Before starting Gateway this year, I thought I definitely knew what I wanted to do, but through trialing the taster days I discovered that I wanted to go into a career other than the one I originally planned on having.

The 3 careers I looked into doing were painting and decorating, becoming an automotive technician, and automotive refinishing. Originally, I wanted to become an automotive technician, but after doing the automotive refinishing day I discovered that I preferred that more. My work placement is at Babbage & McCullough and the job involves preparing panels of cars after they’ve been repaired at the panel shop to be painted and then painting them. 

As a gateway student, I do some of the work to prepare the panels such as sanding with an electric sander or by hand. The ITO I am registered with is MITO and the units I do are half theory and half practical. This means that I can do the theory work in my gateway class and do the practical work when I go out to the workplace. For my practical assessments the MITO assessor visits me at work and for the theory assessments I just do them online and they get marked by an assessor that way. These units are very important and helpful to complete, they are micro-credentials which count towards a future apprenticeship. My plans for next year are to get an apprenticeship locally, but if I’m unable to then I will be going to Ara in Christchurch for an automotive refinishing course.