How I ended up in my career (the long version...)



When I was in high school, I knew I was going to be a civil engineer, and, I knew I was going to go to Iowa State University.  The reason I knew that (actually from about 6th grade on) is because my dad was a civil engineer and he went to ISU, his brothers went to ISU, my older sisters went to ISU, and my older brother went to ISU.  Most of those people became civil engineers.  I wasn’t told I had to go to ISU to be an engineer, however, it was kind of implied that I was going to do that.  That’s what we did in my family.

So, in high school, that was my goal.  I took a lot of math and science classes to prepare myself.  I didn’t think outside of the box and look at other careers.

High school was not that difficult for me, I was able to get to ok grades without too much effort.  After I graduated, I did go to ISU.  When I got there, that’s when I found out how difficult college was.  I was overloaded with homework and there were about 26,000 students enrolled at ISU.  It was very overwhelming.  I didn’t do very well my first year of college at ISU.  I did so bad that I did not go back there.  The next year, I attended a community college, and, eventually, I decided that maybe college just wasn’t for me.  So I quit going to college and worked on a land surveying crew for the next 8 years.

After working for 8 years outside in all kinds of Iowa weather, I decided that maybe it was time to go back to college.  I had a brother-in-law who had been an elementary teacher and then became a principal.  I liked kids and decided that would be a good career for me to pursue.  So, I quit my job, quit earning money, and went back to school full time as a 28 year old sophomore.

When I started back to college, I was fortunate enough to get a job in the financial aid office helping students go through the process of getting money to help pay for college.  I worked 20 hours per week when school was in session and 40 hours per week during breaks.

After a year of being successful in my classes, the time came for me to do a field experience in a 4th grade classroom.   It was kind of like a job shadow experience where I would help the teacher, work with the students, and find out what it was like to be a 4th grade teacher.  After 16 weeks of that experience, I went back to my academic advisor and told her I did not want to be a teacher anymore.  I found out that that career was just not for me.

At that point, I realized what I really enjoyed, what I really wanted to do for a career, was to work with college students.  I ending up getting a master’s degree in College Student Affairs and working at a community college before coming to ICAN to work with students before they became college students.
John Holland


John - ICAN Waterloo