We spend way too many years of our lives working to not be happy with what we do, but what direction do you take if you’re unhappy with the career you find yourself in?
When I left University with my degree in Biology I was certain I wanted to be a teacher, so I enrolled on a teacher training course. From this, I found that teaching was something I was good at, which made finding a job pretty straightforward (it didn’t hurt that I was male and teaching science, which was quite desirable when I first entered the profession).
I loved my job during the 4 years I was a teacher. Interacting with teenagers in the classroom all day was one of the most rewarding things I’ve ever done, and being able to see them progress was fantastic. I also really got into the extra curricular activities, co-ordinating the STEM programme for my school, taking trips out to STEM events and to visit industry contacts we’d made. The longer I spent in the profession, I found myself spending more and more time completing paperwork, marking and preparing to such a degree that my classroom teaching was no longer a priority.
This is not an uncommon complaint amongst teachers. What I did realise was that I had a real drive for helping guide students towards doing what they were passionate about. During this difficult time in the teaching profession, my best friend confided in me with an idea he’d had for a business and asked me to come onboard. This idea was based around providing a platform where people could seek guidance by engaging with other peoples’ experiences, so I was immediately hooked and found that I now had a potentials way out of a career I was currently not content with! This was the start of a chain of events that resulted in me co-founding our company, which’ll I’ll go into in my next post.
I’ll go into the lessons we had to learn and the sacrifices that needed to be made, as well as the on going journey we face with getting our company off the ground.
Thanks, Ash
APrestown 