Assignment 2 part 1

During my first year of high school I spent an inordinate amount of time in the computer lab.
The internet had just come into general use, which gave me access to vast information for the first time. This was very exciting to me, which lead me to spending countless hours building WebPages and finding out about other countries.

My interest in computing became more focused during my third year when I went on placement working in a job centre. This was caused by meeting some of the members of staff who were miserable and felt their job was a dead end job. So despite only being 14 years old I was motivated to look at my situation and options to broaden my horizons.

Afterwards I decided to create a portfolio about my ideal career. I began looking at different careers by matching my interests to job adverts posted on the internet.
I was looking for a career that would allow me to live and different countries. Also I wanted a creative job that allowed me to work independently as my people skills were less than desirable at the time. After much research into computing I began to develop an interest in the problem solving involved in programming. Also I found that I could the job anywhere in the world. So I concluded that this was my ideal job.

However doubts began during the final year of high school (college in UK). I had put myself in the programme called diploma for IT (information technology) practitioners. I had struggled to complete the certificate. So when I finished I took out a year to travel to explore other options.

I ended up working in New York with a church called Metro ministries. My job was helping to run an after school children’s program. This reawakened my passion to work with children. I had even considered staying on after the internship. However I realised there was no job security and the organisation was mistreating staff. So I decided to go back and get my degree in computing.

I completed my degree but upon reflection I realised that if I worked in programming I would always be stressed, praying for a program to compile. Life is to short so I decided to try the Teaching English as a foreign language qualification. After I completed the qualification and a year of teaching in China I felt this was the way I could help others.