Happy to keep looking for career direction

Finding your career path can take time and your direction may not always be obvious. But don't let that get you down, it's okay. There is nothing wrong with taking a break to research and reassess your options. AUT graduate Jordan Anderson took 3 attempts to find the right career path.  Now happily working as a qualified early childhood teacher at Bambinos Early Childhood Centre Manukau,  Jordan says her experience has made her stronger and more resilient in the workplace.

Early childhood teaching certainly wasn’t the career she envisaged when she left school and enrolled in a Bachelor of Arts at university.
“I thought I should be at university, so I started a BA but after a year I decided I needed to be doing something with a guaranteed career outcome. I also felt a pull towards working in a caring role and so I enrolled in midwifery, a career I could see would be very rewarding.”

However, after four trimesters Jordan realised this still wasn’t the right career path for her. While she had some amazing experiences, she found she was getting anxious and stressed about the clinical placements and wasn’t enjoying it in the way she had imagined.  
“I think being a midwife takes a certain kind of person and I wasn’t sure I could be that person at this point in my life,” explains Jordan.

Time out

She decided to take a break from study to give herself time to work out what she really would enjoy doing.

“I must say initially I felt I had let myself down - after all I should have succeeded the second time. It took a little while to come to terms with the fact that these changes in my journey were all part of growing and finding my place in the world. Now I see that everything has contributed to who I am now, but I didn’t feel that then,” says Jordan.

She’d been coaching gymnastics part time through high school and university, so she started picking up more hours at her gymnastics club until she was teaching nearly every class and programme offered. That gave her an income and the time to reflect further on her career options.

The gym work was interesting. She was given the chance to design and teach her own programme through TeamGym and got to work with the junior competitive team and their families. “I also took part in our programmes for schools and preschools and really enjoyed working with the younger age groups, supporting the development of their motor skills and seeing them grow in courage,” says Jordan.

She spent the next 18 months working with young children and developing her own programmes. The positive feedback she received for her work from her manager and fellow coaches, along with her genuine enjoyment for what she was doing, started her thinking about a career in teaching.

“The more I thought about it, the better the idea seemed, especially when others who’d seen me teaching gym thought I could make a good teacher.”

Teaching option

After much discussion and research, Jordan decided to enrol in a Bachelor of Teaching in Primary Teaching at AUT. She was delighted to be back studying until she did her first practicum at a primary school and realised, she didn’t like working in the primary school environment of large groups of children in large classroom settings.

Despite this, Jordan believed strongly that teaching was the right career path for her so what was she missing? Undaunted this time she pondered whether she should be in an early childhood education setting instead. Curious, she organised a visit to the early childhood centre where her neighbour worked.

“I was sold immediately. I loved the more intimate setting and the collaborative teaching environment. There was a completely different structure to a day in ECE versus a day in a primary school, and it really appealed to me.”

The rest as they say is history. Jordan was easily able to switch specialisation from primary to ECE within her Bachelor of Teaching. She completed her degree happily and had the choice of two jobs when she graduated.

“I’m also a strong believer in young children learning from free play. I really enjoy forming relationships with children and building up their trust and I love seeing them reach new milestones.”

Finding passion takes time

Looking back Jordan realises now she had felt a lot of pressure as a school leaver to find the perfect career that would give her a livelihood and take her into a workplace that would be like a second home.
“Once I realised that, it became clear to me that I had to love what I was doing and finding that can take time. Sometimes it involves trying different things until you find something that really speaks to your heart. I’m so happy I persevered and didn’t give up after my second attempt.”

Are you unsure about your career direction?

Uncertainty about career decisions can be a challenge. Our AUT Employability Lab employability and career specialists are happy to help you reflect on your direction and think through your career decisions.

You can book an appointment to see an employability and career specialist in person or online through Elab Online.

We also run Career Decision making workshops that you can book into through Elab Online as well.

Written by AUT Employability and Careers writer Angela McCarthy