by Kristine | Apr 27, 2014 | Eternal Student, Working Woman
Some of you might know that I’m a qualified Occupational Therapist (OT) but have never worked in a hospital or traditional OT role since I graduated 5 years ago. I fell into my previous job with a Disability Employment Service as I did my prac there and loved the job so much, that I never left. It wasn’t your traditional OT role, but I did enjoy the OT aspects of the role which included researching new equipment for clients and assisting them with obtaining funding for it. By the time I left, my traditional rehab type OT skills were non-existent, shall we say.
In my final year at work, I took the plunge and seriously explored library work as an alternative career. Why? Cause Matt made it look so enticing and to be honest, I’m a book nerd. Hey, I was always told off for reading at the table and actually tried to run my own library at home. Surely that was a sign? Anyway, it took me about 6 months to run the idea through before actually taking the plunge to start a Graduate Diploma in Information and Library Studies. I’m in my second semester (just over halfway through!) and I’m loving it. Ok, maybe I’m not loving all the assignment and essay parts of it all, but I’m enjoying that I’m being stimulated intellectually (oh, the irony!) and have goals to work towards.
I suppose it is quite tough moving from one career to another and I can attest to that. I’m currently unemployed and looking for work mainly in libraries as a library officer. Starting from the bottom, yo! I actually don’t mind it. Some people have the impression that I’m just settling into whatever job I can find, but honestly I love it. When I completed my 3 week prac, I was over the moon with what library officers to. There was little to no stress and pay was higher than my previous position (if you don’t look at the car and petrol part). I’ve put in some applications to libraries and hoping to hear back from them. I’ve also put in some applications for non-library roles, which are actually higher paying, but I’ll have to see.
Changing careers in your late 20s isn’t the easiest thing. But I figured, if I’m not happy where I am, I should do something to change it. I might not make the most money or be a millionaire by the time I’m 30, but I’ll be happy. And I think that’s the most important variable in this all. Plus, since I won’t be so stressed, I’d have time to pursue hobbies and things I like doing, rather than having sleepless nights thinking about things I need to do at the office or worrying about how my clients or their families might hate me and blame me for what’s happened to their kid. My health cannot take that kind of a lifestyle anymore. I’d rather be happy and do the things I love.
by Kristine | Apr 18, 2014 | Eternal Student
I must admit, I’m a really bad student when it comes to writing assignments. I always end up leaving it right up till the last minute & then stressing out while writing the bloody paper. Today’s assignment is no different in this arena.
I’ve got an assignment to write on the topic of empowerment, how staff can be empowered in an information service workplace and if empowerment can be a useful HR tool. Truth be told, it probably is a very exciting topic in itself. I just don’t like writing papers on topics like theses & then have to find at least 8 scholarly articles to base my arguments upon. Abstract concepts like this doesn’t sit well with my style of analytical writing or brain. Somehow I just find it very difficult to put pen to paper (so to speak) when trying to explain and argue an abstract point.
As such, my procrastination plan today was:
- Nap
- Write some words
- Watch TV
- Write some more words
- Rinse and repeat till midnight when my essay is due
So far, I’ve fiddled with my computer updating it to Windows 8.1 and tried to fix a glitch where my computer has refused to let me play Minecraft: Attack of the B Team due to something with Java, my graphics card and something called a DPC_WATCHDOG_VIOLATION. Updating everything didn’t even make the damn thing work. Anyway, I digress.
I’m 123 words into my 2000 (+/- 10%) word essay. I’ve got about 7 hours left. I suppose it is about time to actually get started properly…
by Kristine | Apr 17, 2014 | Eternal Student, Musings
As the title suggests, I always have trouble with what I blog & if I blog at all. I constantly struggle with the balance of how much about my life I should publish online versus I want to document my life and the happenings so that when I grow old, I can flip through my blog and have a glimpse of what I was at that particular age. At uni, I thought I’d have more time to blog when I finished uni as I was always either caught up with assignments or desperately trying to finish up my assignments or maintaining my sanity while working. After I graduated, I thought I’d have time to blog as I didn’t have to chase down uni deadlines and be bogged down by how much I have to work to be able to survive. That’s didn’t really change, work took over & became the be all & end all of things. It was as if I didn’t know how to do anything apart from study or work.
5 years post uni and unemployed, you’d think I’d have more time or mojo to blog, but somehow that hasn’t happened. I was always caught up in the notion that there is always a perfect time later down the track to get things down. Eg: I’ll blog after uni as I’d have more time to dedicate to it. Or I’ll wait till such and such month to do something as the weather or whatever variable is perfect for it. It has taken a long time to eventually learn that there are no perfect times to do things. Like the cliched saying goes, time and tide waits for no man. There really isn’t a perfect time to do things, you make the best of the situation you are in and you grab a hold of your dreams tight and get down to it.
Not working has certainly made me mull in my thoughts a bit more and that isn’t always the best thing when you have an imagination as active as mine. I’ve been putting in applications for jobs and just waiting to hear back from things, but the waiting around is driving me up the wall. There is only so many TV shows that I can watch, only so many blogs I can read and only so many times I can go on Facebook before I go bonkers. Thankfully I’ve still got uni, which is keeping me busy enough to focus on the bigger picture and what I want to achieve in life. Although, I still complain about assignments and procrastinate to some level 😛
I am hoping to find some semblance to how much of my life I share online & how much I keep to myself. I don’t think that struggle with ever go away, but as long as I have a say in what I put out & sway more to the conservative side of things, I think I’ll be just fine 🙂
by Kristine | Apr 3, 2014 | Lists, Musings
This is getting a bit old with the revamping & removing of previous posts, but I had my reasons for removing quite a large chunk of my blog lately. I suppose this should really be called Kristinesays 3.0 haha. In all honesty, this feels like a slate being wiped clean & I don’t quite care at this moment if I’ve got a following on this blog or not. This is my tiny space in the big world wide web & I’m going to claim this space as my own & write as I feel like. Sure, some things will still remain private for my eyes only as I’ve struggled to draw appropriate boundaries on what it is I write or how much of myself I expose online. As I’m studying to become a librarian and information professional, it is really important to me that I have limits to what I put down. All the views published on my blog are my own and do not reflect my employer(s), past, present or future. For now, this will be a place where I document my life as it goes along.
I’ve had a bit of a brain wave & figured that since I like to write lists all the time & cannot live without lists, what better way for my blog to be! A giant collection of lists. It’s a bit weird, but for me it works wonders that my brain is able to process what I’ve got planned for each day & what I have achieved by the end of the day. It took me nearly 3 years at work to discover that I work well with lists, go figure.
For the first official list this time, I figured that since I’m hungry, what better list than the foods I can’t live without. Even though I come from an Asian background, I love me my Western food. I grew up with Asian-fied versions of dishes like spaghetti bolognese (it had bits of carrot & beef mince in it) or pork chops (made with tomato, onion & corn flour to thicken the sauce – was actually pretty good). If there was a Western dish that we watched on TV, it was almost guaranteed that dad made an Asian version of it. As a result, I’ve made up my own spaghetti bolognese recipe (I’ll post it here one day) & altered it to suit my taste buds. Pasta is something that I absolutely love & can eat day in & day out.
Another food that I couldn’t quite live without is rice. I live up to my Asian roots. I could happily eat fried rice, rice with soup, rice porridge, rice with other dishes, anything with rice pretty much. Such a cliche I am! It’s something satisfying about eating rice that just makes me keep coming back!
To be honest, there really isn’t much else that I couldn’t live without. I say this now, but I’m sure something else might crop up later on 😛
What foods could you not live without?
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