A lot of professional careers started from being a hobby. The dedication and passion are two things which inspires a person to turn a hobby to a profession or a career. Just take my neighbour who loves to cook never had she planned that she is going to build an eatery out of just a hobby. The enjoyment of cooking food for the loved ones was not just a responsibility of being a good wife and mother but also the passion to cook and serve delicious food was emphasized and the compliments she got from her cooking inspired her to put up an eatery in order to serve people from all walks of life.
Her eatery was more than just a workplace, it became a haven for her to continue honing her skills. She dabbled, experimented and tried new reciepes; she added flavours through herbs and spices to make them more palatable and delicious. She became creative and innovative at the same time.
How time flies, realizing that she is managing her eatery for almost two decades now and still people flock to taste her cooking. She is enjoying and at the same time earning from her chosen career.
The writer here also dreamt of becoming a successful creative writer. She declared herself an essayist and a poetess at the same time. It has been her passion since she was just seven years old; the love for reading inspired her to pursue this passion for writing but then fear sets in. She treated writing as just a hobby, something to do during leisure time without thinking that it could be a career. Her father who was a very practical person knew about this hobby, he insisted that there was no money for writers, creative writers at that but then he did not stop her from writing anything to her heart’s content.
At present, forty one years had passed she has been the typical late bloomer, it is only now that she has the confidence to submit essays and poems in different contests, the purpose here is not the winning but rather the will to submit entries. She did not have a career out of this hobby but it serves an inspiration to hone her craft though not as career material but rather because she enjoyed doing it.
But there is another hobby which had turned to a dream job for her. That is teaching and mentoring at the same time. No part of the childhood spent not lining up dolls to be her students and teach the alphabet or sing nursery rhymes. She has always loved children, playing with them, teaching them to read and write was more of an enjoyment than a career. She only dreamt of one thing and is to follow the footsteps of her mother and became a teacher.
The writer had found her niche in teaching, a professional teacher at that. She is currently teaching Social Studies to grade seven students at a public school. It is more than a dream job for her but also a hobby that turned into a career. She is an idealist by heart. She does not believe that there are poor students out there but she believes in poor teachers that is the reason why she engages herself with training and seminars so as to help her be better in her chosen profession.
The COVID19 pandemic did not stop her from engaging in professional development activities. She continuously attends webinars and online seminars that can help broader and enhance her skills and expertise. She takes time to do her own research and make her own instructional materials aside from the assigned modules so as to be able to motivate students to read and learn at the same time. Adding to this is devising ways on how to promote quality learning despite the lack of technology especially that she is a mountain rural teacher. Only 2 percentage of the students’ population has technology and it made her worried but then she is an initiator of sorts, so during the school break, she creates worksheets and activity sheets using graphic organizers so as to be considered supplemental materials to the modules provided by the school.
The writer believes in the Department of Education program, “No child left behind”, therefore she is trying various means to make education reachable to every children though it is a huge task and burden for her it remains to be a challenge and this time around undaunted by fear but more of confidence that one day these children will be successful professionals because she helped them the best way she can and that is the continuing drive for her to succeed no matter how difficult it can be.
