Environment Officer
Environment Agency

Manna W

0.00.00 My name’s Manna W and I work for the Environment Agency and I’m there as an Environment Officer. There’s a lot of businesses that maybe produce waste so we have to go and inspect them and make sure that they’re managing their site properly. We’re first emergency responders so we work very closely with the fire service and the police in these type of matters.

0.00.30 And if there’s any chemical fires or major disasters basically, that’s when we get called out. I enjoyed art and I enjoyed science and basically I wanted to do art but my family’s quite focused on money. So they didn’t want me to go down the art route and so I chose biology because it was something that I enjoyed.

0.01.00 My father, because he didn’t have the opportunity to get into university or to have secondary education, he always said oh, all my children are going to go to university, so we were all forced to go to university. I was actually ill for a year and I was in hospital for a year. Well I had leukaemia, that was when I was 17.

0.01.30 Leukaemia changed me and it made me a much stronger person and it really focused what I wanted to do for the next ten years. So I had a ten year plan and I wanted to go to university. I wanted to travel. I wanted to do all these things and I had a big list of all the things I wanted to do. I’ve done most of them. I done the last one last year which was to go snowboarding and I’m quite proud of all the things I’ve done.

0.02.00 They said that it might come back so you have to go and live, live and do whatever you’ve wanted to do. I did a lot of voluntary work abroad and I sort of volunteered myself on expeditions, so I turtle tagged, I caught golden tree frogs, I caught bats abroad in Trinidad and Cyprus and it’s really exotic and exciting. But I ended up doing environmental health.

0.02.30 Mainly because I wasn’t sure yet what I wanted to sort of settle down in. I wasn’t sure of my career path but I wanted to keep it broad and I’ll be able to, you know, decide later in life. My problem is that I never stick to one thing. So I art. I do a lot of sports. I like diving. I used to do a bit of sports climbing. I sail. I windsurf.

0.03.00 I do everything but only in small capacities. In five years I would like to be a bit high up in my profession. In the Environment Agency there’s a lot of opportunities for you to move around. It’s the first Agency I’ve worked, well it’s the first organisation I’ve worked for that I find that this is possible.

0.03.30 I think my parents are secretly proud although they’re a bit disappointed that I don’t make lots of money. But I think they’re proud in the fact that I’ve been abroad and that I venture into these type of things. That I haven’t really been influenced by friends to make lots of money. 0.03.50