Lois & Clark Forums Forums General Discussion Off Topic What do you do for a living?

I work at a newspaper/printing press that handles several regional daily papers and a host of smaller papers as well. It's fun reading the news before it hits the stands...

Suez,
I am glad to hear your son is doing well. And thank you for your encourgement.

I'm a registered nurse and I used to be an OB specialist, although I've worked in a number of other fields, but I've been retired for a number of years. My second job was raising 7 kids. I came out of retirement last year for 5 months to take care of my mother, who had Alzheimers, and it was the hardest job I've ever done. I am now comfortably back in retirement from nursing again, and I hope never to go back.

I'm still a homemaker and still very busy. I always thought that after I got the kids graduated from school my life would slow down a bit. Hah! Now I take care of my handicapped brother, babysit my grandkids several days a week, and am trying to handle a house renovation so we can sell it and move out of California so my hubby can retire. Maybe someday things *will* quiet down, but I don't see a lot of chance for the near future. In the meantime, I'm trying to write fanfic just to relax!

Nan

I'm a systems engineer for a nationally ranked hospital corporation. I work on the clinical lab/anatomic pathology side of things keeping three systems afloat. I do a lot of programming for cancer research/reporting, which has afforded me the opportunity to travel to a lot of meetings in really awesome cities on my company's dime.

I write fic because, otherwise, I'd have programming code rambling around in my head at night.

My fancy title is "Clinical Coordinator of Behavioral Therapy Services", which basically means that I'm a therapist who supervises other therapists in a psychiatric center at a local hospital. Well, that and whatever other jobs my boss has me do. Currently that means I also "unofficially" supervise all of the nursing staff and techs as well. I still keep my hand in direct service though and I do on-call work for a local mental health center, which has resulted in numerous visits to some of the finer jails, hospitals, and personal care homes in the area.

I originally intended to enter law enforcement and actually took the civil service exam for the U.S. Marshall service just a few weeks before being offered my first job in mental health. I liked the work and dove into it full time, but 18 years later there are still times when I ask myself..."How did I get here again?"

I take pocket money from my grandparents.

Seriously, where are all the students?

I'm a second-year Pharmacy student (expected studies time is 5 years). I haven't decided what I'm going to do next; there are good career prospects, though. I may work for some pharmaceutics company, or open my own pharmacy (I think that would be a good idea once I'm ready to get married and have kids... not as stressful).

I've had two paid jobs so far... one was act as a translator/intermediary for some friend's company during their collaboration with a Spanish-speaking company. The other one was tutor a girl in English. It lasted two months, until it was obvious our personalities didn't match, to put it nicely

See ya,
AnnaBtG.

I just saw Mrs. Mosley's sig line:

Gee! I've been quoted.

I write for a living. Not full time but enough to earn me a couple hundred dollars a month on average. Were I more disciplined, I could probably earn more, but I'm enjoying my empty nest.

And Mercy said:
ROFL! I hear you. I have the same plan, just in the humanities. You think it's bad in science, try being one of us. Although, I have been fortunate to not be in debt up until now thanks to killing myself for fellowship money and the occasional chance to teach the ungrateful masses how to communicate outside the country.

I actually had a real job once. It was a great job, lots of opportunities and wonderful people. But, it wasn't for me. I decided I'd like to be paid a mere pittance to speak more languages than a UN translator. I also traded a personal life for the chance to tip-toe through the political minefield that is academia in the hopes of someday achieving that gold medal that is tenure.

Strangely enough, I actually love what I do...most days. I wouldn't mind a raise, though.

It's so intriguing to see what you all do all day! And I'm impressed by all of you! I haven't been around a lot lately because of what I do all day.

I'm a third year pediatric resident at a large tertiary care Children's Hospital - and am currently interviewing for a pediatric cardiology fellowship position. They keep assuring me that at some point in the future I WILL get my life back, but I don't think I believe them anymore. <g> This year has been a little bit better time-wise because I've had a few elective months. But spending the last 2 and 1/2 years on 30 hour in-house call shifts every 4th night has been tiring.
I have to say a huge "Thank You" to all the nurses in the group...and everyone else working in anything psychiatric/beahioral or healthcare related. You make my job doable and bearable!!!

But honestly, I love what I do, I adore the people I work with (most of them), I love the kids and the families that I take care of ...and though I'd like a little more sleep occasionally, I wouldn't trade it for anything.

Hey Mona, if you've got any questions about pre-med/med-school, etc. let me know. I worked during pre-med, but not during med school. It's definitely doable.

Jill

I'm a second-year civil engineering student.

I've been in telecom for most of my career doing a variety of jobs, mostly in operations and development. Right now, I'm a Business Analyst, which involves gathering information about how people do their jobs, making job flows and suggesting to management how to make the jobs better/more efficient. I've also done quite a bit of technical writing when procedures need to be written for training.

As for the future... I'm a bit opposite Mona in that I *want* to become a preschool teacher. I've done the academic coursework in Montessori early childhood education and am just waiting for the opportunity to do the student teaching to earn my certification. Mostly, I'm stuck for now because of financial concerns.

BJ

At the moment I mostly panic.

I am a student just finished my BA in Geography and English Literature and I am reading for an Honours year in Historical Geography.

I have published a book before and I am slowly working on a novel but college has to come first. Everyone thinks I will be a writer but I don't see how I can support myself that way unless I write pulp fiction or Mills & Boon. The former would kill me, the latter would be doable but might bore me.

I want to go into publishing but I might have to move to do so and I like where I am. :-(

And I don't get paid for it but I have a weekly column called Perth Diary in a newspaper in Sri Lanka. If you want to read it you can subscribe to it at http://www.sundayleader.lk or you can read it for free at my blog at http://www.xanga.com/ladykiadri .

Cheers, The Little Tornado.

The Little Tornado

Well I see that this thread still hasn't died out. I hadn't planned on participating, but thought that if I couldn't inspire anyone with what I do, I could perhaps be an object lesson for those on the boards who are still in their studies.

STAY IN SCHOOL LEST YOU END UP LIKE ME!

I did okay in high school (I was valedictorian of a class of 500) but that don't mean nothing in college. I enrolled at the University of Minnesota's Institute of Technology. I won't bore you all with the details, but due to a combination of financial concerns and a failure to find a focused course of study, I didn't finish.

So for over thirty years now I've been a classic wage slave. Currently I work for a company that sells and installs commercial furniture systems. I work in the warehouse. That means I unload trucks, check in and put away the product, then I later pull the product from the racks to load our own trucks for jobs going out the next day. Sound like fun?

The daily workload is not consistant. Somedays are fairly reasonable, then the next you'll be inundated with trucks and product. It's the nature of any service oriented business. You are at the mercy of your customers and have to make hay when you can.

The job is quite physical in nature. I am required to be able to consistantly lift heavy boxes and objects, and I am on my feet walking on a concrete floor all day. When it's really cold, unloading a trailer at an open dock door can be a treat. One that is only topped by unloading a metal trailer in the high heat of mid summer. Our warehouse is NOT air-conditioned.

The sad part of this whole thing is... I don't hate my job. It's probably the best job I've had to date. The pay isn't particularly good, but I get by. The most attractive part of the job is that I like the guys I work with and we get along quite well. My immediate boss is a good guy and is someone who will back up his people as opposed to his predessesor who would only worry about covering his own butt.

Last time I was in Chicago for the Con I got Fred (my boss) a statue of Mr. Incredible because he looks just like him. The statue sits on his desk.

So, while it's not the end of the world if you find yourself as one of the myriad of those who don't have careers but merely have to 'work for a living', it's better to find what you really would like to do.

In that regard, take your schooling seriously. College can be a lot of fun, but don't loose sight of the prize at the end.

Not everyone is cut out for college. But there are several good alternatives, like trade schools and tech centers. Do you know how much a plumber or an electrician makes?

Money is nice, but the most important thing is find something you enjoy doing and be happy doing it.

Tank (who steps down from his little soapbox)

Tank sagely said: Amen. I wish someone had gotten that into my skull when I was in school.

BJ

Your hubby may know what he's talking about. It took a few years of planning to get me home. Before the kids came around, we put the grand majority of my salary into paying off college and medical loans so that we wouldn't be bogged down with debt when I wanted to come home. We also selected a smallish home to begin with, one we could afford on one income. I love staying at home, but I hate stressing over bills. We choose to live poorer than we have to since the kids will only be young once.

Elisabeth
who is also stepping off of her soapbox (and wondering why Tank's soapbox is prettier than hers)

You'd also be surprised at how much work costs sometimes. By the time you count daycare for kids [especially if you have 2 or 3], extra gas, possibly a more reliable car if you have a commute, work clothes, lunch out, etc., it's not always financially the best decision. There's a lot of expenses that aren't always immediately apparent. There may be other reasons, but sometimes, the financial aspect of it isn't as big as you might think.

I teach parttime at a community college. Last fall, they gave me three online classes and one seated. I turned the seated one down flat. From a purely financial standpoint, it wasn't worth it. That doesn't include that DS was due the week classes started, though he was early and I would have had to put him in daycare for 9-12 hours a week by the time it was all said and done. After daycare [3 kids] and gas, I would have brought home less than $10 a week which was totally not worth it. And DD6 started kindergarten and I would have gotten out of class less than an hour before her bus would arrive and that would have been pushing it at best.

I'm fortunate in that I can make decent money working from home but I am so ready for our finances to be such that I can stay home and not work at all or work for DH if he starts a private practice etc.

Food for thought .
Carol

I just graduated from college in 2004, so I can't necessarily call what I have a career or anything yet, but I work in the digital forensics field. It isn't anything like CSI portrays it, let me tell you. Things don't take five minutes to process. They take weeks/months to get accurate analysis. I never thought I'd be at a place in my life where I can honestly say working with 25,000 HTML files is a small matter barely worth a ho-hum. That being said, the work can be very very tedious, or extremely interesting. It's really fun running into new problems to solve almost every day. It's not really fun reviewing years worth of deleted computer data looking for the veritable needle in a haystack.

I'm an environmental sanitarian specializing in restaurant inspections. I've done this for 18 years, and really enjoy it. My job is a combination of training, inspection and enforcement (when necessary). It's one of those jobs that everyone knows about but very few people actually have *gasp* a health inspector in their family. Quoting my youngest daughter, "Dad, I really don't want to know how bad this place is. Just tell me if the food will kill me or not."