A lightbulb goes on....

The epiphany that arrived was definitely unexpected. After seven years of soul searching and agonising over whether I could and should change career it all seems to have culminated in a five minute conversation in between surfing lessons in a small town in northern Spain.

For years I have thought of teaching English as something that is definitely not for me; that I would hate standing in front of a class and ‘teaching’ or rather ‘disciplining’ and that the staff room politics would drive me up the wall. However, my lovely and inspirational Spanish teacher was able to throw quite a different light on it. Javi emphasised to me the things she loves about her job; meeting people from all over the world, facilitating a learning process and the freedom to use her training pretty much anywhere in the world. I realised ‘hang on a minute…isn’t that amazingly similar to everything I want?!’

Before I went on this jolly Spanish jaunt of sun, sea and surprises I had the third session with my career coach (Hi John!). The process so far has been to narrow down and reduce to absolute essentials the elements I want from a career. Sounds obvious but you would be surprised at how many things you think are important but which fall by the wayside, or conversely, can be applied in creative ways to many many careers when you start to dissect them. Possibilities had, at first, started to become infinite and I was feeling a little adrift…however, once reigned in, and with the aid of a handy Venn diagram, I saw that there were four key areas I need to focus on in my job search. Working with people, possibilities for travel, using Spanish and writing. Teaching English as a second language seems to fulfill three out of four pretty clearly and finally offers a prospect that actually excites me. As well as being a good short term way of giving me a job that I (hope I) will love, if I stick at it for a couple of years it seems to offer possibilities for other interesting opportunities in the future.

So, it’s off to Seville I will go next month to start my intensive (and everyone has warned me just how intensive) teaching course. All being well that will be followed by a job in Spain and then who knows...maybe I will end up like my wonderful Spanish teacher; in love with her job and able to inspire and enthuse others. I hope so. But I also know this is not the end of the journey!