Having changed his major five times, U.S. History teacher and football coach Monty Priest can say the search for a dream job is not always an easy thing.

Growing up, Mr. Priest aspired to become a lawyer, planning to follow his grandfather who had a law firm in Oklahoma City, and two of his uncles who were lawyers as well.

“Once I saw all the paperwork that was really involved and that it wasn’t like the movies and TV shows, I decided very quickly that that was not going to be the job for me,” Mr. Priest said.

When Mr. Priest first went to the University of Oklahoma, he started as a business major.

“I didn’t know exactly what I wanted to do, so my parents just encouraged me to start with [it],” Mr. Priest said. “I quickly realized that working in a cubicle was not for me.”

In high school, Priest did the school’s morning announcements, and took a class to intern with a multimedia company that taught him video editing and how to put together music video material.

“I then switched my major to video productions,” Mr. Priest said. “I wanted to work for MTV making music videos.”

After a year, he changed his major to journalism and began writing sports articles and interviewing head coaches like Bob Stoops, Barry Switzer and other OU sports figures.

“I realized that journalism was fun but my face was too pretty not to be on camera, and wanted to go into broadcast journalism to work for ESPN,” Mr. Priest said.

Mr. Priest took video production classes and worked on live interviews. A friend told him that there was a local high school that needed a volunteer football coach.

“I went to help out because I played football in high school and I hadn’t really done anything with football in about three or four years,” Mr. Priest said. “I went over there to volunteer. I loved the football aspect of the job, but most of all, I loved working with young people.”

 Mr. Priest had this job, and then changed to working with the University of Oklahoma football team for two years. One of those years, OU got the opportunity to go to the national championship.

“I was literally standing on the sidelines in Miami, Florida with Will Ferrell doing the coin toss, while Shaquille O’neal was in the stands,” Mr. Priest said. “It was quite the environment.”

After volunteering with University of Oklahoma football team, Mr. Priest went to talk to his counselor about switching his major once again. She advised him to switch to education.

“Once I got on that path, I knew that’s what I wanted to do,” Mr. Priest said. “No two days are ever the same in teaching. You are dealing with young people so the environment is constantly changing, and for someone like me that is what fits best, because I like to adapt to new situations.”

A big inspiration in Mr. Priest’s life was his high school History Teacher and Football Coach Mark Milton.

“I always remember how passionate he was about his job, both in the classroom and on the field,” Mr. Priest said. “I know sometimes coaches get a bad rap about not being good teachers but he was the best. He was very engaging; he always kept things fun and fresh, and we were always learning. On the football field, he brought that same passion, so it made it exciting. It made it to where I wanted to succeed and work hard both for my team and for him, because I know he was working so hard for us.”

Through each of these careers, Mr. Priest feels he gained experience that could help him further in the classroom.

“Working as a film major, I learned a lot about visual stimulation-about what looks good for people,” Mr. Priest said. “That helps me with lessons to keep teenagers engaged. Through broadcast and journalism, I learned how to converse with people to get the responses or direct their responses to how I want them and overall to interact with people better.”

With the pressure on current students to choose a major by the freshman year of college, Mr. Priest’s advice would be to keep the mind open to change.

“There’s just so many options out there that you might not even know about yet,” Mr. Priest said. “I always encourage people to take some different courses, even if you think you know what you want to do. There are more passions that you have, so you should take a course that deals with that as well to see if that’s something that you really want to do.”

Mr. Priest’s parents encouraged him to make sure that he landed somewhere he had passion.

“My parents have always given me a lot of responsibility in the way of giving me a pretty long leash in trying to feel things out,” Mr. Priest said. “They had a lot of confidence that I would  make sure I was doing something that I was passionate about and not just to pick up a paycheck.”

Mr. Priest ended his search to find his dream job.

“I changed my major five times before knowing what I wanted to do, yet I still graduated in five years with doing student teaching,” Mr. Priest said. ‘It doesn’t mean you are going to put yourself in a bind. As long as you find a spot that fits, then you have made a success out of it.”