Hi friends,
Apologies for the lateness of
this post. How was your week? I’ve been on holidays and had a lovely time away.
So this is my third week writing this blog. I hope you enjoyed the book review
last week and were intrigued by the introduction the week before.
I pride myself in saying I have
ten years of experience with children, however I think it would be prudent to
go back to the very beginning to where my journey started.
When I was in Year 7 in high
school, I decided I wanted to be an orthoptist. An orthoptist works with an eye
specialist, testing vision and conducting eye exercises. They mainly work with
children and the elderly.
It makes sense considering I
started seeing one when I was three years old. I was fascinated by the ability
of someone to improve another’s sight. I wanted to be that person who helped
others.
In Year 10 I did work
experience at my eye doctor’s practice with his orthoptist. I absolutely loved
it. The first day I was given brochures to read about various eye conditions
and got to watch different videos about procedures. I was hooked. One
afternoon, I got to do an induction with a girl who had just started at the
practice. It was great to see what I would hopefully be doing in several years
time. For most of the week I sat in with the orthoptist while she worked with her
patients. It was so exciting to see things from the other side of the fence.
However, the best thing about
that week was sitting in on a lasik procedure. It freaked me out a bit, but
don’t worry, I won’t explain it. All I will say is that from then on, I was
determined to be an orthoptist.
Now, apart from school, I was
heavily involved in Sunday School at my church. I loved the conversations I had
with the children and the relationships that were built. However I had never
considered working with children as a career. It was just a side project (for
want of a better term).
So you’re probably thinking
“That’s great, but what does this have to do with where you are now?” Well, in
my day the ATAR was called the UAI (Universities Admissions Index) and was a
rank out of 100. To get into the degree to become an orthoptist, you had to
have a UAI of 82. Given my grades at the time, there was no way I was going to
get 82. But I was confident.
One afternoon during afternoon
tea, mum said to me “So what will you do if you don’t get the UAI you need?” I
was quick to answer “Take a year off and go back as a mature aged student”. She then asked “What will you do?” I had no
idea. She followed with “What else do you like to do?” I shrugged. She said “Do
you like doing Kidschurch (Sunday School)?” I said “Yes”. Then she said “Well
what if you do Early Childhood?”
“Okay, why not?” I thought.
“It’s another option”. So I looked up the UAI for Early Childhood. 61.05.
Achievable. Or so I thought.
Fast forward to after the HSC
and the results are in.
54.25
As you can imagine I was
devastated. I had no idea what to do.
After the shock wore off, I did
a bit of research and discovered that you can do a Diploma of Children’s
Services at TAFE which gives you 18 months off your degree (Which was 3 years).
I then looked up the course on the TAFE website. You had to apply for it in
August.
Brilliant.
In those days on the TAFE
website, not only could you look up courses, but also potential careers you
could have with those courses. So I started browsing. The one which appealed to
me most was Legal Secretary. I don’t know why, but it just sounded cool. Mum
reminded me that our neighbour was a legal secretary so I asked her how she got
into it. She said she did a business course at Bedford College and that it was
really good. Right, so the next step was to jump on their website. Which I did.
Lo and behold, not only did
they offer the Diploma of Business, but they also offered the Diploma of
Children’s Services! I quickly abandoned the idea of becoming a legal secretary
and went back to the idea of being a childcare worker.
I enrolled, did a tour of the
college and bought my textbooks. I was so excited to begin my journey.
Apologies for the length of
this post, but I wanted you all to know the full story of how my childcare
career began. As you can see, it was quite a long and difficult road.
Tune in next week for a book
review of The Very Cranky Bear.
Mel
