Mark Baggley: What Next?

Transcript

In terms of expectation about us as individuals, about what we were going to do, I do remember one, I think she was an art teacher but also of doubled up as sort of careers adviser and she asked one day, 'What do you want to do?' and I said, sadly I wanted to be an accountant. I don’t know why. Because I liked doing sums, I think. And she said, 'Don’t you think you’re aiming a bit high?' And looking back, I definitely think that was, I don’t think that was based on educational attainment. That was 'You’re in a wheelchair, do you really think you can do accounting?' We never had work experience as such, either. We went, I do remember going round, when we were about fifteen and a half, we went round two or three businesses in the city but it was much more, you know, this is Jenny, she works in the typing pool, this is what Jenny does, this is what... and it was more like a day out than actually a serious conversation about work and certainly I never thought, I don’t remember any employers ever coming into the school and saying, 'This is what you could do'. There was no expectation like that, and certainly nothing like, nobody would ever suggest that you could be in things like the media or any of those sort. It was about get a steady a job, find a job, keep it and parents would say that as well, I think. And I guess probably that was really subjective at the time, so few disabled people were getting employed, that, you know, if you could get a job. My friend Nigel when he left school he got a job as a lift attendant in a department store in Lincoln and, yeah he thought that was really cool and probably we did at the time cos he was getting paid so he was going it, basically.

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