Two Years On – Rachel’s Blog

It’s been a busy few weeks of announcements here at TimeTrap. Our newest experience, Pudding Lane – 1666, will be opening on 30th August and two days later we go from being open 5 days a week to 7 days a week. This, along with entering a busier time of year for us, means we are on the lookout for a new member to join the TimeTrap Team.

It’s always nice to know what you may be letting yourself in for when applying for a new job so that’s why we asked Rachel, our longest serving Time Travel Engineer, to write a blog on why she applied, what qualities you need, and how the job can help develop you as a person.

Rachel is a doctorate student at the University of Reading and originally from California who joined us when we first hired back in October 2017. Here’s what she had to say…

This October will mark two years of me working at TimeTrap. When I applied for a job as a Games Master, I had only ever done one “escape room” before – it was technically more of a pop-up event designed for large crowds of people – but those twenty minutes spent in a muggy convention hall solving puzzles with strangers were more than enough to convince me that I needed to submit my CV immediately. Imagine my surprise and delight when TimeTrap turned out to be even more rewarding than my prior experience had led me to expect. To step into the TimeTrap building is to see the significant amount of care that Katie and Andrew have poured into every detail, at every stage, from research to execution. The opportunity to be a part of that – to join a small, independent team and be constantly involved with a variety of creatively and intellectually stimulating projects – was too exciting to pass up.

Those qualities would have drawn me to the job, regardless, but what made TimeTrap the perfect fit for me was that I am, first and foremost, a student. In the time I’ve worked at TimeTrap, I’ve completed a Master’s degree and started a doctorate, and the amount of times I’ve stopped in the middle of my studies to mentally thank TimeTrap for making me a better student is not inconsiderable. (I would, incidentally, like to think it goes both ways, and that what I learn in my life as a student makes me a better GM. You’d have to ask Andrew and Katie about that, though.)

There are obvious ways in which my job and my studies go hand-in-hand: my personal academic focus on literature and gaming mesh perfectly with TimeTrap’s emphasis on thoughtful, immersive storytelling integrated with fiendishly clever (yet eminently logical) puzzle design. I imagine it would be a similar case should I be pursuing other degrees, as well; I know several of my colleagues have backgrounds in performing arts, film, set design, English, and tech, and they all have found opportunities to flex and develop their talents here. In preparing to teach, I have also discovered that my experiences as a GM lend themselves rather nicely to becoming an educator: I have become much more comfortable expressing broad concepts and clarifying important details to diverse groups of people, and I can see how this would carry over to the classroom, on both sides.

This segues neatly into reflecting on how skills honed at TimeTrap can be applied more widely than to a specific degree. Being a GM requires you to be attentive and adaptable as you monitor games and customise your clues to suit each team’s needs; these are both abilities that are essential to being a successful student, as well. Speaking precisely, informatively, and, perhaps most importantly, engagingly is also of the utmost importance, and I certainly feel like I have become a more effective communicator in my academic life as a direct result of my time delivering briefings and interacting with customers.

Being part of the TimeTrap team allows me to pursue the things I’m passionate about while simultaneously making me better at them: the best of both worlds.

Fancy joining our team? Head to our ‘Join Our Team’ page to find out more and apply.