My life as... A Studio Technician
So as I mentioned in my last post I'm just coming to the end of my year in placement. I've spoke about my university life before but as a recap I study Music Technology and Audio Systems at The University of Huddersfield. It's a 4 year course and the 3rd year is a placement year which I'm coming to the end of. I was lucky enough to land a placement at the university itself working as a Studio Technician for the recording studios we have on sight. It's been an amazing year and I've learnt more than I could have possibly imagined and I'd like to share some of that with you if I may.
So lets start at the beginning - I think its fair to say the placement didn't start under the best of circumstances. Within the first week myself and the 2 other placement students found that our boss was leaving and would be replaced with one of the masters students on a temporary basis until a permanent role could be advertised for.
This meant that we were largely left to our own devices. Our new boss was great but he had a lot to take on and manage without having to worry about us.
To go along with the change in management we also had a month to learn all of the systems ready for the students arrival in September. And coming from someone who was suffering from intense paranoia and panic attacks at the time (not so much anymore thankfully) I can assure you that the onset of students was not helping my mental stress.
Needless to say it was a stressful time with a lot of problem solving and having to work closely as part of a team to figure out issues and get the facilities ship shape. And we did it. It wasn't the easiest but when the students arrived in September we we're ready. We still had countless problems behind the scenes, including reimaging Macs, a website to rebuild and so-on, but as far as the students were concerned everything was working.
3 months into the placement we were approaching Christmas. We had 3 Music Tech gig nights under our belt, we weren't putting out so many fires, and the studios we're running much more smoothly. Personally I was immensely proud of the work I'd done and the skills I'd attained over the 3 months. Because our team was largely left to figure our own problems out it meant the facilities were ours. If a problem occurred it was us that had to fix it. And we did! Which gave me an enormous sense of pride in my job!
The rest of the year continued on in a successful fashion after a solid start. The dynamic of the placement shifted from problem solving to improving the work place as time went on. At the start of the year we were each tasked with developing a project that would benefit either the placement or the university - This largely became our main focus towards the end of the year, along with developing our new radio station; TechCast Radio.
Overall this year has been an amazing experience for me and I feel as though I've challenged myself and broke through barriers that would have stopped me in previous years.
Thanks for reading
Tom x
