MrBrightside!
About 4 years ago:
Aged 18.
Finishing A-levels with moderatly good grades in Physics, Maths & Design Tech.
Working part-time at a Morrisons supermarket.
Dreamt of being an Airline pilot but never imagined it was a feasible plan, nor did I have a clue on how to do it.
I went to University on a doomed Mechanical Engineering Course. The course wasnt for me, it was all noses in text-books and had no hands-on work whatsoever. The closest we got were 'lab' sessions when we listened to a polish guy try to explain "choked flow" whilst stood 1ft away from a very noisey set of apparatus. I lost all motivation for the course and subsequently dropped out after my second year.
I moved back home and continued to work at Morrisons where I was promoted a couple of times and a career in retail was looking like a possibility. But I wasnt happy and didnt fancy spending the next 50 years in a supermarket kissing up to a**hole customers.
I contacted EasyJet and pretty much said I want to be an airline pilot. They ushered me toward CTC. A year and a half later plus a failed CTC interview, I am a couple of months away from starting an integrated course at Cabair.
Im not getting into the whole integrated vs modular 'royal rumble' - I just wanted to share with you my experience of the last 4 years.
My advice would be by all means get into the industry and start networking, if you can of course. But as AlphaMale pointed out, stayting on at tesco and trying to get a promotion certainly wont hinder you. It looks great on your CV to say you have had X many people working beneath you. Also sticking with tescos will show you to be a loyal employee!
One other thing, should you require a professional studies loan (or equivelent), they will ask to see a contingency plan - in my case this was a letter from my boss at Morrisons saying if anything happened that meant I couldnt complete the cabair course, I could start back at Morrisons immediatly. Its not as if another supermarket job would be hard to find, but it was a neccessery stage of the loan application - so keep your boss sweet
Good luck MB and keep us updated!
JB