Rope Access Assistant and Language Teacher
Plas y Brenin

Anne-Claire M

0.00.00 My name is Anne-Claire M. This week I’m working as a Rope Access Assistant with my husband in North Wales. I’m 34. I live in Bristol and I’m also a Teacher, Language Teacher. Rope access is a way of accessing to a side of a building or to a side of a road, instead of using scaffolding, using ropes.

0.00.30 I started climbing when I was 16 in France. I love being outside, especially obviously when it’s nice weather. I grew up in the countryside and any opportunity to be outside to go biking, to climb, to walk, yeah, I love it.

0.01.00 My dad’s an engineer and my mum helps out at the hospital. My parents I think influenced me when I was 18 because I didn’t know what I wanted to do so they thought maybe psychology was a good degree to have. I started studying psychology at the university for two years and then I did also a bit of sociology and moved to London on my fourth year and really enjoyed London,

0.01.30 really liked it, so stayed another year and started climbing indoors and working as well at a climbing wall. And that’s how I became a Climbing Instructor. Moving to England was a major turning point for me because I had to learn a new language. I was not, I couldn’t speak English very well when I moved to London and also studying and meeting

0.02.00 new people and I met my husband as well in London, so it was definitely a turning point. It was not a bad thing to do psychology as a degree because I learn quite a lot about people and behaviour, etc. But I realised I didn’t want to work in psychology after doing it for three years. I was not interested by it anymore.

0.02.30 I think my parents would have loved me to have stayed in France and worked in France as a psychologist. What my parents think about climbing, they are scared because there are children of some their friends died quite a long time ago but they died climbing and they never been really keen on me going climbing. I love to do some yoga.

0.03.00 I’ve just started doing Pilates and I love climbing with my husband, with my friends and I love skiing. I do love sitting in the pub as well with my friends and eating lots of really nice food and I love cooking and gardening. I do want to be a full-time teacher, yeah, cos it still give you a lot of freedom, lots of time for my passions.

0.03.30 But when I become a full-time teacher and permanent teacher in the school, then I won’t be able to do this kind of courses, but it’s nice to know that if I decide to stop doing it without, for whatever reason I’ve got to stop doing it, I always can fall back on doing other things.

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