Which path will you take? Pt. I

‘Do you know what you’re doing after graduation?’

It’s the question almost everyone dreads. Some people are lucky enough to have it together and know what they’re doing after they graduate from uni. But, most people are not that lucky.

Being in second year, I still have time to think about my career path because there are so many factors that go into deciding which path to take. The idea of having no plan or ‘playing it by ear’ absolutely scares me. That’s why I try to have more than one potential pathway so that I don’t ever fall into that situation.

Having said that, my career path changes pretty often. There’s always something new that I want to master and so any hobbies I want to pick up, so I often find new interests.

Ever since I was little, I always wanted to be a teacher or a professor. When I was 14, I started working at my local swimming pool as an Aquatic Program Assistant, which essentially was an assistant instructor. In Canada, you have to be 16 to be a lifeguard/swim instructor, so when I turned 16, that’s exactly what I did.

I fell in love with teaching and developed a strong love for it. I revelled in writing lesson plans and report cards. I delighted in my ‘lil kiddies doing front crawl for the first time or putting their face in the water without any help. I relished in watching said kiddies move up until maybe I got to teach them again at a higher level. I was loving life at the pool.

But everything changed when I took law classes in grades 11 and 12. I fell in love with law. I quickly changed my mind and decided that I wanted to become a judge, so teaching quickly became the back-up plan.

Throughout my first degree, my primary path was law school while my back-up path was teachers’ college. Both of these are post-graduate programs in Canada, which means you need an undergrad degree to apply for these programs. I mentioned in my first blog post that I dabbled in a few different subjects throughout my first degree including (but not limited to): gender studies, philosophy, English literature, and music. As you can probably tell, I was very indecisive and hadn’t found something that I’d truly enjoyed studying for my undergrad.

During the three years of my first degree, I really struggled. I fluctuated a lot in terms of grades and I’d always been average in school. I started out being pretty confident I could get into law school, but that changed quickly when I decided I actually wanted to be an academic instead, because, realistically, my grades just weren’t good enough to get into law school. By second year of uni, I was going through a really rough time deciding what my career path would be because I wasn’t motivated or inspired to do anything and I wasn’t enjoying what I was studying. There were a lot of mental breakdowns and rude awakenings that year.

It was ironic because when I was little, I was so set on being a teacher and nothing else, but as soon as I was on the sure path to becoming an adult, I was changing my mind every few months. What I wanted to be really depended on both my overall mental wellbeing and how confident I was that I could get into law school, which, in turn, depended on how well I was doing in uni. It was a vicious and unhealthy cycle of thought.

Being an academic quickly changed to becoming a YouTuber (cue the shameless advertising for a YouTube channel I haven’t touched in ages!), but then that changed to becoming either an interior designer or wedding planner. I also thought about going into music, because there was not one semester that I wasn’t doing a musical theatre show on the side, and I fell in love with that as well. Rehearsals were the only thing I was motivated to do and genuinely enjoyed doing. At that point in my life, I thought I was only allowed to have one passion so I thought it was a sign telling me that my one, true passion was music.

I now know that you can have more than one passion in life. Since my last degree, I’ve had a hidden passion that I’ve only just realised is a passion of mine a few weeks ago. The story continues next week!