Many years ago (I won’t say exactly how many) I was a student at the School of Business in the Business-Marketing program. I spent most of my waking hours in B Building, stressing over group work and exams, celebrating kick-ass presentations and papers, and developing life-long friendships. I loved my time at AC (or the Gonq as we affectionately called it) and I left armed with the knowledge, skills and experience to go out and pursue my dream career in Marketing.
After I graduated I decided to take advantage of the College’s transfer agreements and further my education at University. I’ll be honest – I went to Uni mostly because I thought I “should.” Out of my group of friends from Algonquin, some decided to go this route but many did not. Years later, we are all enjoying successful careers in Marketing. Depending on where you want to go in your career, a degree might help or might even be necessary, but the 83% employment rate of the School of Business grads speaks for itself. Our programs are designed to prepare you for career success.
When I graduated with my degree I was lucky enough to get a job in marketing right away. I was the Marketing Manager for a local distance-education career-training school. Being thrust into that role right out of school was a challenge but one that I welcomed. As I started to get my feet wet, I was amazed to see how much of what I learned at Algonquin came into play. All of the knowledge and applied learning the College gave me helped me do my job, and do it well.
I stayed in that role for three years until I had my daughter. (Isn’t she adorable?!)
Then I decided to step back from my career for a few years to focus on family. Sounds awesome right? Not entirely. While I loved being with my daughter, I really MISSED working. (I might be a wee bit crazy!) So I decided to launch a small online business on Etsy.com. I made and sold personalized picture frames.
My marketing and business background served me well in this little enterprise. It was only supposed to be a little pet project to keep my mind from going mushy but soon I found myself shipping out multiple orders every day, to customers all over the world. In two years I made and sold over 1500 frames. It was a fantastic experience and it gave me the challenge and sense of accomplishment I had been missing.
Then finally the time came for my daughter to go to school and for me to go back to work. I was so excited to see what the next phase of my career would be. One day while scrolling through a job posting website, I saw these words:
Marketing Officer, School of Business, Algonquin College
I wanted to yell “Oooh! Oooh! Pick me! Pick me!” How perfect would I be for this job? How perfect would this job be FOR ME? To be able to go back to Algonquin after all these years and help promote the School of Business – the School that gave me such an amazing education and start to my career – seemed like a dream. And luckily for me, the dream became a reality.
I am so thrilled to be working at the School of Business. Algonquin College is an amazing community and I feel very proud, and very lucky, to be back where I started.
