The third post of three in an attempt to uncover deeply held assumptions that have shaped my academic trajectory through higher education. In the first post of this series I covered my formative undergraduate years, and then my growing understanding of the the place of learning in my life as I finished my undergraduate.

As prepared to graduate my application of knowledge to produce novel solutions led to work with multimedia and the burgeoning web. Soon after I left University I was working in a youth multimedia centre, conducting introductory courses to the internet and training first generation web developers.

That work led me to an international career in multimedia and the web that spanned 8 years, first working for a Cooperative Multimedia Centre. During that time I was being head hunted to train for the education arm of QANTM CMC but I went with passion of developing, perhaps because I thought I could learn more from it.

That knowledge comes first hand through exploration and self-examination has been a guiding assumption in my career. It probably steered me away from becoming a teacher in the stereotypical sense of a person standing in front of a blackboard in front of class of 30 kids. That style of teaching never had much to offer me, and I always felt that I had more to learn.

When the steam ran out of my web career in the early noughties I tried a few different things, from working in the gym again to teaching yoga but realised that I still had a lot to learn about my place in the world. I decided that I wanted to learn Japanese so I took the opportunity to become an English language instructor in Japan. The other goal was to earn my black belt in a second martial art, having earned one as a teenager in karate.

I came back from Japan five years later, fluent in Japanese, but also well versed in language teaching techniques. I very quickly turned that around into a business teaching people Japanese over the internet via video conferencing software. I strengthened my teaching qualifications with a CELTA and went looking for more reliable income. I was teaching English part time when I found a job as a Learning and Support officer at James Cook University Brisbane.

I realise now that to advance my career in education I need to learn how to bring all of my life and work experience into one cohesive whole that that can bring value to a learning organisation and more importantly, learners. I feel that I have the chance to do that here at James Cook University and I really appreciate the opportunity to take part in this subject ED5300 Learning and Teaching in Higher Education as part of the Graduate Certificate of Tertiary Teaching. I am also concurrently admitted to a Graduate Certificate in eLearning through the University of New England. Hopefully I can bring both those qualifications together under a Masters of Education in the near future.

You can follow my career progression and connect with me on LinkedIn.