Hello, I’m Matt from A View from 5280ft
It’s good to be over here at Freedandflawed because I am free and very flawed.
Very flawed.
Right now Jenn, is going to school. She has even posted a special recipe to FAILING at it. I didn’t need it. I failed on my own. A couple times.
It all started in high school…I was a total badass. I got a reputation early for getting caught in an alleyway next to school rolling a joint, during my freshman year. I hung with the crew, never listened too my guidance counselors and pretty much did whatever I felt like doing. At the same time, when I did show up to class, I pulled good grades. I guess I was a bit of a closet nerd.
When I started college, I had NO clue what I wanted to be. I would think about it but, school was never my thing. I was good at math…it was easy. All math basically was, was a class where you learn a set of rules, manipulate numbers according to rules, then…learn more rules. So I decided to go for electrical engineering.
College required more of my time than I anticipated. Also, I was going through some personal matters at the time so I was absent from class on everyday except midterms and finals. This strategy, I realized is not the smartest-way-to-do-things.
Of course I failed. I got put on academic suspension and next semester I was expelled from the university. When this happened I did what was most logical, I joined the working force.
I had a few friends who worked construction so I figured I could make some money doing that. My daily duties were to level the dirt (grading), build the forms and lay the concrete. Then I would float it and clean it.
Fuck that. It was not fair out there. Since I was young, they gave me the shovels while others got to ride around in the bobcats all day. Forty foot rebar is really fucking heavy, especially when you have to move piece after piece. Sometimes they would go easy on me and put me on cam-lock duty. For those of you who don’t know what that is, consider yourself lucky.
Anyway, it was obvious that this was not going to fly. So I found a job in the mailroom at a hospital downtown and decided to go back to school at night. The question still remained, what did I want to be? All of this went down at about the same time 9/11 did and guess what…I wanted to be a firefighter. I was a bit of a roughneck and it seemed perfect. I went to community college at night and got my emt license…then applied to get my firefighter I license. I was crushed when they told me there was a two year wait list. I could have gotten in after a year if I did volunteer work for a year but shit, I had bills to pay. There’s no way I can do that.
Back to the fucking drawing board. In the meantime, I was doing good at the hospital and accepted a promotion. A couple of promotions actually. I was now a stupidvisor. It was then when I realized that time was ticking and I needed to be educated, FOR real. So I started going to a university at night again. Since I still had no clue what the hell I wanted to do, I went for the most general degree I could think of, a bachelors in business.
It took me three years to get the shitty degree, but I got it. The hospital, which started off as just a job to get me out of doing manual labor is where I still work today as a business analyst (a couple more promotions). I’m actually pretty happy with my career. I call it a career because I know I am in the field of work I am meant to be in…
So I guess sometimes, if you just float around long enough, the chips will fall. The trick is to catch them when they do.
This post kind of transformed into something different than what I intended. I was going to talk about how rotten a student I was but, that’s ok…I’m going to roll with it.
How did you guys figure out your calling?
If you haven’t yet figured it out, what steps are you taking now to do so?
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This has been a common topic on several 20 something blogs lately. I guess it’s something we’re all dealing with to some extent. I started college having no idea what I wanted to do. For the first year I was “Undecided”. Second year I started thinking about what my ideal job would be, what I would be happiest doing for 40 hours a week. I chose working in the hospital with children as a Child Life Specialist, did an internship, and hated it. So I was back to the drawing board, but by that time it was senior year. I graduated with two degrees, but still no idea what i wanted to do. I took a year off, traveled abroad, and applied to graduate schools. Now I’m in my second year of a Master’s program in Counseling Psychology and I love it. I’m still not sure if I want to do this for the rest of my life, but for now I am really happy.
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My memories of my high school years are basically snapshots of acid trips and pot hazes. I tried to pull it together my senior year, got deathly ill and couldn’t finish. I got my GED and my parents finally ‘fessed up- no money for college. I went to work.
Years later, after drifting from one administrative job to the next, I was the receptionist for a small metal machinery business in Atlanta. I used to help the owner’s wife with the sales tax returns. She skipped out one month, and the CFO was in a panic. He gave me the return and asked me to do as much as I could. I did the whole thing. So he started giving me accounting work to do while I ran the switch, and promoted me into his department as soon as an opening came available. We got on very well, and he took me under his wing and taught me double entry accounting.
Flash forward two years. We had recently moved to Paradise, and I had snagged a job with my current company doing payables. My boss quit. Her replacement no-showed. It was the end of the month, and the owner was in a panic. He had no one to close the month and cut the financial statements. I offered my help, and he took it. After searching for a replacement for two months, he finally just gave me the job. I started my slow crawl toward a BA in Finance.
It was basically laid at my feet, and I see that as rock solid proof that it was meant to be. I love Accounting and Finance, and I’ve been told time and time again that I have a true and natural talent for it.
To think that growing up, I always wanted to be shrink!
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well…
first year i was general sciences at one university… but i decided that partying and boys were more of a priority,and ended up leaving the school at the end of the semester.
I luckily had the army to fall back on… but i needed more. i WANTED to do well in university. so, i went back. I took a pile of biology and psychology courses. but I got bored.
Anyways, long story short, i left university last year and went to another province and got a diploma in Cardiology Technology…and i’m now working in the hospital as a cardiac tech, and i love it. i found my calling after A LOT of soul searching.
it’s a dog-eat-dog world out there…and we’re our worst enemies at times.
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aw.. look at you doing good for yourself and stuff!
who cares how you get there, a few bumps in a road builds character.
Me? It took 28 years but I figured out that I’m best with people, helping, volunteering and just having a job to support my true work. And that’s what I’ll be doing come November.
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Wow, I *just* wrote about my “moment” of discovery.
Long story short – I went to school for education (“because I looove kids!”) and realized that despite LOVING my work with kids, being a school teacher was unappealing – the same class, every day, same schedule…I just thought it was constricting and would grow monotonous. Even though my boss at an education center gushed about my talents with kids, I wanted to see how not working with kids went…And you’ll have to read my blog to find out more because I’m already sick of typing! HA.
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Ha, ha, ha, ha!
“stupidvisor.”
I still don’t know what I want to do with my life. I have a Master’s degree in English that I don’t use unless it’s to write my blog and ignore grammatical rules.
So, yeah.
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I had ran competitively since I was 8. I picked my college based on their track team. I majored in art, but honestly I majored in track. I graduated and got married months later. There I was married with no clue who I was since I wasn’t running anymore. I floated around painting murals and bartending. After a year and a half I got pregnant. When I looked at my daughter the first time everything fit. I am still Rachel, but my job is being a mom and I love it.
Seriously though, I’m not one of those over the top mommy bloggers, I swear!
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Matt, what’s weird is that I didn’t and still don’t know my calling I only know what excites me. I’m seeing a career councilor to help me get into the field I love, but it’s a hard road.
I love hospitals and everything to do with them. I might go back and get my nursing degree once I figure out if I can pass or not. I had tried in college but sucked at Chemistry. I think it was because I didn’t want it enough. Right now, I just want to get into a hospital and work in women and children arenas. Still don’t know what to do, but I’m going that way!
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ughhhhh I have no clue what I want to do.
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I’ve been unhappy with my job (well, not my JOB, but the people I have to deal with on a daily basis), so I’ve started looking at graduate programs to get my MBA so I’ll have more leverage with employers, as well as more opportunities for jobs. I began looking at executive MBA programs (because you can do those online — they’re made for people who are already employed full-time). I REALLY, REALLY had my heart set on Georgia Tech’s executive MBA, but it costs seventy freaking thousand dollars. I don’t want to get my MBA from the college I got my BBA from, but if I do, it would cost about 1/10th of that. Blah.
/long comment
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I graduated with a degree in psychology and as soon as I was done with school- I felt more confused than ever as to what I wanted to do. I’m still confused, not gonna lie. I recently got a job at a world reknowned hospital where world leaders come to get treated and blah blah blah it’s all great- but I’m not happy nor disappointed in what I’m doing. I do counseling for people all over the country. My real goal and what I think would make me happy is teaching in a college somewhere in the psych dept. Or going back to school for nursing. Still not sure. One is definitely more attainable than the other. Buttt… for right now I’m using this job at the prestigious clinic as a stepping stone and a nice resume boost. Plus it’s a great place to work. There are so many reasons that this job rocks besides the job itself.
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It took me two years of working in a horrible hospital environment to find my niche in corporate real estate.
Our college lives seem very parallel. I’m just starting to go back to night school to finish up my degree (in business, lol). Glad to read your success story. Thanks for sharing!
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I dropped out of college for 3 years, fell on my face more times than I can count, went back to school and suddenly it got a little clearer. Then I went out into the world and fell on my face some more. Now I’m pretty set on what I want to do, and I know what I DON’T want to do, which is equally important.
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I’ve got more education than any person needs with no degree and licensure to go with it. So, for someone with one internship short of a MS in Counseling, I’m doing pretty good as a medical secretary while I wait for the rest of my life to sort itself out. Which I believe it will. It just takes time. This is second career territory for me in my old age, and I’m waiting for the next right thing.
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I think its a misconception that everyone has “a calling” – it’s like meeting “the one” – you know, we have a lot of possible matches out there, but its not like if you date 1 woman and it doesn’t work out, you suddenly feel like a failure (for too long). Work should be like dating. You try a bunch of stuff… you figure out what you like, and what you don’t like — and eventually you stick with one for a while. Then you break up, and get a raise
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This is currently the question that haunts me at night because I’m still not really sure what I want to do with my life.
I have a degree in music. I’m creative, I’m currently working as an Admin assistant in a cube. Not very creative.
I am doing a lot of music type things/writing things after work and on the side… I’m hoping eventually it will blow up into a glorious creative job one day.
*fingers crossed*
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ps: kudos to you for figuring it out!
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There was never much contest for me, as to what I was. Art was always my thing. Of course, most of my life I was told that I was good at Art, but it wasn’t a career. It was a hobby.
I thought about Zoology/Psychology/Marine Biology. All things I could do, except for the math. As hard as I looked for something else I could decide on nothing. So, I majored in Art/Art History, and I’m glad I did.
I’m an artist, and Art is in everything I do, including working for this non-profit agency helping youth and families.
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I was always sort of doing what I’m doing now – I just never knew until a few years ago it had a name: technical writing.
So I just started my own business writing all that stuff that no one else likes writing (software manuals, reports, and content for anything that needs content) because I love it and I’m actually pretty good at it (so weird for me to get paid for stuff I like doing and am good at).
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Hahaha – I haven’t figured out shit!
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i shouldn’t have started college until i was 25. i was soooooo not ready to be serious at 18. i literally didn’t go to school my first 1 and 1/2. of course i got kicked out. went home for a semester and took classes at the community college and swore i would start going to class and stop partying.
went back to UD my junior year, and started going to class. i didn’t stop partying though. oops.
im amazed i still graduated in 4 years.
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I didn’t declare my majors until my third and fifth years of undergrad and still don’t know what I want to do. Right now, I’m working as an assistant but I hope to take the GRE soon and start grad school. We’ll see what happens…
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I think career choice is more about finding out what you don’t want to do than what you really want to do.
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I went to college for a year in hopes of being a doctor, but I really didn’t have the drive for it. I came back, waitressed, then worked at a call center. I got promoted a few times in the call center (which I loved for some odd reason) but Verizon outsourced the work to India. Then I lucked into the job I have now which is pretty awesome, but the money sucks.
I think it’s what I want to do for a living, I just have to buck up and go get my degree so I can actually make money doing it.
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How I Found It:
my sister got knocked up and needed someone to look after her business, so I took over. I moved on two and a half years later to an animal shelter here in Sydney. I’ve been there since May and I’m hoping it’ll eventually lead to working in animal behaviour/psychology/rehabilitation.
I have a diploma in events management and could be earning a huge salary… Instead I sit on minimum wage, barely scraping by, all because I love what I do.
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