There hasn’t been a single time in all my life when I’ve been told I ‘have’ to get a job. I started work at the end of year 11 as an office junior (one year short of finishing high school for good). It was supposed to be a school vacation stint of about 6 weeks and then I was returning to finish my senior year and then onto university to be a Physical Education teacher.
The school holiday job was then offered to me permanently and the rest is history. I stayed at this company for about 6 years which then took me into my early 20’s. By then computers were the ‘next big thing’ and I thought I’d like a career working with them. I had enough money in savings to take a bit of time off work to look for that ‘just right’ job. I had a ball. Went on a few holidays, checked the paper every day and then a fantastic job came up as a Systems Operator looking after a mainframe computer system, with training provided, for a major US mining company.
I stayed there for a few years until the armed services was calling my name and I wanted to join the Australian Air Force. Unfortunately (or fortunately, whichever way you look at it) I followed my heart and finished up in regional NSW with a boyfriend in the Army. I eventually made my way back to Brisbane about 5 years later and a 6 year career in contract administration for an air conditioning company followed.
Finished up there to travel around the US for 6 months and when I returned I thought about getting into hospitality because I loved food, restaurants etc. I was just about to sign up for a hospitality course when an employment agency I had registered with phoned with a 3 month job offer. Christmas was approaching and I thought the money would be good. That turned into a 6 year stint in the Queensland Government. I then met my (now ex) husband, had the children, took maternity leave and just never went back.
I have had a couple evening jobs since having the children so I could be home with them during the day but that soon took its toll especially when my little boy was young. He was quite a handful. Here in Australia our Federal Government has a lovely department called “Centrelink”. It is Australia’s answer to a welfare service for the unemployed. Since becoming a single parent in January 2012, I have been very lucky to receive a pension every fortnight from the government. Its not very much but its been enough for me to pay a share of the mortgage, pay the bills and live within my means.
This lovely government then introduced that if you are a single parent and your youngest child turns 6 years of age (which mine did in November last year) you HAVE to either work or study for 15 hours a week or the government will take that pension away from you. So what does a 49 year old woman with two primary school aged children do? Someone who thought they had finished any thought of a career. Someone who thought they would be home raising their children for the rest of their life (except for maybe a small part time job or volunteer services). I can’t volunteer for another 6 years. Even if I want to study, what do I study?
So many questions and so overwhelming. I’ve been looking online. I’ve gone to TAFE (Tertiary and Further Education). Found out about University degrees. Who’s going to hire a 55+ University graduate over an early 20 year old graduate? So many questions.
I did, however, get told about an online program called My Future which has been absolutely fantastic. (I found out all these things on my own too. Centrelink were no help whatsoever.) I’ve only just touched on the surface but you can search for a career and find out just about everything there is to know about it.
Take a Music Teacher for example. The above shows just what sort of information is available on being a Music Teacher. You can also create a profile on what sort of things you like doing, which I haven’t done yet but it is supposed to create a lot of different job descriptions and how to go about getting that job. Failing that, I can clean people houses I guess!
www.myfuture.edu.au
Disclaimer: This isn’t a sponsored post. I wanted to share this information so other people in a similar situation as myself might like to look at this instead of just jumping into any old job just because you ‘have’ to. You’re worth more than that no matter what age you are or what educational background you’ve had. Anything is possible!
