Brendan| Birkdale

“I’m a history teacher and I think it’s a really important subject that lots of people should know about and also it was about a job that provided something personally rewarding as opposed to just remuneration.

I want to get personal satisfaction out of my work. Pay cheque is nice too, but I want personal satisfaction, too. It’s mainly to give something back to society, something positive and share the things that I’m passionate about.

The one thing I really need right now is a fulltime job. I’ve been looking for awhile. I’m just a new high school teacher and I need something to keep going, because that’s the career that I want to get into. That’s what I need at the moment.

I guess I’m not that young. I’m in my 30s now, so I’ve come to it a bit later, but I kind of still feel youngish and so I still feel a bit of a connection with younger people of this country, and want to help them out too, and help them create knowledge, and find things that’ll help them tackle problems moving forward into the future.

For the subject that I’m getting into it’s quite small, it’s not like being a science teacher or maths teacher where it’s just like they’re screaming out for teachers. It’s taken me a bit longer, therefore the whole process has come up with a lot more ups and downs. There’s times where you feel like you’re getting really close and you go to an interview and you think, oh I nailed that, I felt really confident about it, and they resonated with me.

Then they call you and say, you’re really great, you’re going to be a great teacher, but you just missed out, we decided to pick one other person, but you were our second choice. And, they wish you all the luck. Those moments are the lows and then you have the highs. It’s a bit of an up and down process when you see the sheer volume of job applications you’ve sent out. I keep a record of all of them, you look at all of them and you’re like, oh. It becomes a little bit disheartening, but I think for me perseverance and remaining active is the key. I also have a supportive wife who keeps me going too, I think that’s pretty good.

It’s almost a clichéd aphorism that those who don’t learn from the past are bound to make the mistakes of the past. But it’s also useful in understanding present problems as well. I think in New Zealand here, having a thorough knowledge of our country’s founding document and the Treaty of Waitangi, helps us to understand what happened in the past, and possible grievances and that sort of thing, and how we can remedy these, those in the present, and how we can move forward into the future constructively and positively.”

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