My career path has been on my mind a lot lately, and I think it’s because I know I need to get back on the horse, so to speak.
When I first started out on what would become my first career path, I was a freshman at the University of Colorado. My astronomy class was meeting at Fiske Planetarium for the first time, and I was excited. It wasn’t the fact that I would be get to look at projected stars that had me energized that afternoon (not entirely, at least); it was learning that the planetarium employed student interns and volunteers. I wasn’t qualified to be an intern, but I think I volunteered on my out of the planetarium that day. It became my second home over the next year.
I spent days running shows, giving star talks, and helping to build and install new shows. I was learning anything they threw at me, and loving every minute of it.
Eventually, I left CU for a small university in Texas. My uncle gave the information for the Texas State Aquarium’s volunteer recruiting fair, and I quickly found myself spending a couple mornings a week welcoming school groups to the museum and splitting them off into various activities. This position was short-lived as my teacher prep program became more field-based, but I quickly fell in with the education department of another nearby museum.
I think this was where it truly dawned on me that I wanted to become a museum educator. I taught in the first grade program, but when they weren’t in the museum, I was working on developing a series of workshops for Girl Scouts to earn various badges through the museum. I spent my mornings wandering through the museum and doing research, before sitting down in the xeriscape garden to write down ideas and shape them into activities. Before long, I realized that developing lesson plans and units were my favorite part of the teacher prep program, too.
This passion served me well during my student teaching, when I volunteered to run two performing arts workshops at my school. I had them planned out quickly, and the kids had a ball with them.
Fulfilling my own professional plans, I went to grad school pursuing a degree in museum science. The department was housed in the university’s museum, and we all worked in various departments. I went to the education department, where I was put to work immediately on developing the workshops for the second event of the school year. I sat in a dark office filled with dusty astronomy books, and I researched and wrote and had a wonderful time. I was positive I had found my calling.
Unfortunately, my calling didn’t seem to agree. Before I was even through with my thesis, museum after museum was rejecting me because they felt I was overqualified. I’ll admit it, I was crushed. I even tried taking the approach that I would just find myself in something not related to museums or education at all…so I became an editor at an education publishing house.
Right idea, wrong falcon.
This turned out to be a horrible mistake, and I soon found myself in a far corner of the country holding down two part-time teaching jobs and a substitute gig. I still teach in a tutoring center part time trying to make math make sense to my students.
I had to return to my past to find myself again. I am looking toward what I loved about that past as I try to find my future. I still want to sit in that dark office surrounded by dusty books doing research and developing educational programming. I think I may have figured out where I should try to land next, but I have no clue how to get there. (I’m always looking for helpful pointers, though.)
Let this be an inspiration to you. If you aren’t happy now, look to your past and think about those times you were happy. What were you engaged in? What kinds of activities did you feel really drawn to? Find the answers to those questions, and then build your own career changes around them. You may surprise yourself with who you really are.
