It’s Monday morning and boy oh boy has a good bit happened since the last time we chatted. My very awesome extremely close to me Aunt passed away suddenly the day before I graduated college myself after six VERY LONG years of textbooks, tired, six kids, final exams, awesome professors and SATAN professors….. I know you know them….. Maybe we have had a few in common.
Truth is, some people are cut out for the careers they chose, and some people got into careers because of their education and then realized too late that what they were doing was not really what they loved to do. I think we can attribute a little of that to those professors who seemed like they really didn’t want to be there or were unwilling to work with students.
Who wants to be stuck in their job? Not me! I didn’t go to school for six years through graduating high school students, putting one into kindergarten, team momming football teams, hosting prom and homecoming parties and having my father in law with dementia coming to live with me so that I could come out the other end to be miserable did you?? The answer: HELL NO.
My Aunt who recently passed away was an awesome example of how to live life being happy with the career that CHOOSES YOU. For 20 years she was an x-ray tech for hospitals and doctors offices and one day said, “I’m done.” And she was. She gave notice to a predominant neurologist she was working for walked out the door after two weeks and never looked back. For many years after that she tried multiple jobs to see which one fit the best. She had been educated to be an x-ray tech….. she had no other education. She landed clerical jobs, she landed waitressing jobs, she even tried her hand at being a doggy daycare provider. You name it she did it. She wanted to see which career CHOSE HER. In between all of her jobs we would get calls saying she was on an island somewhere in the Caribbean or off the coast of Florida or some place we had never heard of. She traveled to see different perspectives to help her understand where she wanted to be in life. She was one of the HAPPIEST people I knew.
“Weird Aunt Dee”
You are at a point in your life where travelling is essential to show you so many perspectives. To show you the diversity in life and in cultures. To open up a world in which you can find out who you are and who you really want to be. You are not a part of the corporate world yet, you are not tied to a job that dictates that you only have two weeks off and if you are while you are in school that’s amazing too!! Use those two weeks to travel somewhere you’ve never been and immerse yourself in whatever culture in the place that you land. Maybe you will love it, Maybe you will hate it….. but I promise you, you will leave knowing a little more about yourself than you did when you landed there.
This fall I will head to a community in Jamaica where I will meet up with friends I made while doing a service learning trip there. I will be greeted with love and joy and I will be so happy to be in a place that feels like home to me. I will be taking students with me to show them the love and happiness that exists in a culture that does not know the benefits of a first world country. We will stay with local Jamaican families. Learn all about the foods they eat, go to a local beach and eat jerk chicken from a grill that is being manned by a local Jamaican. We will step into a classroom in a small community where education is the utmost priority and see how children are engaged and loving the lessons they are learning while in a 95 degree classroom. We will see how they don’t even give a second thought to not having hot water…. But they love. And they live. Passionately.
I’ll take students to Belize and hang out in a local neighborhood in Belize City. We will go help teachers in classrooms and get to know local children and Ministry of Education personnel. We will eat Belizean food and swim in the Caribbean Sea and understand a little more deeply what compassion means to us, and to the people we serve. We will visit local hospitals and see how the community takes on a growing epidemic of drug use and the contraction of HIV/AIDS. And I guarantee you, when you come home you will literally be a better person telling everyone you come in contact with how this experience changed your life.
And then you will add it to your resume. Which will set you apart from every other person sitting in those classrooms with you getting the same degree you are getting. And you will graduate. You will start interviewing and some of your best interviews will be spent talking about the time you went to help kids in Jamaica or Belize and what you got out of that experience.
And your potential new employer will put an asterisk by your name ***
Don’t sign up for one of our fall trips out of obligation. Don’t sign up because people tell you that you should. Sign up for one of these trips so that you can experience a life changing event that will propel you into a better career and teach you one more piece about yourself that you did not know. There’s no time like the present. What are you waiting for?? Click on “Register for upcoming trips!” Below.
Go. Passionately.
Want to learn more? Sign up for our emails!!
It’s been fun chatting, Until next time…..
Jennifer