Tomorrow marks my fifth birthday in Bilbao. I have spent a lot of my life here now, and I’ve worked in many different places (including as a cleaner in a hospital lab in the middle of the pandemic). I am currently a freelance English teacher and travel agent, I have just finished my second degree in Business, and I thought to myself when I submited my dissertation on the 20th of August, that I would be able to relax for a few weeks before starting back to work where I was the previous year.
I was under the impression that everything was fine, until Tuesday last when I got the awfully stressful news that there would be no classes for me in that center – on the 20th of September. Although I was initially stressed, I tried to find the silver lining. I managed to find a number of new students within 24hours, and realised that I would be fine. That being said, it was the first time I had felt financially vulnerable in a very long time. Today officially marks the 6 year anniversary of when I started at the University of Sheffield, and started having ridiculous money problems with grants not arriving on time (4 months late), and surviving on handouts, and the goodwill of friends.
The difference between me then and me now though, is that now I have acquired many tools that will allow me to achieve some morsel of success in my area of expertise. I have recently completed a level 8 degree in Business, Social Enterprise, Leadership and Management, following the previous year’s achievement of the level 7 Business, Enterprise, and Community Development. I have been teaching English professionally since 2016, and I have been networking like crazy for the last 4 years in Bilbao.
The last time I felt like I needed to move my ass to solve my financial needs, I felt like I could only get so far before something got in the way such as «you don’t have a degree», «you’re underqualified», or I had to deal with the timetables imposed by the company I was working for. Now, I have freedom to explore my options, to spend time learning more languages (and learning more languages that I can then hopefully teach), and getting into the Community Development side of things that I’ve spent the last few years studying.
It’s all going to be ok.