Elise Taylor left in 2019 and last week presented a successful and insightful webinar to current students, on her future career path and what she is doing now. 

I left The Abbey in 2019 and I’m now in my second year of a Nuclear Degree Apprenticeship working for the Ministry of Defence. The apprenticeship is run by Defence, Equipment and Support who supply the equipment for the armed forces and I work for the Submarine Delivery Agency(SDA) who support the UK’s Nuclear Deterrent. I will spend the next 4 years supporting the SDA and the lifecycle of the UK’s Nuclear Submarines. Currently I am looking at the 2019 Radioactive Waste audit (you can find all the data online) and restricted materials. 

I was pointed in the direction of the apprenticeships by my Mother who was an aerospace engineering apprentice for BAE. I knew that I didn’t want to conventionally attend university and so the mix of valuable work and doing a degree whilst getting paid seemed like the perfect mix. 

The thing I miss most about The Abbey is rushing to have lunch at 11:30 in sixth form as well as running Rubbish Club with my friends for the year 7’s where they would make things out of “rubbish”. We would host bin bag fashion shows and use all the left over cardboard from resources to make anything from monuments to robots. 

My advice to current students who want to go into any stream of engineering is to apply to Apprenticeships as well as University. There are so many engineering firms running a variety of different apprenticeships from nuclear to aerospace or even engineering management. Whatever you apply for its always possible to change your mind. 

I am really glad I chose this apprenticeship and I’m really excited to learn and work on nuclear submarines in the future.