Tag: back to school

Start Before You’re Perfect

You know when I came back to school in September, I was excited. Actually I was incredibly scared and excited. What really pushed me to pursue this experiment was that it was a big goal that scared me.

However, in the last two months, I’ve been incredibly overwhelmed. I’m met with anxiety, a constant battle in my mind, and a debate on whether I could actually do this or not. What the voice I’ve concluded is actually saying is, “you don’t know this. There is so much you don’t know. Why are you bothering?”.

Pause there. That’s incredibly harsh. I was speaking to myself with those words that I would NEVER say to someone else. Why was my mind running away and dwelling on these negative thoughts? Honestly I don’t know. Insert this comment from my dear friend and mentor Paulina Cameron, “Be kind to youself as you do all that hard thinking.”
Be kind to yourself

I posted this earlier last week, at a point in time where I was feeling completely overwhelmed. And since then I’ve been battling with these types of thoughts and Paulina’s comment was a proding nudge to be kind to myself. That’s a great reminder, but boy is hard to do. It’s almost as if that thought acts as buffer to the harsh thoughts, but it doesn’t completely take the negative thoughts away.

What I’ve deduced that these thoughts are encouraging is that I shouldn’t start before I know everything or before I have it down perfectly. Once I put that phrase front of mind it gave my demon a face, a metaphor of sorts. Since putting a finger on it, I’ve felt a bit better at addressing this concern. So what if I don’t know everything? Who has done anything impactful or meaningful in life, knew EVERYTHING that they were doing? I”m going to venture a guess and say no one.

I do a lot of thinking. I’ve been paying a lot of attention to these thoughts in the past few months and boy if I didn’t have some education as to how these thoughts work or come about, I would be beyond overwhelmed. I studied thoughts like these but it is still an uphill battle trying to combat them.

An earlier post this week as tomorrow is a day to reflect and honour those who fought for our freedom (and so we could have thoughts like these and can blog about them). Thank you to all the veterans of Canada.

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I’m Back!

I’ve taken a bit of a hiatus from social media in the past three months. I made a decision at the end of August to step away from a career in public relations. Let me back track a bit and explain what my thought process was.

At the end of my third year in my undergrad degree, in psychology, I decided I was not ready to pursue a Ph.D. This was definitely the right decision at the time, as I would not have put my whole being into what I was pursuing. So I took an extra 2 years to complete my degree and three (which turned into five) co-op terms. This was a great experience as it exposed me to three very different arena that my career could go. Firstly with the Canadian Space Agency (federal government; psychology focused), followed by Dixon Transition Society (non-profit; adminstrative and event based), and lastly with the BC Lions (private sector; event based). At the end of this, I discovered public relation and enrolled in short and sweet nine week pr certificate. I was lucky enough to intern and work before I started in pr, and immediately after I finished my certificate. This was a great direction for me to pursue at the time, as it hit a lot of the interests that I had: social media, building relationships, and events. However, after nearly a year and half in the industry it really dawned on me that pr wasn’t the right fit for me. I loved what I was doing, I worked with great people, but I didn’t feel like I was thriving.

I am discovering my values and recently realized that I really want to make an impact in my career. This notion led me to the idea of medicine. Now that is a whole lot of schooling. I know. And a completely different direction. So what I am doing is testing out the physical sciences. The last time I picked up a physical science textbook was in 2008. Needless to say, I am putting myself in a bit of an experiment. In the next year, I plan to finish intro biology and chemistry, and will then make a decision to see if this is the path I want to be on.

So there you have it. A bit of a left turn in my career trajectory, but a challenge and goal that I am excited and scared to take on. And that I feel is the biggest indicator of something you should do.

Now for the goals of this blog. I wanted to keep doing some of the things I was doing including attending events, meeting new people and developing relationships, and sharing ideas. So I created this space, when this name dawned on me. I’ve attended quite a few events in the past to the point where some people started to recognize me off of social media. Now I thought that was a bit weird. But I thought why not utilize my event attendance to help support my developing writing skills. And so That Girl in Vancouver, was born.

Here’s to a year of fruitful lessons, endeavors, and writing!

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