I was never great with understanding people.
I wanted to study psychology at the undergraduate level to try and get a feel for what truly goes on in the human mind, and I thought that studying Psychology with Forensic Psychology would be especially intriguing – learning about serial killers and the most extreme types of abnormal behaviour. Very quickly, I learnt that it was nothing like the dramatic TV show depictions of profilers (of which there are actually very few) and that I definitely did not fit into that environment – I was easily offset in dealing with forensic environments.
However, I’ve always had a strong affinity towards technology – there’s always been something inherently beautiful in a complex system design – which meant that from a young age, I had begun tinkering with everything in sight. During my years as a budding psychologist, I worked a number of technical roles: cameraman, wedding photography second shooter/videographer, projection mapping consultant, digital media festival consultant, software engineer (I’ll get into this in a bit later!), sound engineer for live and recorded sessions, projector and AV specialist technician and a stagehand. I fell in love with job after job, finding each role more advanced than the last – and actually spent several years as a technician at the LPAC (Lincoln Performing Arts Centre) on campus as a technician where I did everything from sound to lighting, AV and even computer graphics and animation. Not only was it a good way to earn money as not many undergraduates sought out technical opportunities at the time, but I relished the long hours, meeting new people and working on a myriad of projects – no two days were ever the same, let alone two hours.
When it came time to decide what I wanted to do and be after I graduated, I was stuck. Like many, I was still figuring out what it is that gave me a sense of purpose and something where I enjoyed the work. Unfortunately, I clearly realised that going onto develop my psychological skills in that particular environment was definitely not for me – it’s not something that I’d ever feel comfortable in. I did, however, reflect on the many years I had spent bouncing around in technical roles before and after university (I did the stage lighting and set up at my school for their studio space at the time), had been involved in developing medical software with my father who is a practising pathologist and generally being around tech. Luckily for me at the time, as I was finishing, a job role was made available for a permanent post as a psychology technician – something which, frankly, I had heard or known nothing about till that point – other than how wonderfully supportive ours were in the department. As a forensic psychology undergraduate, I had less need to visit the psychology technicians at the time – or so I thought, so I had only crossed paths with them a few times. In all honesty, before seeing the advert – I had very little knowledge of what the job role actually contained.
I had worked in a number of part time technical roles and shift work so when I applied for the job, it was my first ‘proper’ application and I was nervous. Thankfully, I got invited to interview and the rest is history – well, recent history! On my first day, and my first week, it really took me by surprise. Psychology is a field with many sub disciplines, and the technicians needed to support them all. Adobe After Effects for tracking mask layers and background removal with roto-scoping techniques for forensic and stimuli videos? Check. Filming against green screen and doing motion capture to look at emotional expression and understanding in bodies? Yep! Building, soldering and woodwork – including creating a ‘monkey box’ (which is not as bad as it sounds!) where monkeys had to reach for treats through different layers of acrylic sheets and we had to route grooves to allow the sheets to be changed around, while being strong enough to withstand being chucked around in a zoo? Absolutely! Having to lifecast hands for body illusions, VR/AR and iOS app building (so Unity using C#, Swift for iOS native application), website building, 3d printing, data recovery and swapping out disks in a hard drive platter – you name it, we’ve probably done it! Having worked in my previous roles, I was aware of just how varied a technical role could get, but I never realised exactly how varied that would be. To say I was swept off my feet by the sheer variety of skills I had to pick up and work in, would be a very strong understatement.
I can safely say that I was not prepared – but that I’ve loved it.
A couple of years after starting, our senior technician retired – someone who had been with the department for over two decades. I went for his role and was again very fortunate to be chosen to take on the mantle. Since assuming my post, I’ve pushed for automation (we have a large School with over a thousand students that we need to support as well as 40+ research active staff in that big range of sub disciplines) – so we’ve built AI bots that answer student queries, digitised all of our forms and processes and built ways of the department helping itself. I’ve campaigned for making our roles more sustainable – looking at getting people into the field, as well as applying for professional registration for my team and I, joining professional bodies and so on. I wanted to make sure that in the future, if my colleagues or I ever left, that the skills and knowledge we had gained on the job wouldn’t be wasted and would be captured and passed on. We spend a long time in our team making sure that we upskill each other, involve people in projects that may interest them and let them grow – both professional and personally.
The important sticking point for us – necessity is the mother of invention, and the team is built on a foundation of a merit. I wanted to ensure that when I took over that the team would treat all members as equals and that we would innovate and forge on together. I can happily say that I’m incredibly proud of the work that my team carries out every day – we’re involved in a number of cross University projects and we’ve become standard bearers in many areas. That only reinforced my belief and faith in what crucial roles technicians play in underpinning activities across the University and in industry. In the fabric of the University, everyone has their part to play and a vital contribution to make – but obviously being in my role, I had a vested interest in specifically what technicians do. I got involved with my professional society and was elected to the committee and became their webmaster as well as a voting member of the council and I pushed for the development and recognition of technicians, which is what led me to the Technician Commitment. Ever since the first announcement I saw about it, I knew I had to be involved – it was a much more refined, elegant and grounded version of what I had been working on. Since the University became a signatory, and I joined the Technician Commitment group here, it’s been an incredible pace of activity to look at what could be done to support those who support others every day.
Coming together across the range of technical disciplines with other senior technical managers, HR and academics, as well as all the advocates we’ve had along the way – it has been a humbling journey that has led to a lot of soul searching. One of the most important lessons my father spent years teaching me was to take an active role in making your environment better – try to make a contribution to leaving something better off than when you found it. All I can do is try to do my part in that as we move forward – I’m very grateful to all those that have come before and hope I can play a part in developing technicians going forward.
I’m honoured to have been able to join the ranks of technicians and hope to encourage as many others as I can to do so – nothing quite compares to it!
Edit: The Technician behind this story is no longer at the University of Lincoln, but we continue to celeberate good work by these Technician’s during their time here.