I give a parent is put your neck out for them and getting them those TY experiences and things, you'd be amazed where it'll take you. know, like if they want to do journalism, ⁓ yeah, that's the other thing. Don't mind, don't worry, don't care about is there a job in it. ⁓ That is the greatest limiter to potential. Oh, that's dying. That's no park that. If they want to see something, find a way to give them that T.Y. experience of a week. And I might stick with them forever. And I might, they might put them off it as well. But if you can broaden your family knowledge or experience in any way or take up any school chances where those TASTA programs even, take them. Yeah. It's interesting. I have often think that Knowing what you don't want to do is absolutely critical to your decision making. I enjoyed physics because you could figure it out. And we took part, I think, in some regional thing for the Young Scientist. And it was, I'm so glad you did. I was bored stiff. That was it. You know, was like, God, is this it? No, thank you. That knocked out a whole area. ⁓ But I would say that, you know, if you're looking at it from a parent or an aunt or an uncle's perspective or you know, when you're in a role in the family where you can kind of help bring them along, you know, look to using your network to give people a chance to see what they may or may not like. You're in the of work, you're in the world of community. You know plenty. you just don't have that slight pitch or nuance. And again, what they're hearing being sold to them isn't what's being sold to you. We really have to pull, if there was a big push you could make in education in Ireland. We need to do a lot more in the guidance space for families. There needs to be the you bit, the parent bit, but we need to pull it together ⁓ in a far more holistic way that we're all going through the process to educate it. The time to do that is T.Y. slash early 50th year. And that, the way, that's quite late in some ways. And that means they were all on shared language. We're not going at it the way we better do it now, you know, because it's going to be tough enough to talk to a teenager or an adult. ⁓ Tell ⁓ Every job has the good, the bad and the boring bits. Like what are the boring bits ⁓ of ⁓ a principal of a further and training unit? There aren't actually any boring bits. There are bits you go, ⁓ God, not a game, but they're not boring, I think the bit I do the timetable. And I actually it's a bit odd. I enjoy it. It's about four thousand hours a week of teaching delivery I have to schedule. ⁓ And ⁓ discovered actually I'm really good at logic puzzles. I dread it every year and then I kind of get going and then I get really into it. So that's the bit like so around the last week of July, it's not the time to talk to me, I think. I think I'm a bit insufferable in my size and mornings and weeks is going, but then I get into, I all start after the August bank holiday and suddenly I go into the zone and I get no one else in the world cares. I can't turn and go, oh my God, you know, but I do, I'd say around the last week of July, I'm probably You can see the other Glen Rose on my face. So it's not Instagramable what you produce, but it's essential part of the wheel and how the machine works. And you're part of a team, which is great. So like there's someone else who figures out teachers and the subjects and I have to figure out how to make it work. So you can ring them and that's I actually enjoy that camaraderie of it actually. I, the things I really look forward to and get to do is we get to write programs. Yeah, I was going to say, what do you consider the perks then on the flip Yes, if you look at the last 12 months, we secured funding for two and a half million to remodel the third floor. So we're turning it into a dedicated computer department. So there's a huge amount going on there with room configuration and robotics and technology. So that's one angle. We digitized all our student services. So that's what our colleagues as well. So now it's quite streamlined. So now we're playing with the data. That's really interesting. And you can kind of provide better services. ⁓ I deal with all the student issues, good and bad. And I like it. like supporting people, even if it's not going their way. And it's probably not going to go their way. But I think it's really important to bring a human element always into, you have to follow a policy or procedure if it's more negative thing. but you still work with people and you should be able to bring people along respectfully and follow process. And then also keeping people on track is fabulous. And then we get to write programs. we, colleagues were writing a new module for the Bachelor of Social Work with UTC. We got approval from QQI, which was great. And again, the teachers work with them. They're amazing. We got funding for an artist in residence to work with the childcare students to change how they think about doing with children. The scheme isn't open to further education colleges from the art college or the arts council, but we do a partnership with Nundalk Institute of Technology for part-time programs. So we leverage that. I like an application form. We swung the money. We have an artist from Biog, the graffiti tears were involved in that. My colleague Pauline O'Reilly worked on that. And again, that's only an idea on the side. We knocked out and we replied again. That's the mix. Amazing. With ⁓ all the things you get to bring in that you never you see, Deputy Principal, ⁓ they're not a teacher. They're a leader, they're a collaborator, they're a man manager, they're meant to be a budget person. When you get to education and leadership, there's so many things you can get involved in. Yeah. all the things are impacting your community, the people that are in it. Like you're changing people's lives in terms of the confidence they find along that pathway to go. Yeah, this is definitely for me. No. This is definitely not for me. Yes, I know, no, I'm going to go on and do that instead. All of it sounds like every year as the clock turns and it comes around to that, you know, the timetable zone, it comes around to September that you've a clean sheet on changing the world as you see it and the world in your community. sounds amazing. It's magic. It's magic. If you ever told me that's what the job was, I wouldn't believe it. It's magic. It's releasing potential in people all the time. You know something, have to, whatever job you go into, whatever career space you go into, you have to keep that sense of wonder. Yeah, curiosity. And curiosity. You should always be curious. Yeah. Always. Curiosity is the thing that makes... things work. You have to be curious, watch, think about it and ask other people because other people are the experts. But you have to think all the time. And yeah, I'm glad I didn't say yes to teaching at 17, really, to be honest. So am I. I think everyone is glad you didn't say yes and you went on this journey and then you found the magic and are now, you know, sprinkling fairy dust everywhere you go. ⁓ My last question and... This is one I ask everyone because I think there's an awful lot of chat about AI. We've kind of mentioned it briefly And there's a lot of fear, I think, among kind of that 17 to 25 cohort who are saying, Jesus, I'm doing a degree course now. Will there be a job at the end of it? Will AI have taken it? What role does AI play in your role at the moment in your job? And how do you see it impacting in the future. It's going to, it is transformative, but it's really at the baby phase still. It needs a lot of thought. It's going to need regulation. Anyone that says it doesn't is wrong. The history of everything gets regulated and it should. It should not come at the expense of people. That doesn't mean you don't lose jobs and things. know, that all is transitionary change happens, but. It shouldn't come and take the risk of people like graphic design or artists. Analyzing data, you need to use your own brain for that. I think we're in for a bumpy 10 years with it. I there are going to be some sectors and jobs that will take a hit and some career paths will look very... They look a bit more uncertain for now. But I remember I said to you about, we're looking at the robotics space in terms of the coding. So our software students were doing coding for coding. And now you're looking at, let's code for the physical. So I think a lot of courses will pivot. They'll work more on certain attributes of them. So again, as usual, should always be picking something you'll enjoy, you're interested in, and you have a capability at. And then it'll be a lot of continuous up-skilling, I think, for the next few years and adapting. Sitting alongside it. Yes. You know, not being afraid of it, but sitting alongside it, learning how to use it and I suppose leveraging it. there are great benefits. It will help speed up some parts of some people's jobs. It'll make the bits of the job they want to do more doable. But ⁓ yeah, it's going to be it's coming for a lot of stuff in the next few years, I think. And it'll make people go back and look at the essence of their job and say this is the job or this is the role, you know. Yeah. Yeah. And what is the human part of the role that it can't do? And what are the other pieces that actually it will take and it should do and, you know, allowing the human to focus on the human part of what needs to be done. Brian, this is not the conversation I expected to be having with a teacher at all. Thank you so much. You've covered a multitude in sharing your journey with us today. I really appreciate it. Thanks a million for your time. Thank you very much, Laura. It was a pleasure. you