Let's talk careers

[Danefied]

Originally Posted by CaliTerp07

What I do: I teach middle school algebra and algebra remediation

Do I like it?: Oh my gosh, yes. Most days, at least. Some days the kids drive me batty, but 9 times out of 10 I come home busting up laughing at something they did or said. Proof: http://middleschoolsafari.blogspot.com/ It is a ton of work--I was at school for almost 12 hours today, came home and put in another 2--but the rewards when a kid *gets it* are incredible.

Do you need a degree for it? Yes, and most places are leaning towards requiring a masters within a few years of starting.

How I ended up here: It was a roundabout path. I have undergraduate degrees in information systems and operations management (basically giant integrated computer systems and how to optimize them). I worked for a big 4 consulting firm for 4ish years building enterprise software systems for the military. Realized I was miserable, and that I didn't need the money anymore since I had stability in my husband (which is a huge blessing, I know), so I finally got up the guts to go back to school on the weekends for my masters and make the career switch. It's been awesome.

I’ve never seen your blog and now just spent half the morning reading it - hilarious!!!

It does take a special person to teach middle school! I teach high school and even the 9th graders scare me! I’ve had mostly 11th and 12th graders for about 12 years now, and it suits me just fine - they almost have a frontal lobe at that point

What do I do: See above
Do I like it: LOVE it. I love working with teenagers, my colleagues are awesome, and its very rewarding.
Granted the pay sucks given the hours you put in, and the politics of public school teaching suck even more, but its still worth it. (And probably why teachers get dumped on so much - I think our legislators know on some level most of us would do it for free.)

Do you need a degree: Yeppers.

How I ended up here: I’m not quite sure. I’m thinking there was an alien abduction at some point.
Seriously, I fell in to it when I went to grad school. Part of my scholarship required teaching, and they were more serious about it than most GTA programs so I had to actually learn about teaching. Turns out I was actually pretty good at it.
When grad school finished, DH and I were toying with Peace Corps or being real adults, and when he was offered a job here, real adults won out. I found a job nearby at an orphanage/home for children as one of their teachers. That was awesome but emotionally exhausting and I had to get out after 5 years. I ended up at the local high school. The rest as they say is history.

[SoCrafty]

I am an appeals coordinator for a major insurance company. You get medical services that aren't cover and you're mad, you write in a letter...I'm basically the person who reads your benefits and decides if the company should pay for it or not. If its not a benefit issue and a medical necessity issue I send it off to a nurse or physician to do.

I love this job

I do not have a degree, but I've been in some facet of health care (pharmacy [which I do have a certificate for] and appeals) for about 8 or so years, and I'm working on my coding degree.

[BostonBanker]

What I do: Full time real job is as an analyst in an environmental testing company.

Do I like it?: I love the work. I love (most) of the people I work with. I despise the company I work for. I'm hoping to use my experience here to transfer to a different company at some point. Just trying to work out where I want to settle down.

Do you need a degree for it?: Yes, some sort of science degree with lab work in the background. We obviously have a lot of environmental science majors. My degree was actually animal science - I did the entire pre-vet curriculum, but knew I didn't want to go to vet school.

How I ended up here: I worked in a lot of animal related fields out of college. I taught dog training classes for a few years, worked as an animal control officer, and managed horse barns. I finally got completely fed up with animal people (we are all completely nuts), and decided I wanted out. I'd always loved lab work in college. This place was hiring, and I knew someone working there.

[Brattina88]

What do you do for a living?
Preschool teacher during the school year, and in the summer I am in charge of the school age summer camp.
Do you like it?
I love love love thes summer camp, it is so much fun! We go on field trips every day, we keep the kids active and fit, and we also learn about so many things, our community, and lots of character building skills. Since I've had a taste of it its been really hard to go back down to preschool. I like that job, too, but it has its days... Usually the other staff is MUCH more challenging than things like classroom management.
Did you need a degree for it? Yes all the leads have to have an Assoc. degree at least.
How I ended up here: I took ECE in high school, and was working at a day care (that I really didn't like). A couple months after I graduated I had the opportunity to work part time at the Early Learning Center I am at now, and I jumped on it. The part time allowed for me to continue going to school, and once I got my degree I was promoted to Lead teacher, the timing was just about perfect. I volunteered for the summer thing, because I knew they were scrambling and didn't know what to do, they were going to have to hire somebody. I never knew I'd love it this much!

[FG167]

I'm currently unemployed as we just uprooted from my home state of MI and moved to TN. It's driving me CRAZY but we've only been here a week so I guess I need to work on my patience.

What I do: I'm a Medical Laboratory Scientist/Med Tech/Medical Technologist/MT/Clinical Laboratory Scientist - yeah, all those names have been applied since I got my degree 3+ years ago. I started working in a hospital as a generalist running testing on 3rd shift so mostly really, really sick people in ER or the cancer unit kids. Then I switched to an autoimmune/allergy testing reference lab where we did a variety of testing but mainly focused on testing kids for life threatening peanut allergies.

Do I like it?: I do. I love helping people without having to do the whole patient contact thing. The pay is good...the hard part is finding a job with good hours.

Do you need a degree for it?: Yup, need a Bachelor's, to pass a certification test, and then some states require a state license. That's my hang up right now - MI does not require a state license but TN does so I'm waiting the 6-8 weeks while they process my information. I sent it in in plenty of time but the paperwork to be sent by my school was sent incorrectly so I had to re-ask them to send it again....

How I ended up here: I started as pre-vet but hated the large animal sciences (cows in particular, and pigs), switched to zoology but wasn't very happy with the potential pay scale and wasn't sure where I would end up living would have a zoo, then to nursing, which I *hated* before I found a field that combined the sciences I loved, with helping others, with no patient contact and good pay.

I have taught pet performance classes and hated it. I loved the people and dogs but it was so time consuming and the owner of the facility micromanaged which is one of my *biggest* pet peeves...there is a bomb detection facility here that has expressed interest numerous times in hiring me for a K-9 handler or facility trainer but they haven't followed through so I don't know if that will happen or not. I'm also very seriously pursuing trying to get into the crime scene forensics lab testing - that would be 100% ideal and I'm hoping that will happen for me...but, honestly, I'm a workaholic and any job that pops up first will be what I take. If I don't have something in one month, I'm going to scoop a third shift job and deal with the fact that it makes me miserably sick. I can't NOT work for this long!

ETA: OMG the blog, it's amazing, I've forwarded it to my teaching friends I've been reading it since I saw this thread - love!

[sparks19]

Oh i forgot to answer "how I ended up here"

I have no idea lol

I never even wanted kids but then found out i was going to be a mom and there was suddenly meaning tO my life. Being a stay at home mom was my calling.

As for being a TA at a preschool that pretty much fell in my lap. We joined our church a few months prior and Out of the blue (shortly after hubby left his job and was looking for something new) the pastors wife called me saying the preschool she worked at was looking for a TA and that Hannah could come with me. I had the interview with the director, she hired me on the spot and we had our first official school after summer camP was thursday And it was awesome

[k9krazee]

Originally Posted by Dizzy

My other half is a funeral director, but he didn't need a degree (granted, he's the 5th generation in a family business). They do need license though. He also loves it, but its very demanding on his time.

Funeral service is different in every state in the US and I love hearing the differences in other countries too!! 5 generations I awesome! I work at a family owned firm and they are on the 3rd generation and there are now 7 total funeral homes in the family. My OH is also a Funeral Director and I/we can totally relate to the long hours.

Some states you need an associates degree, some a bachelor degree (Michigan) and some states you don't a degree or to be licensed (Colorado). Some states you need to do a two year internship (Florida) and some 6 months.

I forgot to answer the how part:

I stumbled into funeral service. I wanted to be a vet and with my pre-vet degree an associates in pre-mortuary science "came with". So I had all of the required classes for mortuary school. I knew I wouldn't make it into vet school so my plan was to go to mortuary school for a year to earn my bachelor degree, get a 4.0 and apply to vet school. I went, got a 4.0, stumbled into a live in apprenticeship and never ever want to do anything else! I love meeting all sorts of families and doing my part to help make things a little easier during their most difficult times. I work for hugs and thank you cards

[~Dixie's_Mom~]

-What do you do for a living? [B]I work as an associate at a certain clothing store.[\B]
-Do you like it? [B]Honestly no. It's not for me. But they are wonderful people and very accommodating to me. It's a good job, just not for me.[\B]
-Did you need a degree for it? [B]No, lol.[\B]


I plan to go to school soon, hopefully for the next semester, def by next fall if not sooner. I'll likely go for music but I'm not sure yet. If not I'm considering possibly getting a degree for childhood development/child education. Like to be a daycare/preschool teacher. Heck maybe I could teach preschool kids music lol. My dream is to be a touring/recording artist with my sister. We're singer/songwriters. But I'd also like to have something to fall back on if that doesn't work out for us.

[Dizzy]

Originally Posted by k9krazee

Funeral service is different in every state in the US and I love hearing the differences in other countries too!! 5 generations I awesome! I work at a family owned firm and they are on the 3rd generation and there are now 7 total funeral homes in the family. My OH is also a Funeral Director and I/we can totally relate to the long hours.

Some states you need an associates degree, some a bachelor degree (Michigan) and some states you don't a degree or to be licensed (Colorado). Some states you need to do a two year internship (Florida) and some 6 months.

I'd love to be a funeral arranger, keep trying to get into the business, but not going to happen LOL. We'd kill each other Plus I don't speak Welsh. He works his arse off... but that's more to do with his work ethic than anything else. They have a large 'patch' they cover, and when you're multi-generational, you tend to have families who come back over and over. You can't say no, so holidays, weekends etc go out the window!!!!

[LostAndConfused]

What I do: I do a few different things. The branch of the company I work for does all of the logistics for IBM. One part of my job is shipping crap into IBM locations and the other part is shipping crap out of an IBM plan in MN.

Do I like it?: Well, the hours are fine and they give me a paycheck, so it's better than being unemployed. I don't do unemployed well. Unfortunately, the better I do my job, the more tasks they heap on me. I was hired to just ship stuff into IBM. Then they trained 2 of us on the 'shipping stuff out' bit. The other person left in mid July and they haven't replaced her yet. Plus, since the shipping location ships the last 2 weekends of the end of the quarter I have to work them. Guess what the falls between the last 2 weekends of December? If you guessed Christmas, you'd be right. And guess who can't take vacation time to go home to visit family? If you guessed this girl, you'd be right.


Do you need a degree for it?: I have a degree, but I don't think any of my co-workers do.