During Spring Break I did a lot of thinking and planning for my life after college but I’m not going to lie, I started to hesitate a bit again. Since hearing from one person isn’t enough,  I spoke to yet another Alumni from Southern Vermont College for her honest truth about life after college!

“You Never Know”

-Hanifah Presley ‘14

Okay, so I’ll start here. Before I graduated in May 2015, I thought I had it all figured out. I was gonna move to Albany with one of my closest friends at the time. I was gonna get a job in the psych field somewhere upstate. I was gonna get my drivers license and everything. This was all figured out around January of 2015, which was a few months before graduation. Well, let me tell you…none of that happened!

I ended up not even speaking to that classmate by February, so moving to Albany was out of the question. I still don’t have my license because I’m back in NYC, and right now it’s not really needed. I didn’t end up getting a psych job. What ACTUALLY happened was this-

I ended working in a summer camp in Queens, NY the summer of 2015. Then from the fall of 2015 through early summer 2017 I worked for a company called SCO Family of Services, where I worked as an after school teacher. Through that company I worked at 2 different schools, and in February 2017 I applied and got accepted into the teaching fellows program (an alternative program to assist you in becoming a teacher). Through this process, you attend a summer ‘boot camp’ and receive a Transitional B teaching certificate which allows you to teach in NYC public schools. While in the program, you also work towards your masters degree while still having the opportunity to teach.

Although being a teacher was NEVER in my future plans and despite all the struggles I’m having as a first year teacher, I am so glad that I chose to pursue this field. Since I always wanted to work with children but I wasn’t sure where to begin, this has been a very rewarding experience. I found a happy medium between my psych degree and working with children  so I’m a special education teacher working in the East New York section of Brooklyn. My advice is to “never say never” because you don’t know where life will take you!