Well, I think I’m going back to college… Again.
Now that you’ve been exposed to the bestworst movie ever, and one of the dumb songs I’ve been singing to myself whenever I look at websites for school…
For those who have been following since the new year, I’ve been conflicted between what I should be doing, since things are a little stagnant at the moment. I’m currently on month three of teaching online exclusively instead of back in the classroom. It’s starting to sink in that this might not be the most stable career move in Canada, with there being periods of down time. That’s not the way to pay off student loans.
So, to try and pay off my student loans… It’s time to go back to school and make more debt.
For the past few weeks, I’ve been debating between returning to university to become a teacher, or if I should focus more on the media and writing and some of my old passions. For a while, my mind was set on returning to university. I was going to return to Brockville and hopefully become a high school teacher in my old school. But then I saw a comment that reminded me of the struggle that so many of my teacher friends have gone through:
I have been a teacher for 7 years and I still don’t have full time work.
7 YEARS?! Most people my age don’t have a secure job since finishing university, and they have been on the substitute list or teaching one or two classes at a time in different schools. I have heard rumours that the sub list for teachers in Toronto is almost 1000 teachers deep.
I can neither mentally or financially deal with another decade of working partially. If I could pretend that these months in the winter were a vacation, I’d be loving it, however I financially can’t deal with three months of vacation when I’m trying to pay off student debt.
So I started looking at alternative.
I’ve been working on this site and K-Soul for years now, and created the sites with the intention of having something to show for experience when it comes to social media and writing. I knew years ago that I wanted to work in social media, but for some reason, I am just not qualified enough. So I’ve been looking at school programs where I could get some much needed certification to back up all that lovely knowledge in my head.
I started looking at Centennial College, which is the closest to my house. They have a 4 year Bachelor of Public Relations Management program that is very tempting. They cover writing, social media, communications and have a co-op as well. Out of everything I have looked at, I would come out of this program the most prepared. However, this involves me taking FOUR YEARS off to get all those lovely qualifications.
So I kept looking.
George Brown College, which is right downtown Toronto, have some programs that are much more accessible. They’re mostly online, so I could keep working and still do the courses at my rate. There a Social Media Marketing Certificate and there’s also a Digital Analytics Certificate that would be great. Most of the courses are online, and I can potentially start this month. Or, I could do a one year Digital Media Marketing program.
So, it all comes down to time. How much time do I want to commit to the idea of completely changing my career? How cautious do I want to step into this? Right now I kinda feel like my plan should be to go through with this certificate, and if it looks like it’s not going well, I’ll go the teacher route or something. But I love getting others opinions. Thoughts?