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RALPH SAWNING: I came to PCC after I had spent 27 years
as a union representative with the American Federation of Teachers
which actually represents the employees of PCC.
I had been doing it for 27 years and I, frankly, just got burned out
and I had the opportunity to come to PCC.
I thought, this is an excellent way to move
in a totally different direction and that’s what I needed.
I’m really enjoying the boost that I am getting from coming to PCC.
CAREER COUNSELOR: This is the deal; to really investigate
and research and say, am I really a good fit for this?
SAWNING: The Career Resource Center actually kind of helped me
connect the dots from telling me I needed to be an accountant,
if you will, to going to accounting classes.
I took two accounting courses back to back
that were taught by the same instructor.
She seemed to like how I handed myself so she asked me
to be a T.A. in her Students for Giving program.
What I’m doing is organizing that program and providing
marketing for it so all the campus becomes familiar with it.
TEACHER: ...what is this outreach for.. (fade out)
I found out about the Career Resource Center
through a ROOTS class called Career Guidance
and we actually took a field trip to the Career Resource Center
so I learned to use a lot of the resources there through that class.
You know the tools that were available in the resource center
that I’ve used, I focused on three things.
One was called Real Sec which teaches you
about your personality and how it realtes go jobs.
The other is CIS which tells you about which skills are transferable
from your background to another job and the third were there
were a couple of books on accounting and what that career is like
and I read those and they were excellent help lead me
toward job applications etcetera.
COUNSELOR: One thing I love about this particular series –
we have a whole series in career opportunities – is they show these career ladders.
So you get to see what would I be doing first in the career –
SAWNING: One of the challenges of being a returning student
my age is you feel so out of place.
Thank god I had access to the ROOTS program
which made life simpler.
Not only made life simpler, but turned me onto the Career Resource Center,
showed me how to use the program.
From there, I,ve come to enjoy. I went from fear
to actually looking forward to getting here every day.
My goals are pretty straightforward.
I want to be a certified public accountant.
However, I am going to have a minor that will allow me to write
and design financial software which is an interesting specialty
within the CPA field, but the sky is pretty much the limit there. 00:02:37.28,00:02:37.91�