That one opportunity

Year: 2002.
Scene: Bedroom, at a study desk strewn with notes.
Soundtrack: Lose yourself by Eminem.

You know the lyrics: “You only get one shot / Do not miss your chance to blow / Cos opportunity comes once in a lifetime.”

I love Eminem but that lyric feeds into a dangerous line of thinking: That you have one shot (one opportunity) to capture everything you ever wanted. If you don’t, well I guess it’s just mom’s spaghetti. Seriously though, how did we manage to get ourselves down such a rabbit hole of dangerous thought that everything in life is riding on one chance to prove yourself. Because in all honesty, it’s BS. Very few things have one pathway leading to their door. Even the Olympics are held every four years.

The main problem I have is the pressure that this myth puts on our young people. It is immense and entirely unnecessary. Don’t know what you want to be at age 17? Welcome to the club. We all had some ideas and started off down certain pathways but a significant portion of us also changed our minds. And then changed again. And may change again in the future. Because life is change: nothing stays the same.

Witness my particular pathway to the present moment:
Childhood dreams: Writer / doctor / teacher.
High school ideas: Doctor / teacher / psychologist.
Year 12/13 subjects: All about med school. Which I did not apply for.
University undergrad: BA in Psychology and Sociology. Not a single lick of English, my favourite subject, because I was attempting to be “unpredictable”. Yes, eye roll.
Post-grad dream: Clinical psychology. Which was smashed by a frank chat with the head of the programme who told me that the job was horrifically hard, like being an ambulance at the bottom of the cliff and hugely affecting on your personal life.
Post-graduation reality: Working in a Psych department as Academic Admin, doing pastoral care and organisational stuff for psych undergrads and postgrads alike. Meanwhile, I quietly got myself a Grad Dip Arts in English and an MA in English. Because, nerd.
New direction: Got married and headed to Taiwan to do… something? Armed myself with a CELTA and sallied forth.
Taiwan days: Did a patchwork of tutoring, communications work, writing and editing.
The redirection: Marriage fell apart so I came back to NZ and worked for a newspaper.
The re-redirection: I wanted my life to have more meaning than being yelled at by Aussie journos who didn’t like the changes I made to their copy. I retrained as a teacher and married again.
The first teaching job: English teacher for two years.
Course adjustment: Moved into ESOL at my current school.
Mid-life crisis: Took a year off to cure years of burnout and other traumatic crap that had happened.
Back at it: ESOL at current school again.

And that’s not even particularly dramatic and it’s certainly been helped along by a significant helping of privilege and support.

We are all constantly evolving beings. Nobody is defined by a single test score, relationship break-up, job loss or missed chance. There are more tests to take, people to connect with, jobs to find and chances to take. This is the message that I am constantly trying to convey to our kiddos: do your best but don’t make this a be-all, end-all thing.

If you’re reading this and feeling like a failure because something has gone wrong in your life: you are not a failure. Please trust me that there will be other opportunities out there even if it feels like there won’t be. Feel those feelings and when you’re ready, get back out there. Get support, connect with others, find your cheerleaders. You can do this.

I believe in you.