On the 16th of January, Steve Dawson, a Fox Sports presenter, came to our school to talk about how to give a good interview. Despite giving us extremely useful tips, our main purpose was to ask questions to write about him.
So first, some basic information from researching about him:
His first writing break was in London for weekly paper Boxing News, where he introduced future world featherweight champion Colin McMillan
He was a Chartered Tax Accountant with 10 years of experience in the field but decided to go for a career change in 1999.
He had spent 2 years as The Straits Times correspondent before moving to Channel iNews bulletin.
He was then headhunted to become the ESPN Star sports as a writer and presenter.
Currently, he is the face of football, mixed martial arts and general sports news throughout Asia having anchored the premium content at ESPN, Star Sports and Fox Sports since 2004.
He has written a couple of sports biographies, Alex Yoong: The Driver’s Line (2010) and How To Be The Greatest Like Muhammad Ali (2012), both published by Marshall Cavendish.
When reading about the fact that he had a career change, I thought that it must have taken a lot of courage to have quit his 10 years long accounting career. How did he feel about the change? How did his family react to it? I was really curious due to a relative of mine who had gone through one to pursue and experience a change in careers. It was quite hard for him as there were worries of whether he would succeed or not and whether the family was financially stable enough to support the change.
But it had turned out that he didn’t really liked the job of an accountant and had had a career change due to seeing a notice from the Straits Times that they needed a correspondent urgently. His wife was a little nonchalant and that as long as his salaries were the same, it was fine. He had actually had an exposure to the career when he was in university which he had written his thesis about the boxing economy due to being a huge fan of boxing and had forward to the newspaper.
I totally wasn’t expecting this due to a second-hand source of the experience of changing jobs. There is usually a long state of unemployment and it normally comes in when you have the free time to start properly planning and taking action for their new jobs. There may be support from their family, but there may also be worries from them as it is almost like a make it or break it thing. His experience just seems too smooth.
If I could ask him another question, I would ask: Is that really it?
I mean like there is bound to be some conflict. Were you really just all chill and lax when submitting your application to the Straits Times despite the fact that you don’t really have a degree for journalism (According to the information I received as he had studied for accounting/economics before working as an accountant)? Is there really no worry from your wife with being able to support your family as there is a chance of you being rejected?
I am aware I sound really rude and pessimistic but I just don’t really like how he was a little too vague with his career change.
But despite all those that I have (rudely) commented, I do believe that his actions were admirable. After all, it does take courage to quit a well-paid job to achieve your dream occupation. He although dislike the job accounting, he at least admitted it had help, something I don’t believe that I would say if I was in his shoes (based on what he has vaguely said). I guess that was why one of my two only favourite lines from him was “I’m quite pleased with my decision” when he was asked what advice he would give to his younger self.
Conclusion of the night (actually afternoon), is that despite unsatisfied with full story of career change, I have wholeheartedly admired his courage to change his career and that he is doing something he is passionate about.
Life to me is like a road with so many possible paths ahead and left behind. Everybody, at some point, may look over their shoulder and ask themselves: ‘Why didn’t I do that?’, ‘If only I knew…’ But we don’t actually know what the actual outcome is if we take that path, all we can do is to make a decision to look forward before falling inside a ditch.
THE END
I have to say I’m quite impressed by the detail of your reflection and the thought that you have put into it. I liked how you incorporated your own views on Steve Dawson’s talk and discussed what you would like to probe more about based on the information he gave you. Perhaps you could work on connecting his story to your own life a bit more and elaborate on how your thinking on career changes morphed coming out of the talk. A possibility is that he might have actually had quite a smooth career transition during his lifetime, how does that make you feel about possible career changes that you are bound to encounter in your adult life as a member of Generation Z.