The do-over:
A few tales of starting from scratch
I never knew what I wanted to do for a career. At school, my marks were pretty good all round, and I had this big science versus art dilemma – I didn’t know what the career options were for the art path, though. People with good enough marks usually did medicine or law, so they seemed like obvious options. My parents were pretty happy I was thinking about medicine – they didn’t push me, but they wanted me to do my best, and something that would be good for me.
Medical science is a three-year degree. Most people go on to do post-graduate medicine, so that was my plan. It was really interesting, because you do stuff like anatomy and playing with cadavers, but about halfway through, I felt like I was just going through the motions. Other people were really excited about what they were doing, but I didn’t feel the same. It made me realise I didn’t want it as badly, and maybe I shouldn’t be a doctor if that was the case. I finished the course, but only because I didn’t know what else to do.
I worked for a pharmaceutical company for a few years. The pay was good, but it wasn’t making me happy. I wanted to feel excited about going to work every day. I’d always liked music and playing instruments; I was really into bands and went to a lot of gigs. One day, I was googling and found that TAFE did a music business course, so I decided to quit my job and go back to study.
People were like, “You’re so brave to quit, it must be really hard.” For me, it would be much harder to stay. This seemed like an easy decision, to do something I wanted. I was 25 when I went back to TAFE. Because I’d been through one round of study, I knew what was expected of me, and was a bit more focused. Trying to juggle work and TAFE while paying rent and bills was a bit of a hurdle, but I worked shifts at a pub on weekends to get by.
The music business course helped me figure out what I ultimately wanted to do. I had to make a fake gig poster as an assignment, and loved it – that got me looking into illustration, which sounded perfect for me. It’s so unrealistic for kids to choose what they want to study straight out of school. There’s a lot you just don’t know about. People change their minds all the time, and it’s totally OK to do that. Just find something that matters to you.