Nightmare Night Shift
As with any placement or work, during my time at U105 I have faced a lot of difficult challenges. During this blog post I’m going to tell you about one challenge in particular- changing the power conditioners. To help structure my recount of this experience I am going to use the Gibbs Reflective Learning Cycle[1].
Let me set the scene for you, one Wednesday I got a call asking me if I was free to come into the office to help out with a few tasks needing done, so I headed down. At first, I thought it was going to be an easy shift. I was helping scout the location of a roadshow we were doing that Saturday, gathering all the equipment we needed for it and writing the risk assessment. However, after we returned from the roadshow location, my supervisor (James) asked me if I was doing anything the next day or would I be able to work a late shift that night. I had no plans for the next day and said I was happy to work late- thinking the shift would probably end around 11pm but I couldn’t have been more wrong. James told me that three of the power conditioners in the server room had died a few days ago and the new ones had just arrived that morning.
Now you’re probably thinking the same as I was, this all sounds pretty normal and easy to fix, however, in order to change the power conditioners, we would have to briefly take the station off air, meaning we had to do it after midnight.
Description- What happened?
Going into this task we thought it would only take a few hours- we were wrong. The shift ended up lasting from 11:30pm-6:30am. We began by removing the old power conditioners and this is where we met our first problem. When the old power conditioners were installed, all 12 of the kettle extension cables (see below) plugged into the back of them had been zip tied to the power conditioner to keep the cables tidy, which we now needed to break. Adding to the difficulty of this the servers were high up and difficult to reach, however we eventually managed to remove them. After everything was disconnected, we powered up the new power conditioner and connect an ethernet cable in order to configure it- this was also challenging as the power cables were very short. After we configured them, we could reconnect the earthing, ethernet and power cables, as well as the kettle extension leads. Having done this, we sild the new power conditioner into place and screwed it into the rack. We then had to plug all of the computers and transmitters into the kettle extension leads. We took this opportunity to record where everything was plugged in, not only for the 3 power conditioners we were replacing, but for all 12 power conditioners in the server room.
Feelings
The real challenge with this shift was the emotional and physical exhaustion that I never could have expected. The task of changing the power conditioners terrified me at first- I’m a sound engineer, my placement with The Black Box doing front of house mixing had prepared me to do the roadshows and outside broadcasts with U105, but this task took me far out of my depth. However, I thought about the chapter in Gem Barton’s book[2] where she talks about the value of collaboration. This reminded me that although I had no clue what to do, James did and together we would be fine. Working through the night was not something I was used to and as the night went on, I found myself getting easily frustrated at small things, such as breaking the zip ties and ordering all the cables. Even though I was working alongside James, and we took short breaks every hour, watching the hours tick by and feeling like we were so far away from completing our task was mentally draining. Around 4am the emotional exhaustion hit me. Going into the night I thought I’d be away home by 3:30am at the latest, so when we worked on past that every task became more difficult to complete. The physical exhaustion took much longer to hit, for the first few hours of my shift I drank tea and coffee to keep me awake. however, the tiredness eventually caught up to me and suddenly the thought of reaching up to plug in the power conditioners became impossible. I pushed through this by remembering Christine Fanthomes words ‘from the employer’s perspective, enthusiasm, flexibility, and initiative are excellent attributes’[3]. Now these might not seem like the most inspiring words, but they reminded me why I was at U105, I really wanted to impress them and possibly even get a permanent job with them. So, with this in mind I persevered.
Evaluation, Conclusion and Action Plan
Overall, this was such a valuable experience for me, I learnt more about the hardware required to run a radio station and I learnt how to overcome mental and physical exhaustion. Although, I won’t lie, that was definitely not my favourite shift with U105- I’m happy sticking to roadshows and outside broadcasts. After I finished my shift, I remembered an interview with John Jansen I once read, in which he talked about when he was an intern, people would get fired for any mistakes made[4]. This reminded me how lucky I am to have the opportunity to be on this placement, make mistakes and learn from them!
If I was ever faced with this scenario again, I would definitely try to get more sleep ahead of my shift. I would also try to remind myself to take a deep breath and not to get annoyed at the little things.
Although it was a challenging shift, it was one I overcame, and I can’t wait for my next adventure with U105!
Bibliography
Barton, Gem. “Advice- Understand the Value of Collaboration .” Don’t Get a Job… Make a Job: How to Make It as a Creative Graduate, Laurence King PublishingLtd, London, 2020, pp. 114–115.
Fanthome, Christine. “3 Applying for a Placement .” Work Placements: A Survival Guide for Students, Bloomsbury Academic, London, 2017, p. 30.
Gibbs, Graham. Learning By Doing: A Guide To Teaching And Learning Methods. Oxford Further Education Unit, 1988.
Jackson, Brian M. “Chapter 1 Interview with John Jansen (UNH/SAE).” The Music Producer’s Survival Stories: Interviews with Veteran, Independent, and Electronic Music Professionals, Cengage Learning, Boston, MA, 2015, pp. 1–12.
[1] Gibbs, Graham. Learning By Doing: A Guide To Teaching And Learning Methods. Oxford Further Education Unit, 1988.
[2] Barton, Gem. “Advice- Understand the Value of Collaboration .” Don’t Get a Job… Make a Job: How to Make It as a Creative Graduate, Laurence King PublishingLtd, London, 2020, pp. 114–115.
[3] Fanthome, Christine. “3 Applying for a Placement .” Work Placements: A Survival Guide for Students, Bloomsbury Academic, London, 2017, p. 30.
[4] Jackson, Brian M. “Chapter 1 Interview with John Jansen (UNH/SAE).” The Music Producer’s Survival Stories: Interviews with Veteran, Independent, and Electronic Music Professionals, Cengage Learning, Boston, MA, 2015, pp. 1–12.
