About a year and a half ago I was lost in the world of jobs, I didn’t know what I wanted to do, although I had about ten different options! Allow me to explain, after graduating from university with a degree in media studies and lacking direction and focus, I thought it appropriate for me to fall neatly into the fitness industry. Training was my passion and having already achieved a qualification in fitness instruction I deemed it  to be my calling.

Working as an instructor was far from the glamorous career that many people see it as however. The money is poor and the job involves plenty of sweat mopping. It is rewarding when you can see that the help and guidance you offer people is making a genuine difference but occurrences of that are few and far between. The majority of people who join a gym do so with the false belief that they will be able to change they way they look in a matter of weeks, this is sadly not the case.

Thinking that I’d like to do a bit of travelling, I looked around for jobs abroad, some looked tempting but I was apprehensive about moving away from home. Then an ad for cruise offers for Nile river cruises caught my attention, why not work on a cruise ship I thought? A role like this would combine eye-opening travel with valuable experience in the chosen field.

Most of the large cruise line companies demanded a wider range of qualifications than I actually had such as a rock climbing wall instructors certificate or health and beauty qualifications. Some of the companies required applicants to do these off their own backs while others offered in house training.

In the end I never ended up applying for a job that involved ocean cruises and river cruises but it’s still an option at the back of my mind. I’d suggest this option to any fitness trainer who becomes jaded and bitter about the industry they’ve fallen into.