Over the years I often joked about when I retired I would learn to play golf and work towards a doctorate. It’s now summer of 2017 and I am retiring from my industry role having been working full-time for 30 years. 30 years! where did that time go?
During my time at secondary school I wanted to teach French since it was a subject I found myself to be good at and luckily had a wonderful teacher as my mentor. Unfortunately at the end of the 1980’s there was a nasty recession in Ireland and no jobs for teachers so that career goal went out the window. What to do? Well, my degree majored in Social Research as well as French but guess what? No jobs in Ireland for career entry level social researchers either.
Some years later I accidentally ‘fell into’ project management and not only did I like it, I also found myself to be quite good at it and is where I’ve spend over half of the last 30 years, picking up a masters along the way which I’ve put to good use. People said to me “what about a doctorate?” to which my response always was “too busy with the day job, on the list for retirement”. I say “day job” in the singular but in truth I’ve been double jobbing with my part-time teaching and module development work for the MSc in Project and Programme Management where I myself earned my bachelor’s and master’s degrees. I digress, though, fact of the matter is that I am now about to begin my retirement journey that I would like to share in the form of a reflective or learning journal of sorts so here goes…
Sandra Flynn 