Hello, welcome to a look into how I have gotten on the path to education that I am on today. If you have not yet please go back to the Values tab and click on the heading “Where is all Began”, this goes into detail of what I consider phase one of my life. Phase one looked back on my upbringing in Terrace BC, where I was born and raised until age 15. This here is all about phase 2 of my life, the “Mid Point”, I would say, when my family supported my athletic dreams and moved everyone over to Prince George BC where I could play hockey at a higher level, with more opportunities. For three years from grade ten to twelve I lived in Prince George with my mom, dad, and two sisters. My sisters and I went to Prince George Secondary School (PGSS), where I got to attend the school hockey program. I was very lucky to still have my dad be my hockey coach while I played for the U18 Female AAA Hockey team in town. When I look back on this phase of my life, and these three years I spent in Prince George I was really only focused on one thing. I was focused on getting a hockey scholarship so I could continue playing hockey at the highest level possible really for females next to the Olympics, and this took all my attention. To say it consumed me would not be an understatement, and that exactly how I wanted it to be. I would wake up at 5am and workout in my garage, my dad bought me some weights and set up a whole mini gym for me, this is about the same time I became obsessed with fitness and working out. After working out I would get ready, go to school, learn, then go to school hockey class, get home from school, eat some dinner, go back to the arena for hockey practice, weekends consisted of traveling for hockey games, and that was pretty much my three years in Prince George.
While I realize to some this may sound a little extreme for a kid, to eat, sleep, and breath hockey and school essentially. However, I was chasing a dream, and the deep desire I had to succeed in that dream drove me everyday. I loved it, I loved the early mornings, and the late bus rides home from a tournament, most of all as I reflect on that time in my life I think what I really loved was the feeling I got from the purpose this dream gave me. I had a purpose in life and it was not one that I ever dreaded, it was one that I loved and would do anything to achieve.
Another big thing I would like to point out about this phase in my life, because I have seen it a lot with other sporting people and kids I have been around, its that everything I did, I sacrificed, for hockey was completely of my choosing. I always say my parents were the best people for supporting their children in whatever dreams they had, but not pushing to a point that they loved the sport or the endeavour more then myself, or my sisters did. In my life today I am a hockey coach and I so often see parents “making” there kids play, and there kids not even wanting it, the dream is the parents dream not the kids dream. It is so common. It gives me so much respect for my parents at how gracefully they supported us in our dreams without forcing them on us. I remember so fondly going to my dad and telling him I wanted to work on my shot for hockey, so he set up a net in the backyard and got me pucks, he helped me work on my shot. I told him I wanted to build muscle and get stronger, so he set me up the gym in the garage. I reflect on this and it almost makes me emotional of how incredibly lucky I was and I am to have both my mom and my dad and the support they gave me and my sisters. I know that my reality is not a lot of other peoples realities. I reflect back on students, players, kids I have met and they don’t have anywhere close to the support at home that I got, I am aware of this. I feel so lucky and again I want so bad to be a figure to others in the world that can be a support system the way my parents were for me. A lot about phase two of my life was dreaming, and living everyday because I had a purpose that I deeply desired to accomplish. This phase of my life got me to where I am today because I find myself searching for a new purpose, a new driver, I feel right were I am supposed to be, I want to be a teacher, I want to impact students and help them dream and accomplish what they want to accomplish, and that is my purpose, my new desire. Where I am at right now is the process to me achieving my new purpose in life.
You can move on to the next and final phase, phase three of my life… learn if I accomplished my dream of continuing to play hockey and getting a scholarship to a University. Phase three is where I did an immense amount of growing up, it is where I learned I wanted to become a teacher, it is what propelled me to this very day I am at now, on the path to becoming a teacher… Phase three, “Making the leap”.
