Mr James Seaha, Director of Post Secondary Planning
Building a career is a personal and individual process that rarely begins with the collective end in mind. While identifying a path is the first step, the wholeness of the concept called ‘career’ is only fully appreciated upon reflection.
Finding one’s way (building a career) can be loosely described as an exercise in stringing together seemingly random life experiences; seizing new opportunities as they present themselves; navigating unforeseen circumstances; and embracing life-wide education and emergent technologies.
Looking to the past and evaluating the present are equal partners in guiding the way to the future. Therefore, an ever-evolving reflective compass must also direct the trekker’s route.
The stories in this article are written with a singular purpose in mind: to reflect upon the emerging careers of recent Brisbane Girls Grammar School graduates to teach, guide and inspire those who will follow. While at school, Teilah, Julie and Ali were proactive and involved students. These young women learned the value of engagement by embracing the academic and co-curricular offerings of the School. They were enthusiastic participants in their education which was enriched by their commitment to those seemingly random interests and activities, all of which would one day influence their path. They learned to recognise an opportunity when it presented itself, and sometimes when it didn’t. They are young women who plan; act on opportunity; spend time in reflection; and embrace new ideas.
Embedded in their stories are the genesis of their careers, which now become lessons for girls still in the planning stage. While each story is as different as the young woman who navigated the path, the lessons for girls who follow are the same: plan a direction that reflects a personal preference; seek and grasp opportunities as you discover them; and navigate unforeseen circumstances with positivity and resilience.
Equally, embracing a life-wide view of education and the technologies of the twenty-first century will help focus on the career horizon, while contemplative reflection will guide decision making.
Teilah’s way
Always one to tread her own quiet path, Teilah (2009) is a young woman with a dream who is in no rush to achieve it. While she enjoyed her time at Girls Grammar, she readily admits that she did not then consider herself an academic ‘high flyer’. She did, however, most certainly find her wings at university.
After winning the Bond University Collegiate Scholarship and with a long-term goal to study medicine, Teilah entered the Bachelor of Biomedical Science. There she discovered an unforeseen opportunity, acted on it, and found a passion that would eventually redirect her path.
While still an undergraduate student, she was invited on to a research team investigating Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and, inspired by one of her lecturers, added an honours year to her Bachelor degree. In 2012, Teilah graduated on the Vice Chancellor’s List with first class honours and, in her own quiet way, decisively reinforced the notion that ‘you don’t have to begin as a high flyer to become one’.
Now on the backburner, medicine will have to wait until Teilah satisfies her curiosity for research. At present, she continues her work on a postgraduate doctorate as part of a research team at Griffith University’s Menzies Health Institute, where she enjoys working on scientific research projects centred on the process of discovery and innovation. Driven by a curiosity to understand how the human body functions when challenged by disease, she welcomed the unexpected opportunity to contribute to research with a focus on clinical translation.
While her journey began with the goal of traditional medicine, it is research that has captured Teilah’s attention. Twice tempted by invitations to medical school interviews, she has chosen to keep her focus on research.
Completing my PhD has given me the time to investigate and explore intricate details of the human body. At the same time, research projects have afforded me the patient contact I originally sought in traditional medicine. I am also developing the professional and clinical skills that are necessary in a medical career. Patient stories emerge from patient interactions and they follow me into the laboratory where they provide me with the motivation to achieve and report valid outcomes to help understand disease. I find great comfort and satisfaction in the fact that all of what is currently known and taught in medicine has been discovered through research. It is a privilege to be a part of that.
Teilah’s journey is not one taken by many. It is certainly longer than most, but it is the path of a young woman who is ‘in no rush’.
‘Others live at breakneck speed, but for me there is time — time for research, time for experience, time for life’. Teilah is happy to take all the time she needs.
Julie’s way
‘Mr Seaha, I changed my career over the weekend! On Friday I was working in my office in London and on Monday I started classes at Sydney University Medical School’.
This single quotation goes a long way towards describing Julie (2002). The epitome of a Grammar Girl, she is intelligent, driven, and unafraid. In 2003, she earned a place to study engineering at Cambridge University beginning in September. In the interim, she decided to spend semester one studying engineering and law at Sydney University ‘because I won a scholarship and didn’t want to waste the opportunity’.
Cambridge exposed me to a wide range of professionals who came to talk to us about careers. Like my experience at Brisbane Girls Grammar School, I was encouraged to be curious and adventurous; to seek and take every opportunity as it presented itself. There I began to understand the concept of transferable skills. I started to see how the diverse interests and experiences of my early life had begun to fuse into the foundations of my career.
Julie spent her first summer internship at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech). A focus on bioengineering planted the seed of interest in health careers. A second-year summer internship at Goldman Sachs followed and, at the end of her third year at Cambridge, she won a Women in Investment Banking Scholarship which included another summer internship in the finance industry, this time at Lehman Brothers.
For nearly three years following the completion of a Masters in Engineering, Julie worked for JP Morgan as an investment banker. She was happy and successful there until she found herself becoming more and more interested her husband’s medical studies. ‘I discovered that I could sit the GAMSAT in London’. And so, somewhat reliant on fate, Julie booked a place.
I realised there was a part of me that was unfulfilled in the banking world. I enjoyed the technical and quantitative aspects of the job as well as the human interaction with clients and colleagues, but something was missing. What I really sought was to combine those skills and make a more tangible impact on people’s lives. Medicine gave me that opportunity.
Armed with competitive GAMSAT scores, an indomitable risk-taking curiosity and nothing to lose, Julie applied to the Sydney University Medical School. Her invitation for an interview came quickly and coincided with her annual leave so Julie returned home for a visit and a chance at a medical career.
Now a doctor in her second year of practice, Julie admits that her road has been long — but for a purpose. ‘My path seemed complicated and my decisions drastic to my friends and colleagues — it even seemed drastic to me — until I met many others in my course who had done the same’.
Unafraid and full of curiosity, confidence and drive, Julie credits the like-mindedness of Cambridge University and Brisbane Girls Grammar School for the richness of her journey thus far. I, however, suspect that the natural warmth, drive and intelligence that is Julie has also played its part in her varied and successful journey.
When opportunities present themselves, I have found it best to go with my instinct. The reason for making decisions may not be clear at the time you make them. There is the risk; there is the adventure. However, I have found that whatever the result, each decision I have made has led me forward in unexpected ways. Interests may change, but the skills and insights we gain along the way will last forever.
Ali’s way
‘If anyone had told me that I would one day own a business I would not have believed them’. Ali (2008) knew she wanted to dance from an early age. Her career actually began at the age of four when she discovered dance. Since then, ‘it’s all I ever wanted to do’.
A self-described ‘creative person’, Ali finds her energy and motivation in dance. ‘While at school, I was so focused on dance that my academics took second place. I lived in parallel worlds of Girls Grammar and dance’. In that regard, little has changed since 2008. Ali still lives in a parallel world, but high school academia has been replaced by a developing business mind.
Ali says that Girls Grammar provided the mould that helped to shape the woman she is becoming. Her involvement in school musicals and drama productions brought confidence and discipline while her love of dance provided motivation and direction. In the end, it has been the inspiration and encouragement from her teachers, the unconditional support of her family, and a personal passion for dance that has empowered her to turn a random opportunity to volunteer into a thriving business — all before the age of twenty-three.
In 2009, Ali began a Bachelor of Fine Arts (Dance) at Queensland University of Technology. Quite apart from studying her passion, she volunteered at a local community centre with an interest in special needs. This single random choice opened her eyes to the prospect of sharing her passion for dance with young people with special needs and Bust A Move Dance was born.
She loved the community centre dance classes, but did not realise their impact until grateful parents began approaching her and encouraging her to continue. Feeling a strong sense of community and connectedness with the philosophy that focuses on ‘encouraging and supporting rather than helping and hand holding’, Ali developed a philosophy of her own.
Like most people, these young people know how to dance. They need only the same support and encouragement as anyone else. We don’t teach people how to dance; instead, we use the medium of dance to teach life skills and create change.
In 2014, Ali was offered of a place in a national mentoring programme sponsored by the Foundation of Young Australians. The programme shared a wealth of business tips, resources and networking opportunities and Ali learned very quickly how to run a business. An opportunity to pitch an idea to the QANTAS Foundation followed and Ali won generous start-up funding for her work.
Bust A Move Dance has grown to more than 100 students in twelve classes per week in a variety of dance spaces across Brisbane. Ali and her young team of employees and volunteers are passionate about dance and the inclusivity of dancers with disabilities so that ‘people of all abilities feel equal and powerful in the world’.
The fiercely determined Ali completed her Bachelor of Fine Arts degree and followed it with a Graduate Diploma in Secondary Education while shepherding her growing business. She (and Bust a Move Dance) are presently fundraising to take sixty dancers to the Los Angeles Special Olympics World Games in July this year and her sights are already set on the future. ‘There is a community of young people with disabilities in every city in the entire world!’.
Open to the idea of celebrating ability at any level, Ali has witnessed a recent shift in the perception of disability in the wider community and ‘it fuels my drive to know that I have been a spark to that change. I know that inclusion can be successful’.
With a passion to inspire other young people to excellence, Ali has already changed her world. It is only a matter of time before she changes ours.
Finding ways to find your way
During its lifetime, a career unfolds as a series of (hopefully) well-considered decisions influenced by opportunity, circumstance, technology and personal preference. Its wholeness becomes visible with the reflective powers of hindsight. As they did at school, these young professionals continue to engage their world with open-minded, well-informed planning. As a result, they recognise new opportunities, manage unforeseen circumstances and embrace the technologies of the twenty-first century to fulfil a destiny that only they determine.
For each, seemingly unconnected youthful opportunities delivered life experiences that signposted a career. Their paths are pointed in different directions, each leading to an unknown destination that, in the end, will reflect the young woman who set herself upon it.
One wonders what decisions lie ahead; what circumstances will influence them; what technologies will demand of them. If the immediate past is any indication of their future, I am confident that they and hundreds more like them, will build careers that will leave an indelible mark on their professions.