The Lemon Life | online magazine offering a fresh perspective on post-grad life.

It is our pleasure to introduce a new facet of The Lemon Life: Lemon Aid. This section will feature accomplished professionals blogging about their careers, their Lemon Lives and themselves; most importantly they will provide guidance and mentorship to anyone interested in their particular field, or just looking for a wiser head to bounce some questions off.

We hope that Lemon Aid will be a resource to Lemon Lifers as they develop their careers.

On that note it is our pleasure to introduce Hannah Brown. Hannah is a professor at a community college in Toronto where she has worked for the past twenty-four years.  She has worked as both a counsellor and a teacher, helping students to identify their strengths and skills and make career and education decisions.  She likes to find out who people are in order to help them discover what they might do in life. We hope you enjoy Hannah’s first post:

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As I rounded the corner into the New Year, nearly at the halfway point of my third year of university, I knew that I was ready for my gap year. In usual late-bloomer fashion I would declare my gap year between third and fourth year of university. Travel, work experience and income all appealed more than a rush to the finish line, especially as I wasn’t at all certain about the cause I was running for. Time away from school would help me to think more about what I wanted to do, and ultimately give more meaning to what I was doing. And it did.

Fourth year ended up being my best year; not only did I meet someone that I really liked,(who really liked my room-mate and dated me anyway) I embraced learning more. I had one of my career-best learning experiences with a professor who entertained, engaged and inspired. I made my own meals and paid my own bills. It was all grand until it was over.

A requisite trip to Europe under my belt and my bank account nearing empty necessitated a return to the nest. I resumed employment in retail with occasional forays into career exploration. I negotiated the adult-child experience, trying to hide my frustration and disappointment from my parents whose concern for me was palpable. The low point for me was travelling to the head office of an insurance firm in Hamilton for an introduction and a chat, facilitated with good intention by my friends and family network. It was paradoxical yet demoralizing to be rejected by an industry that held no interest for me. After this disastrous detour I whined to my sweetheart, the same one from fourth year who’d started off liking my room-mate, that I was a failure to which he, of the Harvard graduate school destiny, replied “you can’t possibly call yourself a failure yet – you really haven’t tried anything”.

I thought that was all I had been doing – trying and not succeeding. But he was right and his accurate assessment eventually got me off my disillusioned butt, back to the city, in full-on job search mode. (Full-on and time-limited because I had only enough money to share rent with friends for a month.) The economy was unfavourable but I was very determined, and irritated into action.

So off I went to the employment centre of my alma mater. I scanned the postings, found one that both intrigued and puzzled me. University degree preferred but not essential; restaurant experience preferred but not essential. This posting was as ambivalent and ambiguous as I was, and I felt abundantly qualified as I fulfilled both of the non-requirements, the latter only by virtue of two days’ work in my friend’s about-to-go-bankrupt pizzeria. The job title was “manager/counsellor” and the setting was a downtown café where people learned employment skills. This aligned with the one priority that I’d been able to identify – get as much teaching experience as possible because I wanted to apply to Teachers’ College. Ability to work with a diverse group of people essential. I figured this was something I excelled in, so I applied for the quirky job and they hired me.

This was the turning point for me in my lemon life. The year was 1983. Sometimes a job just pays the rent, and sometimes it’s the gateway to your career.

I will continue to blog on The Lemon Life. If you have any questions please contact me at hannah@thelemonlife.com.

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