In this blog, Evgeny Vvedenskiy, who recently finished our MA in Career Development and Coaching Studies, looks back on his CLL journey…
Several years ago, I decided to change my career. After many years in the same field, I thought it would be great to challenge myself and do something different. My first thought was to move into retail training as I had been in this industry and knew how it works. After being overlooked for a promotion for a position I wanted, I decided in order to have a competitive advantage, I needed to obtain a higher level degree.
I started doing some research to find a relevant course at the best university possible. I looked at the top 10 universities in the U.K. and only Warwick offered a degree in coaching, so my decision was made. I applied and I was accepted. At my admission interview with Gill Frigerio, she was surprised to hear that I wanted to do full-time study alongside full-time work. However, it was an obvious choice for me as I would rather sprint through study for 1 year rather than spend several years studying. I should admit I had to sacrifice a lot of time from my personal life and put aside all my hobbies, but it was worth it.
It was really exciting going back to the classroom, meeting my peers and our wonderful teachers. Writing course work was a challenge as I had not written course work in English before as I obtained my BA in Russia. I had to adjust quickly to the new standards and requirements for assignment writing. At this point I should say a big thank you to my tutor Dr John Gough who helped me a lot as well as our course leader Gill. Their support was priceless and without them, I would probably have struggled.
My year at CLL was nearing the end when the pandemic happened and we all had to adapt to the new reality. We only had one module left when universities announced that everything was moving online. It was unexpected to all of us including our tutors. I remember our last module’s workshop was supposed to take place just 2 days after the announcement and our tutor had to prepare all the material within such a short time. It was a hard task for her and she did as well as she could have with such a short deadline. I should admit it was another great experience for me in terms of learning outcomes. Before the pandemic, coaching most of the time took place in the offline environment but since the first lockdown, everything including coaching has been online. The last workshop provided me with the insights on what to do and what not to do during online coaching sessions.
When the first lockdown happened, I was furloughed, and it helped me a lot to finish my study as I spent the whole 3 months of lockdown writing my final course work and preparing for the dissertation. I had to change the subject of my dissertation as it was impossible to do field research which I originally planned to do, so I opted for the literature review since I had a lot of time on my hands to read. My dissertation supervisor Ian Day was great, he helped me a lot going through lockdown and the dissertation. I will be forever grateful to him as well as John and Gill, who supported all of us during these new unknown circumstances.
After completing this course, I considered what I would like to do in the future. Now I am planning to start my coaching practise. I plan to do this as a side hustle at first, which will allow me to gain more experience and develop a client base as well as to stay in a safe harbour with the income coming from my main job. Going forwards, I plan to go full-time with my own business. I am also thinking about my next step in studying which will be to do a PhD. This is a long term plan though, and hopefully, I will do it at Warwick as I had one of the best years of my life studying there.
Lifelong Learning at Warwick 