Careers day speakers...

Last week, I had the privilege of being asked to attend a Careers (half) day with some Year 8, Middle school students at a school that I was a Board member of and that my daughter had attended back in 2014.

It was an interesting day because a past colleague I knew organised the day and got us into groups of careers to showcase to the students with 15 minute talks about our fields.

I was written down as an Author/Illustrator which I found very interesting as I have been first and foremost a teacher for most of my working life (post graduation) and self publishing has only been in my life since 2015 although I had dreamed about it long ago.

I found myself in a group of three people which included a local politician who is currently running for election at the local area for the upcoming elections; a Samoan architect who had formerly been a Manu Samoan Rugby player who'd travelled around the world as a part of his rugby exploits and then there was me.

Each speaker shared about some of things that I needed to do in their 'jobs' and I shared about how I had enjoyed art since primary school and writing stories in high school but didn't get high enough marks to get into Elam art school at Auckland Uni so turned my attention to teaching for only 2 years, I said at the time, which has since become a lifetime career.

But in the back of my mind I still wanted to publish writings and continued writing plays for local high schools which were quite popular with the local communities in the 1990s and there was a teacher whom was listening to my talk and spoke up that she had watched some of the plays that had been performed and attested to the interest of local communities at the time.

I also shared about starting a second Masters degree in Creative writing as an almost last ditch effort to reignite my writing interest but acknowledged that when it came to self-publishing that there was little information available for me to access and so I went onto the internet and started piecing it all together and finally after a life changing conversation with a special lady called Maria Fastnedge, the rest they say, is history.

Afterwards, a few youth came over and asked for my autograph (although I didn't feel that I was famous at all) but hope that I inspired some of them to reach for their goals and to have learnt that sometimes things don't make sense at the time, but later they do.

As I shared about teaching in high school as an English teacher: short stories, plays, novels, poetry, Shakespeare's writings and not thinking that it had anything to do with my own goals and now realising that it was a neat platform for me to learn from and now I write short stories, plays, novels, poetry and a remake of one of Shakespeare's writings from a Pasifika perspective. A real neat day for sharing with youth about life stories and careers...