New Start in 2014

I decided to delete my first 3 diary entries from 2 years ago and start anew.

It’s almost summer here in Western Australia and it’s almost the end of 2016. I’m ready for 2016 to be over already. It’s been a fairly difficult year but I’m feeling confident that most of the issues experienced this year will have resolutions soon, if not already.

Unemployment figures in my home town have slowly been growing with the death of the mining boom. It has been difficult to get a job for the past 2 years and now it is just getting harder and harder. I’m really lucky to be working in IT at the moment but I REALLY HATE my boss and the company that I work for. I don’t want to get into why because it will turn into a huge rant and I’ll just get myself wound up. However after some major soul searching I’ve decided that 17 years in IT is more than enough and it’s time to move industries.

In my final two years of high school I was living in a home for abandoned girls. My mother had decided that she no longer wanted me to live with her and I was so young that I had no means or resources to fend for myself. So I was placed in a semi-independent home for teenage girls. I managed to finish high school with high enough marks to qualify for University. I also applied for a “hardship” scholarship which I won. The scholarship paid for my accommodation for 1 year and I studied the first year for a Bachelor of Social Work. Once my scholarship ran out I ended up dropping out of the course as I found the workload overwhelming. I also didn’t believe I could work full time to pay rent and study full time with no family support. It all worked out for the best though. I ended up falling into IT during the Y2K era and have worked there ever since.

17 years later and I’m over the people that work in IT and the industry as a whole. The focus is on profit margins, cash flow and growth for shareholders. I feel like there’s no soul or morals. It’s all driven by greed and male egos.

So a few weeks ago I submitted an application to go back to University and finish my Social Workers degree. I was accepted into their program and I’ve submitted an application for recognition of prior learning from when I studied back in 1997. I’m not sure if they’ll accept it because it was so long ago but you never know until you try. I’m still waiting to hear back from them but I’m hopeful. I’m planning on studying part time, online while continuing to work in my current job. I got an email this week advising that although the course is online there is mandatory “touch time” between students and teachers. So they’d like all the students to visit campus for 3 days to participate in orientation and other activities, such as classes on how to learn the course online etc. It sounds really interesting and fun except the campus is a 3 hour drive away. So I’d need to drive down to campus and stay locally, maybe on campus, for the 3 days. A bit of logistics is going to be involved to make this happen.