My Shillington Journey: Part One

As mentioned in my last post, in August last year, I decided to quit my office job & study full-time at Shillington Design College in Brisbane.

But first, let's go back to where it all began...
I had been working at an elevator company, here in Brisbane, for 5 years. During my time there, I had done a wide range of roles at this company (everything from Reception to Data Entry) but my last role was Service Coordinator / Marketing Assistant. I would schedule work for elevator technicians every day. And when I had spare time, I would work on the company's marketing materials. Every night I came home & was really unhappy with my job. I felt like I was getting nowhere & not making a difference. To make things worse, I was still fumbling with what it was that I wanted to do as my career. To say I was a late bloomer is an understatement.

The company had a big range of lift photographs, however, they were all outdated & any new photographs needed minor touch ups. So they decided to pay for me to go and learn how to use Photoshop professionally. As soon as I started doing this, I was hooked. Whenever new photos of lifts were given to me, I would rejoice & try to fix them as quickly as I could. The more complex a photo, the better. It was then that I started thinking about studying Marketing. So I enrolled in night classes at TAFE, but it started becoming a chore. And I quickly realised it wasn't just marketing that I liked - it was design that I loved. But studying Design full time for 4 years was not a financial option. So I had kind of given up. Until I was told about Shillington

I researched Shillington College quite thoroughly & saw that their full-time course was only 3 months long! Everything seemed to be perfect because I was luckily in a financial position to take 3 months off work - so that was a BIG tick. I also saw that there was an information night that week. It seemed like this was meant to be - so I finished work early that Friday & went to the information night.

I was so excited that I ended up arriving a little early. I was greeted by a lovely lady, who ended up being one of my teachers (Shanti Sparrow). She told me to take a look at some of the previous student's portfolios - which were amazing! I remember seeing a student example of packaging design & at that moment, I knew this was the place I was meant to be (as cliche as that sounds).

So that weekend, I arranged the tuition fees & on that Monday, I handed in my 4 weeks notice. I was so scared about telling my boss, but I was also very excited. My boss was sad to hear the news but she wished me all the best - which felt amazing. Then the countdown began....

Stay tuned, I will have Part Two up in a few days. Trust me when I say, you're going to want to hear the rest of the story!

Until next time,
Cora
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