From Freelance to Full-Time, Once More

One of the funniest—and lowkey annoying—things about my work life is that I seem to write more when I’m freelancing. But the minute I go full-time, my writing dries up.

With Zimbabwe Badge and Medal, I only picked up writing again after I left the company. Which sucks, because I worked on some really cool stuff—lasers, CNCs, all of it. Now most of that just lives in my head, save for a few pictures and videos. Same thing happened at Baker Tilly. Did some amazing work, kept telling myself I’d write about it “next week,” and—surprise—it never happened.

What makes it funnier (and slightly tragic) is that I joined Baker Tilly with a solid writing habit. I’m only now starting to get that back.

Anyway… fast forward to 2025. I’m now at David Mascott Country School as the IT & Marketing Manager. Even though I’d worked with them as a contractor before, going full-time wasn’t exactly on my 2025 list. I was supposed to start in January, but we bumped it to February.

Since stepping in, it’s been full throttle. I’ve basically had to build two departments from scratch—IT and Marketing. Before this, Marketing was a shared task among managers. They’d ping me (or another contractor), get a few flyers made, post them on Facebook, and call it a day. IT was folded into the Finance Director’s job…a man with solid managerial experience but not much time for troubleshooting, sourcing tech, or running digital infrastructure.

Just like at Baker Tilly, I didn’t get much of an induction. Day one was: “Here’s the mess, fix it and send reports!😂” So, I hit the ground running. First step? A full stock take of anything remotely IT-related: staff laptops, network devices, phones, TVs—you name it. Basically, if it has a logic board and a whisper of RAM or a processor, it’s under my domain.

While I was still trying to map out what I was dealing with, I ran into two big pressures from the Accounting team:

A. I needed money for repairs—but there was no IT budget, since the department technically didn’t exist yet. So I dusted off my old freelance sales skills and pitched the case. It worked, 90% of the time. Slowly, I began setting up a mini repair center in my office to handle maintenance in-house.

B. I was building an entire ERP system—solo. Occasionally I’d get help from some software engineer friends, but for the most part, it was just me, stitching together a system from scratch. Another point worth noting, the Acounting department was expecting it to be up on my first day of work!😂

C. Oh, and no pressure, but I was also managing marketing during enrollment season. We’d just launched a secondary school and needed students fast. So weekly I was dabling in SEO work, weekly newsletters to parents, attending school trips for pictures, social media research and other means to increase brand visibility… How Sway?!

I remember in March, a colleague joked that they couldn’t realistically afford to pay me for all the extra hours I was putting in. And honestly? I didn’t mind. I was in it for the learning. Especially the ERP, it felt like a personal mission.

A “slow” day would have me at my desk by 7:30am and heading home at 9pm. On the intense days? I’d be in by 6am and out around midnight or 1am. Wild times… but weirdly, kind of fun.

So… where am I going with this? Honestly, who knows. But what I do know is that each day feels like a mini case study in expectation management, tech leadership, and big-picture thinking,not forgeting workplace politics and drama. Unlike previous jobs where I was just following instructions, I now find myself in the driver’s seat—making long-term decisions, not just executing them.

It’s humbling, honestly. Some of the choices my colleagues and I are making will shape the future of the school, the kids, the local community and even the staff. That’s a big deal. And while my title says “IT & Marketing,” I’m also sitting in budget meetings, HR discussions, overseeing operations and helping plan staff development.

Soooo… because when i grow up I like to think i might be an overachiever, I’ve set some personal milestones for this role.

For starters, I’d love to see David Mascott become an ICT hub in the province—a place other schools look to for inspiration. I want our student labs to be exemplary, showing what’s possible even with limited resources. And I really want this ERP system to work. It’s built to support everything: accounting, HR, student management, enrollments—you name it. I know some staff are still unsure or intimidated by it, but I’ve genuinely tried to design it with everyone in mind. It’s not here to take over jobs—it’s here to complement them.

I also want to level up our digital culture. It’d be great to see the whole team become more tech-savvy and shift toward more professional tools—something like Slack for internal comms. WhatsApp is great, but it’s just too personal for work stuff.

And finally, on the marketing front, my dream is simple: I want this school to be so well marketed that parents are lining up to enroll their kids two years in advance—especially for ECD. We’re already starting to see that kind of interest, with parents asking about Form 1 spots for 2026. So the momentum is building… but there’s still work to do.

And I’m excited. I really believe we can do it.

Side notes, some of the text in bold is for future Tk to come back and write about the highlited bits then add in hyperlinks. Sidenote 2, thanks for reading this far, here’s some pictures of me teaching a grade 4 class on hardware and software. Ended the session with some team excersises!