Anantha Anilkumar had a reassuring message for Year 9 boys when he visited the School to give a careers talk this term: “Nothing will happen exactly as you expect it to – and that is ok.” He detailed the twists and turns of his life before he settled into his career as a Civil Service analyst.
Since graduating from Oxford with a degree in English Language and Literature in 2016, Anantha (OE 2005-2012) has worked in a diverse range of jobs, from being a Music teacher at a secondary school in the Borough of Camden and a content editor for an organisation offering Mathematics tuition, to working for a company providing IT Cost Management software.
Since September this year, however, he was been with the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, fulfilling a role as a continuous service improvement analyst.
In his talk to Year 9 in the Main School Hall, Anantha detailed his somewhat unexpected journey since leaving the School in 2012, including some of the challenges he faced at university and his experience in a number of jobs before arriving in his current post with the Civil Service.
Head of Year 9 Akhil Gohil said: “We’re very grateful to Anantha for his inspirational talk. He emphasised the importance of having a plan and also the ability to adapt, since, as he pointed out, life, inevitably, will not always follow that plan. This particularly resonated with students in Year 9, who are soon to select their GCSE options and who have had to adapt to the global pandemic in the past two years.”