The college side of things...

After looking through this blog site, I’ve come to realise that a lot of the entries I have written have been about my day job in the workplace which, don’t get me wrong, does make up a large portion of my time. However; this blog is called ‘Life As A Digital Marketing Apprentice’ - or LAADMA for short!

It’s not just about my time as a marketing assistant, but also my experiences with the college side of things, which for the record have been mostly positive!

On average I spend around 35 hours a week at work and only 4 hours a week in college, therefor the college part seems a little insignificant if I’m honest.

The work that is required for the diploma itself is relatively straightforward and once you get the hang of the writing style and linking everything you say, it’s pretty easy.
What I’ve found though is just because the work itself is easy, it doesn’t make it any less valuable to the course and most of what we do has a direct link to the workplace and can even help me understand my own job more.

So what do we cover?


Well there are a total of 26 individual units, each covering a different thing. It’s important to note that not all of the units are mandatory, but most (if not all) do apply to me. So I’m going to have to only do the ones that I feel are the most important because there is no way that I’ll get 26 units done in just over a year!

Topics for the units are diverse and interesting; from understanding the business environment to delivering e-commerce solutions. Everything in between sounds super fun and engaging - one I’m really looking forward to is the video and image software units.

On top of his; the topics that are covered are very relevant to digital marketing today as there is a whole unit on marketing on mobile devices. A marketing technique which has only really been relevant for the last 5 years as it’s thought that 60% of all searches are done on a smartphone.
With statistics like that rising, why would I be advertising on a billboard when everything's got their heads down looking at their phones?

Every unit seems genuinely interesting to me and I look forward to studying all the ones that I do.

Am I enjoying it?


My lifestyle has changed dramatically over the last 4 months of securing this apprenticeship placement. I went from working 11 hours a week and being in college for no more than a couple of hours at a time, to working full time 6 days a week with only one day a week free.

In that respect, being an apprentice with another part time job is quite demanding as I am working a total of 42 hours a week - that’s not including the 4 hours at college.
I honestly wouldn’t want to be doing anything else now though and, if anything, I don’t even class 35 of those hours work as I am doing what I’ve always wanted to do. Learning new things and never truly being in my comfort zone.
I don’t mind being busy a lot of the time as I feel that the majority of my time is spent working towards my long term goal of being qualified, so in that sense I would say that although it is a lot of working hours, most of the hours are spent doing valuable things - so it really isn’t taxing on my well being.

I am a very restless person and constantly want to change up my workload and being in the marketing industry definitely allows me to do that.

So to cut a long story short - yes, I am enjoying it and look forward to what the future of this apprenticeship holds!