Work it

I think one of the hardest questions you can ask someone when you are at school is “What do you want to be when you grow up?”

While I was growing up and attending primary school, I always thought I would live on the Gold Coast, be a Marine Biologist (because I was obsessed with Whales and Dolphins) and get married and start a family.

Not much has changed really, apart from the career part.

As I grew up and became aware of what my dad did for his job as a journalist and public relations consultant, I thought that sounded really exciting (I always thought that the role of a journalist was called an ‘accountant’ – my mum corrected me when I was in Grade 3 after she heard me tell a teacher my dad was an accountant and that his job was to write stories for the newspaper…) I was only 8 okay!

So after graduating high school and University and becoming a journalist and public relations consultant myself, I’m now finding that I am thinking about other careers that I would take up as an adult.

I like being creative while I work and for someone like me it’s a must if I am going to enjoy what I do and get paid for it. So I really think I’d like to try out interior design or decorating of some kind… or maybe become a cook ala Maggie Beer. I like photography too – maybe I could combine that with cooking and be a food photographer?

I am definitely not adverse to going back to Uni or TAFE and adding a few more courses to my belt, but now it comes down to time and money… two commodities we seem to have very little of these days (thanks mainly to our beautiful new home of which construction is due to start soon).

I guess when our teachers in Grade 12 were encouraging us to make QTAC selections I never really thought about things that I would grow to enjoy and one day want to make a career of. You just decide what you think you would be ‘best at’ at that time.

This all comes on the back of a report that was released today stating that nearly 8 million Australians don’t have the basic reading, writing or numeracy skills to undertake training for trade or professional jobs. I was completely shocked to hear this… considering our population is nearly 22 million, this means nearly a third of all Aussies are losing out to jobs to international competition because they can’t read, write or do basic mathematical equations.

It sounds bleak, but I figure that if you stick to what you know and have a special knack for, your flair will shine through… even if you can’t work out what 7 x 12 equals, you can still be happy, just like Homer Simpson.