Reason why I quitted a job at the age of 32 and made an internship in Cambodia

[:ja]谷脇[:][:en]Yoshitaka[:] [:ja]至峰[:][:en]Taniwaki[:]

by Yoshitaka Taniwaki

Reason why I quit an auditing firm at the age of 32 and made an internship in Cambodia

How do you choose your path?

I think there are two ways when people choose the own path. The one is to choose “Path suits you (capitalize on your strength and experience)”, and the other one is to choose “What you want to do”. When I thought my future path, I always bothered my head between these two options.

I think “Path suits you” could make you happy generally. Because what suits you is expected of people and it could make you feel needed and happy while it’s going well.

However, when you are busy with work or face a difficulty while you are not trying “what you want to do”, can you continue to overcome difficulties?

As the result of I thought there was “Path suits me” in “What I want to do”, I moved to Cambodia in order to improve myself and make my career change to international development work.
I’ll share this experience in this article.

Are you sure that you can feel rewarding on your work until 60?

Are you sure that you can feel rewarding on your work until 60?

My name is Yoshitaka Wakitani who did an internship at NGO Kamonohashi Project in Cambodia. Before the internship, I had worked in auditing at an audit firm. I had thought I wanted to get a job I could feel being of help to people through my knowledge of auditing in the future though, I thought continuing the job was one option if I could continue to feel rewarding on the auditing job.

However, I began to think I would not able to be dedicated to the auditing job with feeling rewarding until 60 while I had worked in auditing. So I started to explore a different path from that. At the beginning of I thought changing a job,
In the beginning of thinking to change my job, I considered entering the accounting of private companies and tax for enterprises, which was close to the former job (nearly equal “What suited me”), but I couldn’t find “What I want to do” as a choice on the extension line so far, I had spent discontented days.

In order to reconsider what is “what I want to do”, listened to stories from people in other industries, looked back on my past experiences and emotions at that time, explored my feelings on a zero basis.

As a result, the desire to do work that would feel something useful for society came back. Also, while looking back on past experiences of traveling to developing countries, I began to thought that I would be able to solve poverty problems actually existed in front of my own eyes in developing countries through Japanese high technology, not only engineering but also business skills.

Then I resolved to aim at taking on international development work making full use of my knowledge of accounting and governance cultivated through past jobs.
However, it was difficult to take on international development work for me having worked in a different industry, so I quitted the job at the age of 32 and moved to Cambodia for a half of year from March 2015 to August 2015 as a training to take on international development work.

Moved to Cambodia to seek “What I want to do”

Moved to Cambodia to seek “What I want to do”

The reason why I did the internship in Cambodia was I could gain “experience of using English at work” and “experience in carrying out duties in a developing country” there.

At the beginning of deciding to do an internship, although I aimed for international development work, I could hardly speak English with little experience in developing countries and experience of international business.

So, in order to gain the above two experiences, I looked for an internship abroad or study abroad, I found an internship for NGO Kamonohashi Project. When I received an interview with a local representative, I heard that most of the staff were Cambodians who could speak English and I could use English in daily works, there were tasks in the accounting and there was a position where I could create values so I thought I would be able to gain “experience of using English at work” and “experience in carrying out duties in a developing country”, I decided to involve in the Cambodian project of NGO Kamonohashi Project as an intern.

That is the reason for deciding the organization I worked as an intern. I’ll tell about details of my job during the internship and what I gained as the result of internship seeking “what I want to do” in the next article “Do “what I want to do”, go through happy life even after 10 years”.

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