Ayeesha's job log: 3
After graduating last year, Ayeesha Shahani found it hard working out what to do next. Current options Since making 'the list' a few weeks ago, I have realised that my job options are pretty much the following, 1) Research Assistant (in Social Sciences), 2) Market Research assistant, 3) Teaching Assistant or, 4) Some kind of freelance writing job. I would have to win the lottery to be able to afford the extortionate international fees for the PhD in Anthropology that I dream of doing one day, otherwise that would definitely be top of my list! It looks like for now, chances are I am going to end up one kind of ‘assistant’ or another.
I want to be a Teacher…I think?To be honest, I have always thought I might end up as a Kindergarten/Primary School Teacher. Like most of the other expatriate kids in Hong Kong, I went to a British international school. So my school years were filled with getting to know students and teachers from different cultures who had lived and travelled all over the world, a real hotchpotch of nationalities. Since I was 15 years old, I occasionally tutored little kids and taught them how to speak English as a part-time job (it’s the Hong Kong equivalent of babysitting and what most teens do for extra cash). Being a Teacher in Hong Kong had always seemed like the ideal job, educating amazing children who were actually excited about learning, shaping the minds of tomorrow’s leaders and getting to go home with that great feeling of satisfaction like you are doing something that makes a difference. Let’s not forget the fact that you finish work half way through the day, get weeks and weeks of holidays and are given discounted school fees for your own kids, saving you a bundle in the future. All in all it sounds like a good deal and it is a very highly respected job in Asia. Plus, being a compact 5ft 2inches myself, I quite like the idea of being taller than everyone at work. After my first year of University, I chose to do my compulsory work placement abroad. I taught English in Thailand for four months and Brazil for three months (purely for the satisfaction of imparting a useful language skill on underprivileged children of course, definitely not just because it was a chance to escape dreary English weather and spend my spare time lazing on the beach and hanging out with hippies!). Since my first real jobs were all focused around teaching, it’s no wonder that most of my subsequent work experience was in schools or with children. It seemed natural for me to follow through with a career in education so I never gave any other career much thought….until…I finished my degree. I never expected to enjoy my degree so much and develop such a passion for Anthropology, a subject I’d never even studied before. I certainly never expected that my enthusiasm would get me a First Class honours, but it did. 'But you got a FIRST, why waste it teaching ABCs? You could do anything!'This was the post-graduation advice given to me by a friend who hasn’t lived it down since. I believe this to be the precise moment responsible for me getting thrown off course and sent flying into the state of panic and indecisiveness that I have been struggling to get out of for months! What if they were right? What if four years of gruelling hard work and gaining all that specialist knowledge made the prospect of teaching ABCs and 123s seem like small potatoes. Suddenly the idea of teaching made me feel like I wasn’t utilising my degree to it’s full potential. But what was it’s full potential? According to my friend, 'doing my grades justice' meant taking some kind of corporate job in a big company with a fat pay check. But that wasn’t really…Me. Suspicious…I felt like my degree should have opened up a world of options to me. But what if I had only thought of teaching as my future career because I had never really been exposed to anything else and because it was a safe choice that guaranteed employment in Hong Kong? Feeling like teaching was the path of least resistance led me to wonder if there was some other job out there that I might be good at, but that I maybe just hadn’t tried yet. Being curious about what else was 'out there' led me to my current situation in which I have been stubbornly searching for something hypothetically 'better' than teaching. Over the past months, I have relentlessly searched for other things that I could transfer my social scientific knowledge and research skills into (e.g market research, journalism, psychological research, counselling, a PhD, Development work and many others) only to recently arrive at the conclusion that the job I am truly best suited to is…you guessed it…teaching. I went full circle…now what?It just goes to show what happens when you over-think things. I never thought twice about teaching when I was younger because I liked kids and I thought I’d be good at it; simple enough reasons. After having spent many gruelling months agonising over what other careers I might be good at, I have annoyingly come full circle to the very career I set out to pursue. Before I presume I can jump straight into a teaching career, I have to realise that although I have some classroom experience, what I don’t have is any qualifications. Ironically, this is the exact opposite dilemma of my previous job searches! So I've been spending the last few days searching teacher training courses. Since I can’t afford to undertake a full time PGCE course in the UK (scary international fees), I have to find out what my other options are. Could it be that a move back home to Hong Kong is now in the pipeworks? Read Ayeesha's previous job log:
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