Living History

Number crunching

My first job was working for a month in a quantity surveying place. A quantity surveyor is someone who assesses what is necessary for construction in buildings. The surveyor company contacted my school and asked if anyone was interested in such a position. It was basically just number-crunching, I didn’t have to know anything about the industry to begin with.

I went to see the site they were working on, where they were building a hospital, but most of the time I was working at the office working out the numbers side of things. It wasn’t a well-paid job, but I thought it might be interesting, and I actually had some aspirations to be a quantity surveyor, but then decided against it.

After that job, I went to an insurance company: I filled in forms and did more number-crunching. I also helped with the section’s accounts. At the time I thought I might become an actuary, so this was a good position to have. My first love was always mathematics, and so I went to university in England to do maths in order to become an actuary. However I soon found that this wasn’t what I wanted to do. In the end I chose to take up a career in teaching at the secondary school level. Perhaps I have taught some actuaries of the future…

Alphonse, Ringwood, Victoria

Look at more contributions:

previous | next