Full circle realization
My young-girl career dreams were to be an interpreter at the UN. I have never worked as an interpreter.
At university, I chose literary translation (French to English) as my major. I have never worked as a translator.
I next earned a journalism degree, yet have never worked as a capital J journalist — unless you count my summer job on the copy desk of the Financial Post just after graduating. I don’t.
Over the course of my career, I found my way into various corporate and community communication jobs. And then I earned my master’s in applied communication. The credential came after the work.
I have ended up as a college instructor.
How did I get from a dream of the UN to a job in post-secondary education? It hit me, recently, like a bolt of lightening, that it is, actually, a very straight line from my young-girl dream to my current work.
An instructor is everything that I dreamed about as a young girl, studied in my undergrad degrees, and focused on in my master’s: An instructor — an educator — is charged with interpreting material for students, with translating it into meaningful learning opportunities for them, and with helping them apply it in their lives and work.
I realize that my end-of-career work is the logical culmination of my life's work path. It’s almost like I planned it. Except I didn’t. It evolved organically — and that makes me both very fortunate and deeply satisfied.
I hope you have been equally so in your studies, your work and your life.
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A Post a Day in May No. 22 For the past two years, I have posted something to this blog every single day in May. This year, I hope to do it again.
Photo by Jonathan Singer on Unsplash
As a young girl, my approved career choices were teaching and teaching! I was one of perhaps three in my highschool graduating class to go to college, but although it was hoped I would complete my education and work until I got married and raised a family. It was the 1950s. What can I say.
ReplyDeleteAll I wanted to do was be a nurse. However, because that might involve bathing "some old man", it wasn't an option per my father and grandfather.
And get married I did, in my junior year, dropping out then at the second semester because I was pregnant.
Ten years and four children later I returned to university, managed to transfer most of the basic courses, English comp and the like, and I got my degree in nursing. And fell in love with my OB professor, but that's another story.
So I ended up where I wanted to be, if by a circuitous route. I had jobs I hated, but I always loved my work. And who knew that teaching would be a huge part. I don't ever recall bathing an old man, either.