Lorraine Dowdall

I always felt in school that I was a slow learner and just as I was about to learn anything the teachers would move onto something else.  My mother had promised that if I got a summer job I wouldn’t have to return to school, and at 14 years’ old I left. I’ve worked as a shop assistant all my life but I’ve always felt that I could do more.

One day I felt that I’d had enough of shop work and decided to start doing a class in core skills.  This included a bit of computers, personal development, customer care and manual handling.  I wanted to do a course in multi-media, but decided that I first needed to improve my reading and writing skills and so started a course in TARGET (Trinity Adult Resource Group for Education & Training).  My confidence was slowly building and last year I started the ECDL computer certificate.

I was a bag of nerves sitting the first exam but I’ve grown to realize that I can learn more than I thought I could.  I got 100% in that exam and now I’ve done 4 of them.
I did a one-year long certificate course learning about reception skills and finally got a job working as a receptionist in TARGET, which I love.

I continue to study for the ECDL and to improve on my reading and writing skills.  I’ll never get used to the exams as they will always remind me of school, but each time I finish one I feel a great sense of achievement.