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. 


-----

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 


Comments

  1. AnnMay 22, 2021 at 5:43 AM

    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.

    All 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.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Comments are moderated. Please be respectful.

Popular posts from this blog

Listening for the piano / Thinking about grief

-
Image
Grief is not a land in which I have travelled much, though I routinely explore it via others’ experience. I am drawn to do this as a student is drawn to the masters: To observe, to sit with, to wonder if those others’ experiences might help prepare me for my own when I find myself in that place. Will it? Sara Paretsky, author of the V.I. Warshawski mystery series, says that the grief over her long-time husband’s death hit her like a grand piano falling out of the sky onto her head. There is no pre-mourning, she says. Nonetheless, I persist in my studies: Memoirs of loss. Stories of grief. Tales of survival. I sit with those experiences. The words, the feelings, the anguish wash over me. And I ask myself: Will the sun rise tomorrow? Will I see it when it does?  Should I worry about this? Should I just expect, presume that what has always been will always be? Absurd. It will not always be. The loves of my life are all older, are all old. 95, my mother. Almost 80, my p...
Read more

Anniversary post: This year marks 31 together

-
Image
Amanda and Val: many years ago and today.  Man, look how young we were. Sheesh. Thirty-one years and counting certainly shows. But who in their right mind would care about wrinkles or grey hair when it is a good and generous love that has propelled us through the years together.  Every good story is told through both summary and scenes. Val & Amanda’s story: The summary A generous love that has withstood the challenges of two bouts of cancer and multiple joint replacements, of job changes and career disappointments, of cats found and cats lost, of parents living and parents dying. Two women, together, building a good life. Amanda: Three scenes April 1997: Val and I are driving from Winnipeg  down through the Dakotas and Wyoming and Utah to Arizona, camping in a tent along the way and marvelling at what we can do together, still, after Val’s cancer diagnosis earlier that year. At a roadside cafe somewhere in Utah, a woman asks me if we are sisters. Without skipping a b...
Read more

If pride comes before a fall, what comes after disappointment?

-
Image
Disappointment is not something any of us aim for, I’m sure. The very last thing I ever want to be told by someone is that they are disappointed in me. But this week, I have been very disappointed in others. Life goes on, but that niggling thread of “if only” and “why could it not have been different” lingers in the corners of my mind. Last week’s lightening-quick sale of our cottage ended in disappointment all round when the deal fell through at the final hurdle. The details are not what matter here; what matters is that age-old life lesson about counting your chickens before they’re hatched and sharing good news before it is fully rooted and secured. But who among us has not jumped the gun? Presumed that all would go as promised, as planned? Believed in the goodness of people and trusted that the story would unfold as it had begun — smoothly, seamlessly, successfully? Ah, well. Sometimes it just doesn’t. So we find ourselves at a new beginning, with a different round of showings and...
Read more