Chapter Fourteen: Beyond Uni… What to do with one’s life… (~jinghan)
Note from the Author: First, you’ll be glad to know that this will actually be a somewhat relatively emotionally sober post… Second, you’ll be disappointed to know that this post probably has more questions than answers, despite what the title suggests…
“I’ve done something really stupid, Jinghan!”
“What happened?”
“I miss the first round of law applications!”
“Oh no!!”
And that’s where it all started. I hadn’t even thought about applying to things like post-graduate courses. My friend, whom had known what she wanted to do all along, had messed up her application… I hadn’t even started researching what I’ll want to do after I graduate in less than 6 months. Help!
Conversations with me over the next few days probably all went along the same lines. For example, I am at a party, dressed in a semi-atomically representative O2 (oxygen) costume* and I am talking to a friend:
“Hi, how are you?”
“I’m fine. You?”
“Oh yeah, I’m okay… I have to work out what to do with my life though. Should I do a Masters of Science in maths? I’m not that big on going into research, but people seem to be encouraging me to do it because they think I’m smart enough to. But I want to eventually teach though, so should I do a Dip. Ed. now? Or after a masters? I’m a bit worried that I only have maths if I want to teach… maybe I should have another subject… man I haven’t even decided what subjects I’ll be doing for this semester…”**
Yup. That’s right. It was half way through the first week and I was enrolled in 4 subjects, but attending 5 trying to decide whether I wanted to do Psychology or Statistics. And by the time I had settled on Statistics at the end of the week I was wondering whether I should overload with one more IT subject to open up the possibility of teaching IT later…
One solution was to email my past maths teachers. Surely the story of their lives will help me decide what to do with mine! Yes that’s it! It will solve all my problems!
I make a phone call to the first teacher. He recommends that I do a Masters in case I get into teaching and it’s not what I had expected and it’s always hard to go back into full time study after you’ve been earning income for a while. He started out doing chemistry but is now only teaching maths. I am consoled – yes that seems like a good plan, and yes, it seems like it’s okay to have just maths as a teaching subject! Hooray! I knew talking to someone would solve all my problems.
The next day my other former maths-teacher calls. If I go into a Masters I shouldn’t just do it for the sake of “doing a Master” (Ah! Oh no! Am I doing that? Am I? I am aren’t I!?) and judging by my comments she gets the impression that I’m really not into that research stuff… plus she has no doubts that someone like me can always go back to study whenever I want. If all it takes is to add one subject to be able to teach IT then I should just do so, sometimes variety in teaching is good, she says. Yes, that does sound very sensible. I’m feeling pretty good about this decision…
That is…
Until I remember that I was feeling good about a completely contradictory decision just the day before. Man… what am I going to do with my life? Sometimes it feels like everyone else is on track while I’m just tagging along. Plus, clearly I’m far too easily swayed by other people’s opinions… Where’s my own sense of conviction? How does one develop conviction? Or do some of us just miss out and blunder through every decision like I feel like I’m doing?
Ah… “conviction” a word I’m starting to resent…
Finally I sit down on a Sunday night with my dad to discuss my options. He’s a good person to talk to – pragmatic, sensible, and knows me well… and only a little bit biased towards academia… only a little. We take a closer look at the Masters of Science brochure and it doesn’t seem too bad… And if I choose my subjects right I’ll have a little bit of squirm room in the first semester. Research component? Urg… I guess I’ll think about that when I get there… We take a look at the Masters of Teaching brochure too: yeah when you put it that way, Dad, I do admit that I don’t really want to teach IT, especially at high school level it can be a bit of a dodgy subject. And yeah I can handle just teaching maths… Mm, okay, agreed, Dad, it seems that doing the two year Masters of Science followed by the one year Dip. Ed. is the way to go… And I won’t overload with IT this semester.Phew! Sorted!
I like this feeling of decisiveness. And is that… dare I call it… I think I have… “conviction” in this decision. Hooray!
Monday, and I’ve booked an appointment with the Graduate School of Education advisor to ask about the course and where I stand.”Yeah, I don’t think I really want to teach IT,” I tell her confidently. “But I’d like to know what the different between doing just one maths teaching area and two are?”
“Well there’s not much difference. And actually, I’ll be much more employable if you have two different subjects. So say you added two more second or third year physics subjects…”
Yeah… maybe I should add two more physics subjects… but can I fit that in with my Masters? Why didn’t I think about this earlier in my undergrad? I thought that if I just completed a major it would be good enough…
So… Uh… Conviction? What was it I was going to do with my life again?
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*Nerdiness! Yay!
** Haha… I just noticed the first paragraph of my past post…