Life and eveything in it!
First of all, I decided to choose "Option 3" for NYE, because Option 1 was too expensive and Option 2 presents itself again in the Autumn as well, so I'm not missing out.
I mentioned in my last long entry that my career goal after university was to start a non-profit organization dealing with disability health outreach. I still want to do this, but I wasn’t sure what the interim steps would be, or could be. Do I need to go back to school to do a master’s degree in non-profit business? I was hoping not to, because I hate school. So then if I don’t do that master’s degree, how are the next 5 years going to look to put me toward my goal?
I need to recap with what I am doing now and how it relates to my goal and then give a chronological timeline of the future so that it’s obvious how I’m putting this all together in my head.
Right now, I am working as a personal trainer with the general population at a private studio, but I am also working at the YMCA as a personal trainer, as well as a programs officer developing exercise rehabilitation programs for older adults, people with MS, and post-stroke people. How this relates to my end goal is that I want to work with fitness for the disabled! This is a direct correlation.
When I come back to Vancouver from Melbourne at the beginning of May 2011, I want to continue my job at SFU as a gym instructor and personal trainer because this gets me more experience working with the general population. I also want to try and get work at a YMCA in Vancouver, but that is difficult. Where the YMCA manages all of the community centres here and so there are tons of locations, in the lower mainland, this is not the case. There are only a few YMCA locations, and I am only interested in working at one of them, the downtown one. The Langara one is nowhere en route between my place in False Creek and SFU Burnaby Mountain and SFU Harbour Centre. The Robert Lee YMCA however is centrally located between my living place and my study and work spaces. Since the likelihood of that YMCA having an opening for a personal trainer and programs officer is questionable, I will also apply to all of the Vancouver and Burnaby Parks Board community centres that are along the axis stated above. They all have similar outreach programs that I can be a part of. It is very easy to have two jobs in this industry because they are all casual, meaning that I may only get one 4-hour gym shift per week and may only have a few personal training clients. Obviously, over the summer I will have greater availability and will push for as many hours as I can, but this will allow me time to get my own personal training business off the ground as well. That way when I go back to school, hopefully I won’t need to work any gym shifts and just continue forward with my personal training clients and special programs. This way I can minimize my hours worked and maximize my money in. If I happen to not have very many clients, still taking two gym shifts per week (one at each job) will be a small amount of money to augment my student loans & grants.
I plan to keep these two jobs during my third year at university, as I still have to finish my degree. Spending my summer this way will also allow me flexibility with my time, as I don’t really want to work full-time during the party season. It will mean I am broke ass, but I know how to get to events at minimal cost. The summer following (of 2012), I will need to take on a full-time job for my last co-op semester, but better jobs should be available to me given my closer-to-degree-completion status I will have at that time. I am hoping I can still keep my SFU and YMCA/community centre jobs over the summer as well, even if I am only working a couple of hours a week at each, so that I can resume those jobs while I finish my fourth and final year at university.
Now here begins the fun part: starting this January, I have every intention of learning more French through Alliance Française (or likewise equivalent) as my French skills are intermediate; I can make some basic conversation but not enough to be able to get employment in French. I also want to start learning German; this will take me longer as I’ve never tried to learn German but I have been spending my whole life trying to learn French on again and off again. By the time I finish my degree (expected graduation date is now April 2013), I will have been studying French and German for 2 years and 4 months, if I keep it consistent and do it over the summers.
The reason why I am doing this is because coming here to Melbourne has given me exactly the experience I wanted, the ability to travel and work abroad, internationalize my résumé, and prompt some personal growth, without needing to learn another language. The places I want to go to next however, English is not the dominant language, and so I need to give myself prep time to learn the languages, because I want to go to Paris, France and Hamburg, Germany. I have always wanted to go to France and Germany and because the working holiday visa requirements are set to cut off for people above the age of 35, when I finish my degree, I will be 30 and have the time to go there for a year. I would go to France first because my French would be considerably better than my German, and I could also learn more German while I am working in France. Also, while France gives you the option of working there for a year, Germany provides the same thing but gives you the option to renew for another year afterward if you want to. Maybe I will also want to go to Switzerland after as they speak French and German!
It is extremely important for me to capitalize on the working holiday visa programmes in place for Canadians because if you consult the Wikipedia article on working holiday visas, you will see that most countries have a) their age cut off at 30 (which is the main reason I came to Australia first), and b) the visas seem to predominantly be available to Canadian citizens. I sure won the commonwealth lottery in this case, because had I been born in the US, I would have no working holiday visas available to me. That’s not to say that I wouldn’t be able to get employment in another country, it would just mean needing to find work first and then get sponsored by a company that really wants me. Of course the drawback to that is that if you ever want to leave that company, it means you need to find someone else to sponsor you, or risk being deported. I also feel that not nearly enough Canadians make with these international deals and I want to keep travelling.
Now the major reason why I want to stay with the YMCA is because they have locations and operations internationally. There are YMCAs in every country that I would want to go to, and already having worked with the organization, I would hope that I have an advantage. Post-university though, I would not want to work as a personal trainer. I would much rather have the job my current boss has: managing the gym/fitness facility branch of a YMCA facility. This would give me the “business experience” that I thought I would acquire by doing a master’s business degree in non-profit organizations. Because guess what? The YMCA is a non-profit organization already, AND it offers subsidized memberships to those that truly cannot afford it. Hmm...sounds a bit like the company I wanted to start, doesn’t it?
Then when I come back from more international gallivanting, and am drafting up my business proposal, when I approach banks and the government for business funding, not only will I have this kick-ass degree in Kinesiology, but I will have worked and travelled in 4-5 countries, speak three different languages, worked as a personal trainer, worked as a fitness facility manager, and worked at a non-profit organization. Now all of a sudden I am a much better candidate for having my organization be successful. And if it so happens that I would still need a master’s business degree in non-profit organizations, all of my experience will help me to get into the program, which is usually a one-year accelerated program, or two years at the most. And I can do that in any number of countries as well!
Now I realize that while doing my degree, the steps along this path may change a bit. I may not pursue that exact path, and it may be a good idea to get some experience as an exercise physiologist (the person that does the assessment of degree of disability in a clinical setting) as well, but I can still do those things while living in France, Germany or Switzerland. The greatest thing about my industry is that it exists and has funding in all first-world countries and once I have my degree and am a registered kinesiologist, the hardest part will be getting my credentials recognized and approved, but is much easier to do that than a medical or law school degree designation. This is just my path right now. I will do whatever I need to do though to make sure all of my career and education decisions still line up with my ultimate dream and life purpose. At this point, I don’t even know that I would want to create this business in Vancouver. I suspect that I will, but it is impossible to say until I cross that bridge... :)
I mentioned in my last long entry that my career goal after university was to start a non-profit organization dealing with disability health outreach. I still want to do this, but I wasn’t sure what the interim steps would be, or could be. Do I need to go back to school to do a master’s degree in non-profit business? I was hoping not to, because I hate school. So then if I don’t do that master’s degree, how are the next 5 years going to look to put me toward my goal?
I need to recap with what I am doing now and how it relates to my goal and then give a chronological timeline of the future so that it’s obvious how I’m putting this all together in my head.
Right now, I am working as a personal trainer with the general population at a private studio, but I am also working at the YMCA as a personal trainer, as well as a programs officer developing exercise rehabilitation programs for older adults, people with MS, and post-stroke people. How this relates to my end goal is that I want to work with fitness for the disabled! This is a direct correlation.
When I come back to Vancouver from Melbourne at the beginning of May 2011, I want to continue my job at SFU as a gym instructor and personal trainer because this gets me more experience working with the general population. I also want to try and get work at a YMCA in Vancouver, but that is difficult. Where the YMCA manages all of the community centres here and so there are tons of locations, in the lower mainland, this is not the case. There are only a few YMCA locations, and I am only interested in working at one of them, the downtown one. The Langara one is nowhere en route between my place in False Creek and SFU Burnaby Mountain and SFU Harbour Centre. The Robert Lee YMCA however is centrally located between my living place and my study and work spaces. Since the likelihood of that YMCA having an opening for a personal trainer and programs officer is questionable, I will also apply to all of the Vancouver and Burnaby Parks Board community centres that are along the axis stated above. They all have similar outreach programs that I can be a part of. It is very easy to have two jobs in this industry because they are all casual, meaning that I may only get one 4-hour gym shift per week and may only have a few personal training clients. Obviously, over the summer I will have greater availability and will push for as many hours as I can, but this will allow me time to get my own personal training business off the ground as well. That way when I go back to school, hopefully I won’t need to work any gym shifts and just continue forward with my personal training clients and special programs. This way I can minimize my hours worked and maximize my money in. If I happen to not have very many clients, still taking two gym shifts per week (one at each job) will be a small amount of money to augment my student loans & grants.
I plan to keep these two jobs during my third year at university, as I still have to finish my degree. Spending my summer this way will also allow me flexibility with my time, as I don’t really want to work full-time during the party season. It will mean I am broke ass, but I know how to get to events at minimal cost. The summer following (of 2012), I will need to take on a full-time job for my last co-op semester, but better jobs should be available to me given my closer-to-degree-completion status I will have at that time. I am hoping I can still keep my SFU and YMCA/community centre jobs over the summer as well, even if I am only working a couple of hours a week at each, so that I can resume those jobs while I finish my fourth and final year at university.
Now here begins the fun part: starting this January, I have every intention of learning more French through Alliance Française (or likewise equivalent) as my French skills are intermediate; I can make some basic conversation but not enough to be able to get employment in French. I also want to start learning German; this will take me longer as I’ve never tried to learn German but I have been spending my whole life trying to learn French on again and off again. By the time I finish my degree (expected graduation date is now April 2013), I will have been studying French and German for 2 years and 4 months, if I keep it consistent and do it over the summers.
The reason why I am doing this is because coming here to Melbourne has given me exactly the experience I wanted, the ability to travel and work abroad, internationalize my résumé, and prompt some personal growth, without needing to learn another language. The places I want to go to next however, English is not the dominant language, and so I need to give myself prep time to learn the languages, because I want to go to Paris, France and Hamburg, Germany. I have always wanted to go to France and Germany and because the working holiday visa requirements are set to cut off for people above the age of 35, when I finish my degree, I will be 30 and have the time to go there for a year. I would go to France first because my French would be considerably better than my German, and I could also learn more German while I am working in France. Also, while France gives you the option of working there for a year, Germany provides the same thing but gives you the option to renew for another year afterward if you want to. Maybe I will also want to go to Switzerland after as they speak French and German!
It is extremely important for me to capitalize on the working holiday visa programmes in place for Canadians because if you consult the Wikipedia article on working holiday visas, you will see that most countries have a) their age cut off at 30 (which is the main reason I came to Australia first), and b) the visas seem to predominantly be available to Canadian citizens. I sure won the commonwealth lottery in this case, because had I been born in the US, I would have no working holiday visas available to me. That’s not to say that I wouldn’t be able to get employment in another country, it would just mean needing to find work first and then get sponsored by a company that really wants me. Of course the drawback to that is that if you ever want to leave that company, it means you need to find someone else to sponsor you, or risk being deported. I also feel that not nearly enough Canadians make with these international deals and I want to keep travelling.
Now the major reason why I want to stay with the YMCA is because they have locations and operations internationally. There are YMCAs in every country that I would want to go to, and already having worked with the organization, I would hope that I have an advantage. Post-university though, I would not want to work as a personal trainer. I would much rather have the job my current boss has: managing the gym/fitness facility branch of a YMCA facility. This would give me the “business experience” that I thought I would acquire by doing a master’s business degree in non-profit organizations. Because guess what? The YMCA is a non-profit organization already, AND it offers subsidized memberships to those that truly cannot afford it. Hmm...sounds a bit like the company I wanted to start, doesn’t it?
Then when I come back from more international gallivanting, and am drafting up my business proposal, when I approach banks and the government for business funding, not only will I have this kick-ass degree in Kinesiology, but I will have worked and travelled in 4-5 countries, speak three different languages, worked as a personal trainer, worked as a fitness facility manager, and worked at a non-profit organization. Now all of a sudden I am a much better candidate for having my organization be successful. And if it so happens that I would still need a master’s business degree in non-profit organizations, all of my experience will help me to get into the program, which is usually a one-year accelerated program, or two years at the most. And I can do that in any number of countries as well!
Now I realize that while doing my degree, the steps along this path may change a bit. I may not pursue that exact path, and it may be a good idea to get some experience as an exercise physiologist (the person that does the assessment of degree of disability in a clinical setting) as well, but I can still do those things while living in France, Germany or Switzerland. The greatest thing about my industry is that it exists and has funding in all first-world countries and once I have my degree and am a registered kinesiologist, the hardest part will be getting my credentials recognized and approved, but is much easier to do that than a medical or law school degree designation. This is just my path right now. I will do whatever I need to do though to make sure all of my career and education decisions still line up with my ultimate dream and life purpose. At this point, I don’t even know that I would want to create this business in Vancouver. I suspect that I will, but it is impossible to say until I cross that bridge... :)