Posts Tagged ‘study’
The Next Three Years
People have been giving me blank stares and confused looks the past few weeks as I have announced that I have a super dooper plan for the next three years which involves a whole lot of study, both here and overseas, and no teaching.
“What?!? No teaching? But…but…you have a teaching degree! You are a teacher! The world needs teachers!”
You know what? I’m sick of doing what the ‘world’ wants so I am now off to do what I want.
“But that is awfully selfish!”
Actually no it’s not! I think it is incredibly intelligent and will make me happy. You see last year when I was teaching I felt unappreciated, used and ridiculed for the fact that I was a teacher. I was stressed out beyond belief and was having a hard time getting out of bed in the morning and functioning at an acceptable level. I was incredibly depressed and had continuous bouts of unidentifiable sickness ranging from ulcers to skin rashes. It was quite a horrible year for me.
Ben suggested that I take some time off this year.
I decided to reassess my priorities, look at what had made me happy in the past and try to focus on what I wanted my future to look like. The result was a HUGE turn around for me.
This year I have been studying music, working three casual jobs as a theatre usher and as a promo girl. I have spent every day singing, reading, learning French and watching Opera. I have cooked new and exotic meals with ingredients I didn’t even know existed before. I have gone for morning walks. I have seen snow for the first time and travelled to countries that I couldn’t have pin pointed on a map twelve months ago. Best of all, I have been incredibly happy. I have only been sick once this entire year and only for three days. I have seen and felt a difference in my manner and my outlook on life. I LOVE EVERY DAY I AM ALIVE!!!
All the changes I made this year have made me incredibly happy. Originally the plan was for this to be like a second ‘gap year’ and I would return to teaching in 2012. Looking back though, that seems like the worst decision I could make. Why go back to the unhappiness when I can continue in this new life I have created for myself?
Which brings me to now. Two weeks ago I drew up a plan for all the things I want to do and see in the next three years. It is a very long list, which I will post when I get more than a half hour break between classes and have time to type it up! In order to actually achieve these things I have to make some further changes.
The first thing to do is to sell my house.
This is a hard thing for me to do because I love my house and I love the sense of freedom, responsibility and stability it gives me. My mum said I would need it one day, well I think that day has come. If I sell my house I will be able to pay for my university fees for the next three years leaving me debt free upon graduation. That alone is a wonderful thought. It will also help me to put my first few plans into motion.
Second thing is to work less and study more.
This is hard as I am a workaholic. I don’t like to sit idle and I feel if I am not earning money then I am a constant burden to those around me and I hate that feeling. But if I want to focus on my studies than I need to commit more time to practise and research and that means creating more time for study and less for work.
Third thing is to cut back on my expenses.
I think I have been pretty good about this anyway. I usually buy the groceries with vouchers I get from online surveys. I menu plan so there is no waste at the end of the week. I buy all my clothes second hand (except underwear). I limit the use of my car and travel using public transport. I have even taken to making birthday presents instead of buying things.
With these changes I hope that the coming years will be as wonderful and rewarding as this one has been. I have had some tricky days and hard times, but the good days have been far in abundance.
In the meantime, while waiting for my house to sell, if you see me carrying a box of Freddo’s or inviting you to a fundraising event. It isn’t because I am being selfish but because I am finally following my dream and I want you to help me get there and be a part of it.
I am going to be a great singer. The journey starts here.
Okay so I guess I have to explain the last post a little bit because my current state of being has obviously been affecting Ben, more than I originally intended or thought. I have been going a little bit nuts lately. I had to make a decision at the start of the year to either go back to university and study music or continue on working as a school teacher and leading the life that the majority of people choose because it is “easier”. I chose to go back to university and it honestly has been the best decision I have ever made. I love every day of it!
Over the last few weeks I have had to make another decision and that was whether to continue in my studies. The course I am currently enrolled in finishes at the end of this year. If I want to continue I would have to audition for the Bachelor of Music course. Last week I made the decision and sent off my application pack, so far so good…or so I thought.
I have been surrounded by babies lately. Two friends have new borns, my sister has just announced she is pregnant again, another two friends are pregnant and then I worked at the baby expo where every second person was pregnant. It is overloading my small circuitry! I really really really want to have a baby but I have made this commitment to study. Some days it is just harder than other to convince myself that I have made the right decision.
Add on top of that this constant feeling that I have left the whole university thing too late. The average age for people in the course is 19 / 20. I am 27. Now I know that isn’t old but when you think it in terms of most people would be finishing their masters by my age and going out there to get their first big job, I am well behind the 8 ball. I also have trouble keeping up in my theory classes due mostly to the fact that I haven’t been studying music since I was a kid. It is a bit much some days.
To try to combat this a little I have been over commiting myself to work also. I spent the majority of the past week working and have had very little time to spend with Ben. On one hand I think I need the money to get by but really I don’t and spending time with Ben is much more important. I just feel slightly responsible for getting myself back in the black financially after all it was my idea to go to Europe.
So there it is. Blah! My thought patterns on a page at the moment. I guess I need to lay off Ben for a little while. Accept my decisions and learn to live with them because I honestly believe I have made the right choice and the future is going to be brilliant!
I know it has been a while since my last post but I’ve been very busy being a “student”! Ahh that magical state of being where you constantly find yourself broke, eating crappy food often of the two minute noodle variety and suddenly finding yourself at 4am sitting in a computer lab wondering why you didn’t start your assignment earlier.
It hasn’t been all that bad, yet. For starters I haven’t had any assignments due and I have a husband who won’t let me eat badly despite my best efforts. I have found though that I am battling a different variety of, well not really “problems”, but they aren’t pleasant.
First of all I feel really old. I am the second oldest in my course, the oldest is a Chinese exchange student who let’s face it still looks pretty young, (what is it about Asians and their ability to look fifteen until they hit their mid-forties?). There are five singers in the course, one is 16 (she is a high school student who does the course part-time), two are 17, one is 18 and then there is me sitting pretty at 27. I don’t look all that much older but it is difficult to strike up a conversation with kids whose biggest achievement to date is graduating highschool and who never seem to want to talk about anything other than their school ball or the TEE.
Second thing on the list is discipline to get down to work and study. I have made a rather elaborate timetable with break times, class time and study times all scheduled in. I even have breakfast, morning walks and showering scheduled. Think of Hermione from Harry Potter and you start to get an idea of how anal I am about schedules. It is a fantastic piece of work and would work brilliantly if I didn’t keep sabotaging myself into not doing my work. I make excuses, have naps, complain about being hungry, pretty much anything can be a distraction. I’m getting better and I do like the sense of satisfaction when I do sit down and stick to the schedule it is just still getting there for me at the moment.
At the beginning of the year I had trouble getting work that would pay regularly. I worked but some of those jobs are yet to pay me (yes I know this is ridiculous). As a result I spent most of January living off credit. I am now paying off my credit cards as well as paying the new bills and as a result I now have very little money to do anything else. Work is starting to pick up now but it is that lag which is killing me. I especially hate this because I try to use my credit cards as little as possible.
It is also weird getting used to catching public transport every day. I purposely did not buy a parking permit for university so I would have further encouragement to not use my car this year. For one thing a parking permit costs $75 which I don’t have at the moment, and if I was to drive to uni without one I would either have to pay for parking by the hour or get there at 7am to get one of the free parking bays which usually fill up by 7:30am. When I was working at the school last year I tried to catch public transport as much as possible but there were days when I just couldn’t be bothered so I would sleep in and drive to school. Now I don’t have that option, if I want to drive to uni and have it not coast me a fortune I have to get up even earlier.
All in all though this whole student thing is pretty good. I am enjoying the course more than I thought I was going to. I have started to talk to people and hopefully make some new friends even if they are seventeen and can’t come to the pub with me yet. If I can just get over these tiny little “un-problems” I am having at the moment then everything will be even sweeter. It is going to be an amazing year.
Image by FightHIVinDC (flickr)
After some unhappiness this past year and after examining a lot of the things I want to be doing with my life but I currently seem to be putting them on the back burner, I have decided to change the way I do things. I am starting to realise that the only time I have is now and if I don’t do the things I want to do now then chances are I will never get around to doing them.
One of the things I have wanted to do for some time is to study music in a little more detail. I have been studying singing for about seven years now on and off with singing teachers and I attended WAAPA for a little while but I always doubted any talent that I had and never took myself seriously. I want to be serious now. I have been feeling like something is missing and noticing how happy I am when I sing is all the evidence I need to know that I am doing the right thing.
I have applied to study Classical Music (Voice Studies) at WAAPA next year. I have an audition in two weeks as well as a Music Theory test. This is what I am terrified about. I think I am good enough to get into the course but I am panicking about the theory test. I have very limited ability in music theory due to a lack of exposure to the subject. I did learn it for a little while, and enjoyed it, but my learning has been very slow. I don’t want to miss out on this course. I know I am good enough to do really well in it and with my age I am starting to run out of chances to go back to uni and study. I feel like this is my last chance.
I am studying for the test but am still worried that my age, lack of theory and the fact that I don’t have a singing teacher at the moment and haven’t had one for over a year is not going to go in my favour. I want to do this. I need to do this.
Image by (phil h) (flickr)
I’m bored with where I am and what I am doing with my life at the moment. My days are fairly predictable and the result is I am in a constant struggle with myself for what I want to do. I’m getting depressed quite easily and I can’t seem to find a way out of it. When I am in a good mood or when I actually take the time to look at what I am doing I realise that things aren’t as bad as they seem but very soon I start with the internal struggle again. I want to be doing something else I just don’t know what or how.
What am I doing?
I was at this point last year too. I was sick and tired of teaching and wanted to do something different. I found out about studying in Singapore and thought that I had solved my dilemma. The problem was that I hadn’t counted on homesickness or the overwhelming feeling I had that Singapore was too much too soon.
After I returned I floated around a lot. I was still confused and didn’t know what I was doing. Then I got pregnant and suddenly I had something to work towards again. Sure it was unexpected and completely unplanned, but it felt right. I had direction.
Now I feel like I am in the same position I was in at the start of last year. Teaching again, not completely fulfilled with what I am doing and looking for something “more”. My frustrations aren’t helping me to decide what direction to take next, instead I seem to be more consumed with focusing on my frustrations.
So how do I get rid of the frustration, decide what I want to do next and remain positive and happy? In a world of choices I have too many to decide on one. I need someone to point the way, but then I want to know where I am going. I feel like I am being torn into little pieces, between where I am and where all the possibilities of life can take me.
Image by SAMUEL TRIP (flikr)
