The One About When I Grow Up

On Monday I had lunch with Mrs W and the girlies, we were talking about how when I was younger what did I want to do when I grew up (if that makes sense).

I was like most kids I reckon and I didn’t want to settle for one thing or another. I wanted to be one thing this week and something else next week – How was I ever going to get the right qualifications while I kept changing my mind!

If I start from the present and work backwards that probably works best.

Primary Teacher
Being a drama teacher was plan A after uni, plan B became being a primary school teacher. I was going to have the specialism of drama from my degree but I was going to teach Italian. Yup apparently to teach Italian at a primary school level you just need to be able to speak to a GCSE level – no problem except I hadn’t spoken italian since I quit back in 2003! How was I going to manage to speak enough Italian to prove the point in an interview.

Drama Teacher
I did a Performing Arts degree and seeing as neither drama or dance were my strong points (or at least not in the eyes of my lecturers) teaching was the way forward. I looked at being a teacher and after two ish weeks of observing lessons, drama in an upper school wasn’t for me.

Anthropologist
Okay I’m not sure where exactly this came from – It might have been while I was studying Sociology at College (I decided that seeing as I had time on my hands I’d pick up another AS level as I screwed up the first time round!).

Paramedic
This was a hairbrain one – teachers are telling you to go to uni and you have no idea what you’ll be good at so in my case I picked what I liked – for one or another reason moving school/going to college wasn’t right for me so I couldn’t do Human Biology, my school wouldn’t accept me for Biology because I only got a C for Double Science rather than a B as requested in the handbook – I was only just accepted for drama because the teachers knew I’d work my socks off (which even then wasn’t enough to rescue me!)

Anyway so I wanted to help people and Paramedical Science seemed like the way forward.

Didn’t Care
When I was in about Year 9/10 I was bullied – for anything being short, being a geek, being a teachers pet, being a christian, wearing glasses, not being trendy on mufti day, you name it I was bullied for it – I just wanted to survive and get out of school. I know I make it sound dramatic but I took to hanging out in the library or the music department to stay out of trouble.

When I was Younger
I did the normal things, wanted to be a vet but then saw Animal Hospital or something like that and they were helping birth a calf – eugh that was gross lol. The guy had to stick his arm in the cow and assist with the birthing – I decided that I couldn’t do that, so that one went out the window. I remember wanting to be a lawyer but the whole idea of standing up in front of that many people and speaking scared me a little (hey I was about 12 and hadn’t really found my outspoken side!)

On the other hand there are all the things I have been
Waitress/barmaid kinda for the same company but at three or four different venues, customer service rep/cashier at a builders merchant, cashier at a supermarket, PA/housekeeper for a concierge and recruitment company (My manager owned the two companies and so I kinda worked inbetween the two for about two months – I loved the idea of what I was doing I just didn’t get it right – also I wasn’t used to working on my own) and most recently a customer service rep for a safe company. I’ve also been a babysitter, cleaner (I was my mum’s cleaner for a few months because I was struggling to get a job as anything else)

The problem with getting my degree in performing arts is that everyone thinks that you just want a job until you hit your big break – to be honest it’s not going to happen for me I just want a job that likes me for me.