Category Archives: solution center

May14

Plan B, part A

Posted on by
Standard

I have realized I have a lot of plan b’s in my life.

the first that I would like to explore is the fact that I went to school for elementary education but am now working full time in the IT world (with little to no plans to go back to being an elementary teacher). Looking back, I really felt a lot of pressure in college to decide what I wanted to be and start into my major program. I went through declaring a couple different majors (english, world religion, anthropology) before decided on elementary education. i wasn’t sure if thats what I really wanted to do but I had to decide. It seemed the easiest (also felt a lot of pressure to get good grades) although I didn’t like that it was what my sister had declared her major as at a different university.

I convinced myself it was what I wanted and moved forward with the hoops. I enjoyed the classes and it gave me time to work on other things during college, like my part time job at the Solution Center, sorority, and other campus organizations. I am very proud of everything I accomplished and took major ownership of my life during college. I felt really limited in high school by status and politics to take any leadership positions, but didn’t allow this in college.

Anyways, I really enjoyed student teaching but it took a lot out of me. I was really tired at the end of the days. After I graduated I dabbled in substitute teaching for a while and had a couple job interviews but everything was so, so political. It is so annoying. You had to know the right people and there is a lot of pressure on teachers to perform well, teach well, the students improvement, etc. It was really frustrating and hard to get jobs. I hated getting a phone call at 5:30 that morning as to if I would be working for the day.

The opportunity arose that I could apply for a full time position at the Solution Center (where I worked as a student). It offered great benefits, more money than teaching would have offered, and I could return to Ames where I had a good support system.  technology interested me but I never thought I knew enough to go into the field. I secretly love the challenge of being a female in a male dominated profession. I love that people are in different stages of life and have different perspectives (teachers have limited views from my experience or just want to be a teacher so they can be a “good mom”).  I love the challenge of things constantly changing and proving to people that I am smart. So although it wasn’t always my plan b, it turned out to be!