It's been a long time since I sat down at this laptop to write a blog post. I had made it a point to try to write every day or so, but that didn't work...
I would say life gets in the way (and it does), but that is ultimately just an excuse.
This has been a massive year of transition for me. For the last two plus years, I have been living on this tightrope. I have tiptoed between the career I have and the career I want to have.
Let's backtrack for a moment. I have been a marketing professional for over twenty years. I started just out of college working in the music industry. When the bottom fell out of that industry I was laid off (along with 999 people - over the course of two days). I jumped around after that doing some customer service work, some non-profit work, bounced at clubs, etc. until I landed with a family-owned restaurant and hospitality company.
I stayed there for over eleven years. I liked the work, enjoyed most of the people I worked with...but didn't love it. I didn't have a passion for it. I have an underlying need to make a difference in the world around me, but I didn't feel as though I was able to do anything in this job.
I had tried to get another job...with more money and more responsibility, but I kept coming up as number two. I would make it through lengthy interview processes and hundreds of resumes, then be the number two choice. That happened five times in two years. It was a tough pill to swallow, but it helped me get to a realization. If I was going to advance my career, being a marketing generalist wasn't enough. I needed to look to get additional education.
Then I thought to myself...I have another twenty plus years in the workforce. Do I want to continue to do marketing or do I want to do something else? I decided that I wanted to do something else. After a lot of soul searching, I decided I wanted to be an Elementary School Teacher.
Yes, the vacation time and summers' off played into the decision (as my oldest son, is a Type One Diabetic), but the biggest factor was feeling like I wanted to make a difference and be a change in the world.
So, I started (close to three years ago) the process of looking into schools, applying to programs taking standardized tests and getting into a classroom (which I hadn't done in over twenty years). Needless to say, I got through all of the hurdles and found myself in August of 2016 in a classroom at Rhode Island College. I was terrified, but excited all at the same time.
Two years later, I found myself an Elizabeth Carr Scholarship Recipient, with a 4.0 GPA, needing some flexibility in my schedule at work to finish up my coursework. I am two-thirds of the way through the program. I needed work to be able to flex my hours so I can take a summer course, two practicums in the fall...then I would need to change jobs before the spring semester, as I would be Student Teaching (Monday through Friday during the whole semester) in the Spring.
Last year I was pushed by work to take vacation days whenever I had practicum classes. In 2017, I used fourteen of my twenty vacation days to go to school. They were not very flexible.
So, a few weeks ago, the moment of truth happened...I gave my two weeks notice. I decided that the life and career I wanted was more important that the career I had. There was an attempt to keep me on, but at the end of the day, I needed the flexibility to do what I needed to do to complete my journey.
It is scary and exciting knowing that I am on my way, all in, towards being what I want to be when I grow up.
My three year journey continues...living the "gig economy" life and working on finishing what I started.
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