A Brief of My Life So Far
Welcome Friends,
I’m Jack, an easily bored, compulsive, and somewhat stubborn 27-year old from Scotland. Those that know me will know that my life so far has been fairly conventional for the most part. I grew up in a small village outside of Glasgow, I went to school where my main priorities were to get the best grades possible, so that I could get into the best university I could, studying whatever degree would get me the job I perceived to be the best. Up to now these seemed to be similar to everyone else’s priorities, so I fit right in.
Along with education, the other hemisphere in my life’s world was sport. I played field hockey from the age of 7. What started as going to the local club on a Saturday morning just to learn, turned into a near 20 year career of playing the sport, winning the both the Scottish and Irish national championships in multiple seasons, competing in the greatest club tournament in the world, the Euro Hockey League, and playing for Scotland junior international teams from the age of 13 to 21.
As good as this may sound on paper, I must admit, I was no star athlete. I was not the best player in any of the teams I played in. I was good enough to get into the teams I wanted to get into for the most part, but was unable to successfully break into the Scottish National team, or really hit the top tier of the sport. Looking back, there was innumerous things that I could have done to learn, improve, and give myself the best possible chance of achieving even more in the world of hockey. So why didn’t I? To tell the truth I was feeling lost.
Up to the age of 17 I had not really met with many challenges that pushed me out of my comfort zone. Achieving great grades and amongst the best in my hockey age group up to that point had been relatively straightforward, so I started to feel like I was naturally talented and smart and didn’t account for the work that went into maintaining that level of success. So when I got dropped from my hockey team for underperforming for the first time, my ego and identity took a bit of a hit that I didn’t really know how to recover from. I continued to play, but I approached the sport with less confidence that continued to affect me for the rest of my hockey career.
The next blow to my confidence came when I move to university. After graduating high school with better grades than the majority of people, I was fairly sure university was going to follow suit. How wrong I was. My first year of university I struggled to cope with living away from home and balancing my hockey career with my new studies, which were significantly more demanding than school work. What made it worse is that many of my peers did not seem to be having anywhere near as much of a problem adjusting. Not to mention that due to still underperforming I didn’t even get selected for the university’s best team. It was a harsh awakening to the fact that I was not as talented as I thought I was.
Though I would not change any of it. It was a tough 4 years of study and playing hockey, but I learned a huge amount, and grew in ways I never thought would happen before I begun. Plus, thanks to a monumental effort in my final year, I proudly walked away from university with a 2-1, but more importantly some good friends and a lot of lessons. But I still had no clue what I wanted to do for a career.
I decided to pursue an further studies, so I moved to Ireland to get a Master’s in Energy Science, a course that was focused on how energy will have to change to be more sustainable. Sustainability had always been an interest of mine, as I saw Climate Change as humanity’s greatest challenge to date. Studying this was eye-opening. I realised I could work doing something I love, and make a difference. Upon graduating I pursued jobs in anything sustainability related - I was not fussy, and I wanted to learn as much as I could. Unfortunately, in Ireland at the time I could find little to no jobs related to sustainability that I was qualified for, and didn’t really have a good idea of where to look either. Eventually I made the hard choice to broaden the scope of jobs in my search for work. This was not something I ideally wanted to do, but I also realised the importance of getting work experience on my CV. Having come from an engineering background, I was also quite comfortable with numbers and data, so when I applied to a business analyst job at a financial software company, I ended up landing my first job.
Two and a half years at that job I learned a lot but knew it was time to try my hand at the sustainability industry again. The people I worked with were great, but the work didn’t interest me and I felt the pull to search for something else. I very quickly found an opportunity that interested me at Anthesis Group - a large, global sustainability consultancy that seemed to me to be doing a lot of exciting things. I didn’t hesitate to apply to a position they were hiring for in Ireland. After a few interviews I was told and some changes to the original position, I was offered a job which I gladly accepted, and I have been working there for just over a year now.
This is just the summary of the beginning of my story, but I have a feeling there is only more to come. I’m excited to start sharing the rest of my story through this blog, I’m not sure where it will take me or what will happen along the way, but I am committed to expanding my horizons through new experiences and pushing myself outside of my comfort zone more than ever before. I intend for this blog to become a window into my life, where I’ll be sharing the things I am working on and giving advice for tackling specific problems I encounter along the way in the hopes that it may be able to help anyone reading.
I can’t wait to share more with you soon 🙂
Jack McAllister