Following a Disjointed Path

What do you want to be when you grow up?

I've always chuckled whenever that question is asked.  Why do I chuckle?  Well, when I was a little kid and all my friends wanted to be firemen, astronauts, ballerinas, or actors I wanted to be that voice on TV that says, "Warning!  This program contains mature subject matter.  Viewer discretion is advised."  As you can probably guess, I wasn't really the typical kid.

But in all seriousness, the question regarding what a person wants to be when he/she grows up, and the pursuit of figuring the answer out, is really important.  And by the time I turned 21 I thought I finally knew the answer.

Within my church, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, all young men and young women have the opportunity to serve missions.  These missions last for 18-24 months, and are entirely volunteer.  The person going on the mission pays their own way and spends 24/7 giving service and sharing our beliefs with anyone that is interested to learn.  Well, a year after my car accident, I began my mission.  I served in the Canada Edmonton Mission from 2008 - 2010 where I spent the majority of my time in small towns 2-6 hrs north of Edmonton (and yes, I'm Canadian, and so travelling distances are measured in time).  I had the privilege of spending a lot of my time working with individuals on First Nation's reserves, and truly came to love the people in that part of the country as I served and taught and learned with them.  At the end of my mission, as I returned home, I thought I finally had an answer to what I wanted to be when I grew up, and I had a path forward to achieve it.

I was going to be a criminal profiler.

And my path forward was to get a Bachelors degree from the University of Ottawa, majoring in both Psychology and Criminology.  I had read every book by John Douglas (i.e., Journey Into Darkness, Obsession, etc.), a pioneer in the field of criminal profiling, and I thought I was ready to jump in with both feet.

But, I had forgotten about the impact of my car accident.  I don't mean to sound boastful, but before my car accident I was brilliant.  In high school my mandate was that if it didn't get done in class, it didn't get done.  In those days studying for a test/exam was accomplished during a 1 hour review the night before, and nothing more.  And that actually worked.  In almost every class I had high 90s, and the others weren't far below that mark.  After my accident, well, that's another story entirely.  I was now studying hours every day for a week before tests/exams and getting grades 10% lower than I had ever seen before in my life.  It was definitely a wake-up call!

And to make matters worse, my lowest grades were in my criminology courses.  

It's kind of hard to say you'd make a good criminal profiler when you barely squeezed in a passing grade for every criminology course you ever took.

So, what I wanted to be when I grew up needed to make a rather abrupt change in direction.  My expectations were reversed, or at least rerouted, and I decided to focus on my first major: Psychology.  I was now going to be a Clinical Psychologist.

Knowing that the number of students that pursue a degree in Psychology is extremely high, I decided to maintain a double major to try and set myself apart.  But, with criminology off the table, I transitioned to English as my second major since I was already taking English literature courses as my electives to help raise my GPA.  I thought I was in a good position, and moved forward believing that my detoured path was now on track for success.

I succeeded in graduating with honours, but not quite with the grades necessary to pursue the postgraduate programs required to be a Clinical Psychologist.  You see, I found out that almost every Psychology exam is in multiple choice format.  And, for some reason, my brain no longer does well with multiple choice.  I remember my one professor for Abnormal Psychology had a very novel way of grading.  The first midterm was in the standard multiple choice format, but the second had options: multiple choice, written paper, verbal presentation.  I chose the verbal presentation, and it really emphasized that I knew what I was talking about despite my poor grade in the first midterm.  If I remember correctly, in the first midterm I scored in the low 60s whereas I received a grade in the high 90s for the second.  Seeing this discrepancy really helped me reconsider my opinion of myself.

It's not that I didn't know the material, it's just that my brain no longer worked in the same way that it had.

But regardless of the reason, I knew that I wouldn't make the cut when applying to any clinical psychology program in the country.  It's a very competitive field, and though my grades were a bit better than what could be classified as 'bad', they most definitely weren't 'good'.  So, I graduated into a state of not knowing.  I didn't know what my next steps were, based on my limitations I no longer knew what I wanted to be when I grew up, and I didn't have a job to provide for my new wife and step-daughter.  It was a very interesting time in my life, and the lives of those in my family.

To make a long story short, after working at a part-time job for a few months, someone in my network introduced me to their manager regarding a contract position.  He was working with the Government department, Employment and Social Development Canada, and they needed someone to assist with rolling out the newly released standard for Psychological Health & Safety in the Workplace.  Based on my Psychology background, and proficiency in writing and editing, my friend thought I'd be a good fit.  I got the job, and then proceeded to move from one contract position in the Government to another for the next two years.  I progressed from working on rolling out a psychological standard to preparing government officials to report before committees, and then moved on to policy development, rewriting memorandums of understanding and departmental guidelines, and landed on process and procedure creation and improvement.

As I neared the end of my fifth contract, and didn't have another lined up, I was a little concerned about where this already disjointed path would take me.  But again, someone in my network heard about what I was doing in the government and was aware of an opening at his place of work that aligned with that area of expertise.  So, I started my career at TELUS, and haven't looked back.  I'm now a Certified Process Improvement Specialist, and am really enjoying the work that I do.

I don't know what the next twist or turn on this disjointed path will take me, and I'm still trying to figure out what I really want to be when I grow up, but the reversed expectations I've experienced along this path thus far have led me to where I am, which, in my opinion, is a pretty great place to be.