Career changes

[Charlene]

Charlene, you sound like a Web developer just waiting to come out.

Many of you have had very interesting career changes! I think I read about Paul's change from doctor to nurse. People tend to think that taking a step "down" is a bad thing. I really think all jobs should have more respect. I always try to be nice to people in retail and restaurant because they get so much abuse.

As for the giving thing, I made a decision a few years ago to quit buying Christmas presents for my family. Instead, I bought them goats, chickens and llamas from Heifer International. That was the first time a gift from me ever made my mother cry tears of joy. Even my nieces and nephews thought it was cool.

That would be interesting. I've put together a web page through the free space that my ISP provides, using their "wizard" since I only know a smattering of HTML. It's at (deep breath for their humungously long URL):
http://home.att.net/~charlene.emerson/scrapbook.html That took a long time to put together but it was fun.

However, I know my husband would not support me if I wanted to go back to school again. He'd say "Why didn't you take this kind of class instead of the flowers when the phone company was paying for it? I'm not paying for this!" Now, when I win the lottery . . . . . .

[Jennie]

I'm lucky. I changed careers when I was still in college and could just double up on classes without taking years off work. I thought I wanted to be a music teacher.

Now I'm still teaching. I taught elementary for years, went back for a master's in teaching French, and now am teaching Spanish and French.

If I had stuck with teaching music, I'm afraid that the hard parts of the job would take away some of the joy and escape I find in music. My colleagues who are music teachers have to have such perseverance to muddle through all the classroom management and administrative parts.

Now, there are good and bad days, occasionally a really rough year. I think the desire for a career change comes when the balance goes way off. When you're feeling like your efforts bring too little fruit, or like you're not asked to contribute according to your skills.

Deciding to change careers is a momentous thing indeed. Like getting out of a bad relationship. I appreciate the honesty and courage of people who take that step.

Jennie

[Paul]

Interesting thread. I hope that you find what you're looking for, SBF, whatever it may be. It's funny how many of us have trouble defining exactly what it is that we want to do with ourselves. I finished my first career about a year ago. In that life I ran a new and used car dealership.

It was quite complicated work that involved wearing many many different hats every day. There were many days that I hated getting out of bed in the morning. When times were good and we were selling lots of cars I loved it. It can be a lot of fun when its busy because you can brush off a lot of the nonsense that comes with the territory. When its slow though... its a totally different story. The last few years were grueling to say the least. It was a slow cycle in the business and our location had really dried up. We had been there nearly 50 years and the best time to move would have been back in 2000 or so but we stuck it out as long as we could.

I started there when I was 17 washing cars and scrubbing crap off of shop equipment for $3.10 per hour. I finished as General Manager with considerably better pay and a lot more on my plate to say the least. Looking back, I don't really miss it in part because it had gotten to be such a grind. I don't think that I would want to get back into the car business today because of what it has become. Not that I'm better than all that, mind you, but the business has changed so much from what I learned it was supposed to be about. Brewer Paul stayed in the same field when he changed tracks but I don't think I can do that and keep my sanity.

It's not the haggling of customers that bothers me, that's fun. I made a lot of good friends over the years of customers and their family members buying their cars at the dealership. I guess I could best say that it's the whole face of the business that's changed. I learned mostly old-school rules about running a dealership. It makes a lot of sense. A lot of what was going on in the business when I got out, I wouldn't even participate in due to my not being comfortable with some aspects of it. For example, a lot of dealers today will have a customer sign multiple finance contracts at the time of purchase. Then after the customer leaves whichever one gets "hung" is the one the customer has to pay on. The dealership tears up the rest. In the event that none of the paper can get hung then the dealership has to go and get the car back. Keep in mind that this is sometimes WEEKS after the customer has picked up the car. This scenario is called a "rollback". I never did that kind of crap because I have always learned that everything needs to be ship-shape before anyone takes a car home. Anyway, a lot of the big guys are doing that these days.

I could go on and on but I digress. We closed about a year ago. After that I went to Hawaii for a few months and came back because my health took a very serious turn for the worse. I nearly died but by the grace of God managed to make a full recovery. I lost about 70 pounds, shed a years old high blood pressure problem and I also wrapped up my pending divorce. So here I am. I still don't know what the hell I want to do next. I have no idea. One of the best ideas in the thread was Jim Stone's about seeing a career counselor. I'm planning a move up north in a week or so. That might be a good idea once I get settled in up there.

I'm thinking about getting into the folk music business. Maybe I'll open up a nice little acoustic instrument store and hire some good teachers to freelance there. If its a big enough space maybe I can even have some kind of performance venue. Who knows?

Well SBFluter, All I can say is good luck to you and please be assured that you are not alone in this. May you find that which stirrs your soul and inspires others because its always better when you can share your joy.

All the best,
Paul

[sbfluter]

That would be interesting. I've put together a web page through the free space that my ISP provides, using their "wizard" since I only know a smattering of HTML. It's at (deep breath for their humungously long URL):
http://home.att.net/~charlene.emerson/scrapbook.html That took a long time to put together but it was fun.

However, I know my husband would not support me if I wanted to go back to school again. He'd say "Why didn't you take this kind of class instead of the flowers when the phone company was paying for it? I'm not paying for this!" Now, when I win the lottery . . . . . .

Don't go back to school for this. They won't teach you the right things. I have no formal education in web development. I learned it myself by giving myself little projects that got bigger and bigger over the course of several years.

How I learned was on the Internet, subscribing to email lists, reading web sites like A List Apart and Evolt, buying my own domain name and getting a web hosting company that allowed me to use php and mysql and then building a web site that over 7 years got more and more complex. The site got me a job. The job taught me programming in Java and a lot about servers and the infrastructure. Not enough to call myself a programmer but enough to be a web developer.

You have begun. Just keep going.

And if you have design sense and a knack for marketing you can go way further than I can. There are enough content management systems out there to take care of the web development end nowadays. What's needed are people to help others with web marketing.

[jim stone]

Terrific story, Paul.

Diane, it certainly sounds as though you have a lot of
talent for web site development. And apparently
there are circumstances where you enjoy it.
Maybe some other
way to earn a living doing the same or related stuff?

[cowtime]

As for the giving thing, I made a decision a few years ago to quit buying Christmas presents for my family. Instead, I bought them goats, chickens and llamas from Heifer International. That was the first time a gift from me ever made my mother cry tears of joy. Even my nieces and nephews thought it was cool.

Our church raised money for this last Christmas and will be doing so again. I love Heifer Project, it is wonderful.

[chrisoff]

Don't go back to school for this. They won't teach you the right things.

Absolutely terrible advice.

As a web developer with a degree I can categorically state that I'm a much better developer for going to university.

It might not be for everybody and not everything they teach is relevent, or even current, but to tell someone not to go is really terrible advice.

[Denny]

pr your schools are better

[missy]

I've changed careers, but was lucky enough that I work at a large company, so could do so without quiting.

For 18 years I worked in an analytical lab, doing lab analysis. I've used just about every instrumentation or performed most wet chemistry methods available in the lab, and did not just "cook book" chemistry (following written methods) but did some methods development work myself.
But the company is changing, and it's not a change I want to be a part of. They are looking for analytical employees to be "project managers" and to work with PD folks, but not be out in the lab doing analysis - that's what contractors are for.

So 2 years ago, I changed jobs. I am currently one of three system administrators for our computer based chemical and raw material management system for our technical centers. We support sites all over the world, and thousands of users. We are in continual "improvement" mode because we are constantly enrolling new users and implimenting new modules (we're bring regulatory on line the first of November).

I am NOT a computer person, in that I have no idea how to code. I am the on the business side of the application, we also have IDS (IT) people supporting us on the actual computer side. I do training, data management, troubleshooting, drafting of dynamic reports and labels, testing and validating the system (it's a huge part of our QA program) etc.

I may not stay permanently at this level of the system. My boss wants me to move to a site admin and straighten out one of our sites that is hopelessly messed up as far as how they use the system.

I do use some of my lab and chemistry expertise in this job, but if you had told me I would be doing mainly computer work several years ago, I would have told YOU you were nuts. But it's worked out well.

I'm also hoping I can retire in 6 years - but that's a whole nother thread!!!!

[sbfluter]

Don't go back to school for this. They won't teach you the right things.

Absolutely terrible advice.

As a web developer with a degree I can categorically state that I'm a much better developer for going to university.

It might not be for everybody and not everything they teach is relevent, or even current, but to tell someone not to go is really terrible advice.

Well, if you want to learn how to slice images from photoshop and do all nested table layouts then yeah, go to school. If you want to learn Web Standards, then maybe go to Scotland and go to school.