For most of my life I wanted to be a vet (except for those
brief years as a very young child where my aim in life was to be a zoo keeper
by day and rock star by night.) and when I say wanted to be a vet, I was
serious; I had all my VCE subjects planned out by year five and what uni
courses I was going to take and what my ATAR needed to be (99.2, whew, I aimed
high.) So it was kind of inconvenient
when at the beginning of year nine, I finally admitted to myself that maybe I
didn’t want to be a vet anymore.
You have no idea how much this decision annoyed me; I mean I
had my entire life planned out. I knew exactly what I wanted to do and what my
path was to get there in doing it. The most annoying aspect of all of it was
that up until that moment I had never had to worry about my future (I strongly
believed that 99.2 was highly achievable)and now I had no idea.
Naturally after that I went through a range of different
options, some of which included: soldier, army doctor, army psychologist,
medical researcher(I wanted to cure cancer for a while there), doctor, national
geographic journalist, author, writer, CEO of a large corporation, Prime
Minister of Australia, engineer mechanic.
Then I looked back on all these things I wanted to be and I realised
that they all (all the ones I really considered anyway) involved helping
people. And that, my friends, was my Eureka* moment. That was the moment when I
realised that what I wanted to do was help things, whether it be people or
animals, or the environment. All I wanted was to have someone somewhere have a
better life because of something I did or something that I helped to do. Then
came a new list of things I wanted to do, I wanted to be teacher in the
Taliban, UN lobbyist, Aid worker, Humanitarian, reporter on topics surround
third world countries, I wanted to fight alongside Malala for the right to an
education everywhere and for everyone.
So, this was great, I
knew what I wanted to do, I was so passionate about it(still am) and yet… I had
no idea how to get there. There are, surprisingly, no courses in universities
called “helping people,” trust me I know.
So then flash forward to the first
information session about work experience and at first I was excited, I would
go to charity and I would ask questions and I would find out exactly what I
needed to do. Until I started researching and quickly discovered that their
didn’t seem to be a single charity organisation in Australia that offered work
experience. This was, to say the least, a disappointment. All that hope, all
those emotions came crashing back down and I started my spiral:
Then it happened, my mum’s best friend, or my godmother was
over at my house and talking about how her, very lovely niece, was doing an
internship at World Vision Australia, and BOOM I was in… well it didn't exactly
happen that fast there was some texts, paper work and emails that had to be
sorted but for the sake of this story I’m going to edit those bits out.
So, skip ahead a few months and DOUBLE BOOM first day of
work experience, to say I was excited was an understatement. My first day of
work experience was actually the last day of a national tour that my world
vision contact/supervisor/person-who-got-me-the-position-and-who-I-was-going-to-stalk-for-a-week,
( I know what you’re thinking, that was waaaay too many hyphens, let’s just
call her Jas)was running.
It was a training
session for VGenners on child labour, and the #FreeTo campaign. I suggest you
look it up, it’s pretty awesome. Anyway it was pretty intense and my brain
almost went into information overload mode, long story short did you know that
there are 168 million child labourers in the world, and that the G20 conference
can do something to change that? I didn't. And our ability to influence and
make real change in the world kind of blew my mind, late I would realise that
many things would blow my mind that week.)
The second day was my first day in the office and Jas was
away, (she’d just been traveling and working for ages, I think she deserved a
break) so I was assigned to Ian, a funny guy that seems to know the entire
office by name (something I admire, since I forget people’s names as soon as
they introduce themselves to me, thank god all the desks at World Vision have
the person’s name on them!) then after going to Devotions, which Ian ran and
was really good. I met a bunch of really welcoming people and shook a lot of
hands and then was whisked away on tour of the office. Which after being shown
around I realised that not getting lost was futile. So I stalked Ian for the
day, well I’m sure there’s a better word for it then that but I can’t think of
it. I learned a lot and the mind blow moment came when Ian was sorting through
some paper work and he said it was so a Refugee in Malaysia could come to
Australia… that what he was doing was affecting real people in real situations.
Day three and Jas was back so I spent the morning typing out
post-it-notes, before being locked out of my computer and unable to get back in
since Jas was at a meeting. So after about ten minutes of waiting and sitting
trying to look busy, I was back to stalking Ian and it was pretty fun trying to
convince the entire of World Vision to go to the movies with free movie
vouchers that expired that night, hence my friends and I went to see Jersey Boys (surprisingly good if you're interested).
Work the next day was good, I typed out posters for the morning on an iPad and by the last poster I could type without looking. A major achievement in life I think, that afternoon I went off to a school to do a sim, short for simulation. Where Soreti and Kate and I were going to pretend to be slave owners and force a year eight class to make match boxes... they had no idea and were terrified... it was fantastic.
So flash forward to now, it's my last day at World Vision and I've had the best time and I kind of don't want to leave. There's something in the atmosphere here, and everyone cares so much and is so passionate and it's so refreshing to be away from a classroom full of people who shrug their shoulders and say "Oh well, that's sad. But what can you do?"
Well, now I know the answer, there's a whole hell of a lot you can do, join the 40 Hour Famine, find a local VGen group. We can do so much and we can make a difference, and dispite what people think here is SO much behind the scenes work that goes on. There are thousands of people everyday working against injustice and even though I've just had a small taste of what it's like I think I'm going to keep coming back for seconds... and thirds... and fourths... and fifths... and just more.
*Reference to John Green’s fabulous novel An Abundance of Katherines, just for
those of you who might have picked up on it, I will write a review of it and
add it to my blog at a later date.
