Bored witless with my apprenticeship.

Hi guys,

I started a 2 year apprenticeship in October 2013 in the IT department of a university. At first I was very eager as the job description looked very interesting as I was to be working with the university servers and data centres, owning and managing incidents, as well as monitoring university infrastructure. What I didn't realise at the time, though, was that the university's definition of "owning and managing incidents" was logging an incident but not resolving it. Instead I was to simply document stuff, log incidents when they occur and assign them to another team to fix them. I, however, was expecting to do all the technical stuff as it is an Advanced apprenticeship I'm doing and I'm supposed to be learning on the job.

Anybody can do paperwork and I fully understand that paperwork is a boring part of every job. I think my frustration lies at the simple fact that my entire job is doing paperwork. I'm not allowed to do any of the technical stuff such as resolving incidents, actually diagnosing and fixing problems. I'm a technical-minded person and I'm mentally frustrated at the fact I'm doing an apprenticeship that's supposed to be getting me experience and qualifications and all I'm actually doing is bloody paperwork. 37.5 hours a week of my life and I feel I'm completely wasting it. Trouble is, if I quit I'm not going to be doing myself any favours either. But another year of this? God help me!

Does anyone have any suggestions? I mean I've spoken on numerous occasions to my manager and to my apprenticeship co-ordinator from the partner college and although they said at the beginning of the first year that they were going to switch me to another team so I could experience the more technical roles in my second year, they are now saying that that won't be possible because they no longer have the resources. I'm unable to fight this because my contract doesn't state anywhere about them switching me to another team, it was purely a mutual agreement. Obviously back then I was glad to be offered an opportunity in a well-established university, my family were also thrilled by the opportunity and it was a win-win for everyone so I signed the contract. I think I misinterpreted the job description, though, as it sounded a lot more technical than it actually has ended up being.

Every morning I wake up now thinking: "Why the hell am I doing this?" I hate going to work and it's not because I'm lazy, it's because I'm so so bored that I kind of can't be bothered any more. My motivation has dropped dramatically over the last few months and my manager has noticed this. Last month I tried extra hard to snap out of it and try to motivate myself so I don't give a negative impression. Until now, you see, I was getting brilliant reports from my manager and, to be fair, I work well with the team. My colleagues are great and my manager is really nice but I struggle so so much to stay focused when I'm completely bored out of my skull. I still have another year of this and I'm dreading it. Does anyone else find themselves in the same boat?

Reply 1

stroodledum

You are already past half way, my advice is complete the apprenticeship. Then you will have the choice to leave with some sort of qualification?

Reply 2

moh'd seif

just make a compeletion on the second part my God can bless and i wish to you all the best

Reply 3

Balloon Baboon

Original post by stroodledum

You are already past half way, my advice is complete the apprenticeship. Then you will have the choice to leave with some sort of qualification?

Seconded. If you leave now you'll leave with nothing. Like you said, you're only really doing paper work, so it really will be nothing. At least if you finish the apprenticeship you'll then have the qualifications to go further into bigger and better things.

Good luck