Back in June, I had my first ever “annual review” in a job. As I discussed my feelings about settling in over the last 6 months and the challenges I’d found within the role and setting of working in a psychiatric hospital; I realised that I partly applied for this role in order to be challenged.
This sparked a few thoughts on my redefinition journey; how I applied for my first ever job knowing it would be doing three things I found difficult and agreed to give two presentations at conferences as part of a volunteering job.
The Transition
From those experiences, I think a part of me had realised that I need to ease myself into working in mental health on the level and scale I’ll (hopefully) be working with clients when I look into graduate positions. So I applied to work in a psychiatric hospital; going onto the wards and speaking to people who are so unwell they cannot function in the outside world.
Back in 2010, I had this realisation that I had a comfort zone.
And unless I did something to stretch and push it; that would be a limiting factor for my life.
I know that I’ll be challenged in ‘the real world’, thus I’ve been aiming to stretch my comfort zone, and moving ever-closer to my potential. This calls for preparation, long thought processes, calm decision making… and sometimes it involves jumping in feet first before I can talk myself out of it.
Even the more “fun” or “mundane” aspects of life require this constant pushing against my zone edges.
Comfort Zone, Meet My Fears
Last night was my leaving do for a project I’ve worked with for over 2.5 years. We went to Lazer Zone. (Basically run around in the dark shooting at people with lazer guns and getting points for accurate shots and trying not to be shot yourself). Similarly, my student house has been empty for nearly four weeks now; just me living here.
- I am afraid of the dark
- I hate sudden noises mixed with silence (just don’t like to be shocked)
- I have a lot of anxiety in general
- I used to HATE tag and hide and seek at school because of my fears
- I have a history of panic attacks in claustrophobic situations
- I live in a dodgy area and you could easily get into the back garden
I choose to suggest lazer zone because I’ve done it once before and was fine. I know there are help buttons around the place, I knew the layout from last time and I had two close colleagues with me. I actually paired up with one of them, even though we were all individually being scored; I asked to co-operate with her so I wasn’t alone for the full 20-minutes.
I’ve learned that I need to push my barriers if I’m ever going to get over these fears. However, I also know how important it is to invent my own support and to ensure I have all my systems in place in case it’s too much for me.
Choices and Changes
This is especially important to me now; as I’m about to step off a well-lit path of student life and into the real world. And let me tell you, for someone who has never even had a part time job (all my work is casual 2-5 hours a week), the real world is scary.
I am suddenly facing the choice many young people in the Western world have already made: as a majority of people leave the path at an earlier point – when they feel educated enough and ready to get into work.
I’ve suddenly just reached the end of the damn path; and I want to stay on it. But the tracks end here.
Each time I was offered the chance to leave there was a nicely lit path still ahead of me, from school to college to university, to post-graduate study… I could leave, but I also had the option to stay on it – with the next step mapped out for me.
At 16 you leave school and can go to college.
At 18 you leave college and can go to university.
At 21 you leave your undergraduate course at university and can go on to postgraduate study.
I turn 22 in August and complete my postgraduate course.
And I am shitting bricks.
Redefining Life
Thinking back to my views on challenges, this feels so far out of my comfort zone that I don’t feel ready.
I am not a business-driven woman. I do not care about a career, climbing any ladder or getting out to the real world. In fact, the latter idea terrifies me somewhat.
So I’m sitting here in the middle of my Masters dissertation with three job applications waiting to be completed. And I’m wondering what systems of support I can offer myself in this situation.
Following the 6-month review back in June, I realised that I can see myself doing any job if it means I get to stay inBrighton, to keep working with these people, to have some income and to remain with my friends. And I’d be able to contribute to knowledge and skills in an area I’ve become interested in and to make a difference to people; while being in an area of the country that supports my spiritual and social development.
Sometimes, it’s important to remember what our values really are. Not to walk the path expected of us or to turn away when the road ends; but to walk across the dirt and create a new path forward.
Your Thoughts
Are you content with the size of your comfort zone?
What systems of support could you use to stretch it?
And something I’m most interested in:
How did you find the transition from learning into work?
– Rose –
I was literally just talking with my *other* neuroscience MSc Graduate friend about this sort of this yesterday. Both me and she stayed on to do Masterses(?!) at Uni, although she stayed on in order to specialise, I stayed on because I wasn’t sure what else to do. And I really wanted an MA. I then lived a student+ lifestyle, working at my Uni library before heading off to Peru. When I came back, I worked in a clothes shop for the better part of a year, because taking a ‘summer holiday’ and moving to London for my publishing internship which…didn’t work out, & I decided that I wouldn’t work for free/low wage anymore. Only now am I finally doing freelance social media work, and loving it, and I graduated in (I always forget) 2010? So yup, it’s been two years since I graduated, and I really did feel at times, after coming back from travelling, that I didn’t know what I wanted to do (anything but work in a clothes shop!!), I didn’t know if I was ever going to find my path, if I was ever going to be able to work in an environment which I could handle/manage and actually enjoyed. I used to throw tantrums at the clothes shop (in the stock room) and cried a few times at the publishing house. I was lucky to work with a freelance marketor at the publishing house, who saw that I was great at social media (where the actual house were baffled by what I was doing, and didn’t understand social media marketing at all) and who took me on after my internship finished (early, because they denigrated what I was doing, so I chose to leave) to provide her clients with ‘all round marketing services’ from press release or website set-up with copy, to running social media accounts. I say that I was lucky to work with her, but if my passion hadn’t been so clearly based around social media, she might never have suggested that I work with her. Equally, I also put out there that I wanted to write copy for money, and chance had it that a blog friend (Ellie Di!) had an offer come her way to do this, which she passed on to me! Equally, I applied to intern for Yes and Yes, but was slightly too late, however, she passed on my details to another blogger who took me on!
Working from home and coming up with your own clients is scary, I guess, but it totally works for me, and it’s all about letting people know what you do, so that they can let other people know what you do.
My Neuroscience friend was at the clothes shop with me after finishing her course (but pre-actual graduation, I think) she took redundancy, I think, and had a summer holiday on employment, had to move back in with her fam, but eventually rang up the Priory and found work as a ward assistant there – she wants to do a PhD in brains and drugs, but every Phd wants handson experience with patients. When she first got the job she was saying how tiring it was and didn’t sound too thrilled, but now she’s been there six months and she’s getting really positive feedback.
She *is* career driven, in that she can see a specific path she wants to take, whereas I’m not, in that I just don’t like going *out* to work! I hate ‘office politics’ and spending 8-9 on a packed train, 9-5 slaving away for someone else’s profit and gain, and 5-7 on a packed out train just doesn’t float my boat. This really worries me sometimes – what if I can’t freelance my whole life, and have to get a *real* job?! But at the moment, I don’t. And that’s what counts.
Also – good on you for going to laser quest! I avoid that place like the plague because I’m claustrophobic and photo-sensitive and I hate that smoke they pump in too, it makes me gag. So it’s basically the worst place on earth for me to go to have ‘fun’.
I didn’t realise that you lived in Brighton! I might be headed down there in a couple of weeks, – there’s a comedy night on the 21st at the komedia, it’s a Funny Women semi-final. Should be good!
Thanks for commenting – it’s good to see someone who’s come through this and the journey they took to get to the now. It’s great that you just continued to put yourself out there and did what you loved and opportunities managed to come up for you. I’m hoping that will work for me too, but I guess I’ll have to see.
The 9-5 plus commute worries me too, which is why I’m only applying for jobs I could get to within 30 mins of bus time right now. I have hands on experience in my field – working in a psychiatric hospital is good for working in mental health, but all the jobs currently going are admin / office mental health jobs, which it isn’t actually helpful for.
Thankfully there’s no smoke in the Brighton Lazer quest, but I know what you mean about the rest. Hopefully if I go some more, it won’t bother me as much any more.
Thanks again for sharing your story