Amra Pajalic

Pressed for time at the moment. I’m putting in two community partnership applications. Spent the past week on the phone and email coordinating details. Will blog more later in the week. Didn’t teach on Monday because of curriculum day so I had the day to myself. Went to the movies and saw Inception. Is a must see movie. For now here’s the article I did about my guidance counsellor for newsletter.

“My name is Amra Pajalic and I’m a former student at St Albans Secondary College. Returning to the college as a Writer in Residence has been a strange and wonderful experience. There are so many familiar faces from my time as a student.

One of the people I was really happy to see again is Mr John Kortuem, my former guidance counselor. I was pleased to have a conversation with him and tell him the ways in which he helped me on my journey to becoming a writer.

When I graduated from high school in 1994 my future was a blank slate. I always knew I wanted to be a writer and I also knew that I wanted to go to university, but both these goals seemed unattainable. I come from a migrant background and no one in my family had graduated from high school, let alone attempted university.

I knew that to be a writer I could study or I could gain life experience and I always imagined that there would be this magical moment when I would sit down and produce a literary masterpiece. Instead my life took many twists and turns, each one bringing me closer to my dream.

Like my peers at high school I put down my uni preferences, even though it seemed impossible I could enter this strange world of academia that I knew nothing about. When we had the opportunity to change our preferences I put down only one option. I thought if it is fate then I will get into university, if not then I will go on to gain life experiences.

I did no research about the course that I was changing my preferences to and so I did not get in. I looked for my name in the newspaper and even though I knew that I had sabotaged myself, I was still shocked that my name wasn’t there. I stood in the milk bar holding the newspaper feeling scared. What was I going to do with myself? After 12 years of knowing what every day would bring, I had nowhere to go and nothing to do.

At this time there was high unemployment and the age group of 18-25 was most represented. Most of us had no skills and no work experience to compete against other applicants. While we were undergoing our VCE exams most of my peers went to Centrelink and registered for unemployment benefits, but I didn’t want to do this.

A few days after I found out I didn’t get into uni I received a phone call from Mr Kortuem. He asked if I had any plans for the future, if not there was an administration course I could study at TAFE. I agreed, at least I would be able to postpone making a decision about my future. I didn’t know it at the time, but this phone call would change my life. Completing this administration course would set me on the path to achieving my dream to be a novelist.

I’m sure most of you find this strange. How could an administration course change my life and lead to me becoming a novelist? But this is the wonder of life. Sometimes you do things you don’t like to make you realise what you want to do. By completing the administration course I gained skills that meant I always had a job, I never had to worry about unemployment, and the jobs I did along the way were all part of the journey to becoming a writer.

I went on and did further TAFE study and I eventually gained enough confidence to embark on my university career and graduated with a Bachelor of Arts. I learnt that there is no magical moment where I would sit down and produce a literary masterpiece. Instead my writing journey has been a series of small steps on a long journey.

I’m not done with studying or with trying different career paths. Mr Kortuem showed me that the most important thing is to be open to trying new things because you never know what it will lead to.”