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Become a care assistant - among (many) other things, it might allow you the opportunity to work on Crikey's ward... 😀
Sorry, we don't have care assistants, more's the pity...
I'm feeling that I've come across all wrong, and I did say I would give over, but I'm not against anyone trying to have a fulfilling job. I just feel that the whole 'my job is really important and satisfying' thing is not available to so many people, so if you want to go for it, go for it, but appreciate that so many people never get the chance, so many people just work because they have to and never get the chance to think about a really good job.
I know what I'm trying to say but it's just not expressible... 🙁
I know what I'm trying to say but it's just not expressible
Don't worry - I know what you were getting at... not least that many, [i]many[/i] people don't have the luxury of deciding.
Care assistants: interesting - they've long been part of the critical care teams in the hospital I know best... mind you, the future clearly belongs to band 3/4s (aka the new SENs!). 8)
We've never had them on my ITU, but then again, we never even had a ward clerk; the nurses did everything, even some of the domestic stuff, and that historical legacy makes it really difficult to introduce them because every role is already done.
Anyway, I give up because I can't get across what I mean!
I hate my day job in a customer support role in a call centre, but have now gone part time so I can go to college to retrain.
I'm really close to jacking it in but as its the only regular wage at the moment with the wife also being a student, it's making things difficult, but the job is impacting in to my private life so I don't think I can stick it until the end of my course.
As a secondary job I work for a firework company and it's brilliant, but could I do it full time? I'm not sure it might take the fun and excitement away.
I think that both [url= http://www.singletrackworld.com/forum/topic/career-changewhat-do-you-do-for-a-living-me-content#post-2917694 ]darrel[/url] and [url= http://www.singletrackworld.com/forum/topic/career-changewhat-do-you-do-for-a-living-me-content#post-2917723 ]neilsonwheels[/url] would disagree that they didn't have a chance or choice. Exactly who are the people that don't have this same chance or make the same choice?
we never even had a ward clerk
Blimey...
I completely see what you are saying crikey.. anyone with a degree or qualifications has far more choice over what they do. Lots of people don't have that option, also having a partner to help take the strain if you chose to retrain, or family help etc, again some people just don't have that option and fulfilment in their vocation just doesn't come into it. At the end of the day the first and foremost is to keep a roof over your head and food on the table and we should sometimes take a moment to remember how lucky we are to sit moaning about job satisfaction on a forum, often on work time 🙂
Lots of people don't have that option
That's beyond patronising it's simply insulting.
IT Manager here. 😉
Although I actually know IT so that probably makes me stand out a bit.
Moving more towards management now but I'm relishing the challenge and I'll always be getting my hands dirty. I'm particularly looking forwards to delegating all the long hours hard work to other people and taking the credit like half my previous bosses did. Pays OK too, I could earn a lot more in a different business but I quite like where I am now. Cycle commute 4-5 days a week, mostly my own boss, unfettered internet access.
So yep, I enjoy it.
What do you mean don Simon? it is neither insulting or patronising! 😯
I suspect I do the the same as petergriffin but I view the negatives he has mentioned as minor irritations. I've been in many jobs from sales through to management and running my own business. I'll never be rich but I wouldn't swap any of them for what I do now as the job satisfaction far greater.
Maxray, do you honestly believe that there are people in modern Britain who don't have the opportunity to free education and all that this offers them or that even if they don't take advantage of this opportunity that they can not enter further or higher education to further improve themselves? Of course there are chances and of course there are choices and to say that people don't have that option is quite frankly insulting.
What are you on?! :s lots of people are not academic, which limits their choices. Lots of people end up in life situations which forces their hand and they have to take a different path. You are trying to say that anyone could be a nuclear physicist? Frankly no. Was everyone in your class at school high achieves? Id wager some struggled in your year in school to get the qualifications they needed to have more choice in their line of work. It's not insulting, its just observing real life. Some people are good with their hands, others with their minds. Everyone is different. Tbh, suggesting anyone who hasn't got some high paid fulfilling job is because of their failure to obtain the right qualifications is pretty insulting! Go and have a word on your self.
. You are trying to say that anyone could be a nuclear physicist? Frankly no
No, but I am saying that everyone does have the chance to give it a go, or anything else they choose to do either academic or not, if they want and to say that they don't have the option to do so is completely ridiculous. Success is not just academic and there is nothing stopping anyone from being successful in their chosen field.
Lots of people don't have that option
Would you prefer ignorant over insulting?
The only person removing the option of success in your life is YOU.
Computer stuff over here - I really enjoy it, as each day has a new problem to solve, and I am of an inquisitive nature.
I'm interested in the world of IT/tech as a hobby anyway, so I don't mind spending so much of my life awake working somewhere.
What draws you toward being a postie? Lack of responsibility? Being unaccountable for large parts of the day? Simplicity (you have your round, you do it and go home)?
I worked as a driver for ParcelForce for a year and really quite enjoyed it because of all the reasons above. But I guarantee that if you have half a brain (and it sounds like you do) you'll be bored to the point of suicide quite quickly.
If you're really suffering from the Sunday work-fear, then yes, a change of career is a good plan. But go sideways, not down. Or disappear at an odd tangent - I did and have never been happier as a full time wedding photographer.
Not knocking posties by the way - you can still lead a devestatingly, catastrophically interesting life away from work (Bukowski)...
I just feel that the whole 'my job is really important and satisfying' thing is not available to so many people, so if you want to go for it, go for it, but appreciate that so many people never get the chance, so many people just work because they have to and never get the chance to think about a really good job.
Millions of people don't even have a bucket to crap in. I will not feel angst when placing my Western aerse over some white porcelain later this morning. This is STW - people have angst over wheels FFS - the step up to a job (probably their biggest time consumer apart from sleep) is not much. You can be thankful for what you do have without wringing your hands and beating yourself with nettles every time you do anything.
Would you prefer ignorant over insulting?
It's not ignorant either.. you are like a dog with a bone with this one it would seem 🙂
I will try once more as you are struggling... not everyone has equal options in life. Your upbringing, things that happen to you or your family, the current areas of need within employment available to you and so on. Yes, choices you make take you down a path which opens, or closes doors but sometimes this free choice you so blindly seem to think is there all the time for everyone just isn't.
If you had to leave school at 16 to care for a parent or loved one for example, this is a choice that is essentially put on you and as such you may not get to go to uni, get that nuclear physics degree etc.
Maybe YOU have had a life full of oppurtunity and have made the most of it, if so fair play to you but don't presume that everyone in life has the same open access that you were lucky to have.
Sounds like something Norman Tebbit would say. 🙄The only person removing the option of success in your life is YOU.
If you had to leave school at 16 to care for a parent or loved one for example, this is a choice that is essentially put on you and as such you may not get to go to uni, get that nuclear physics degree etc.
These people are either the exeption to the general rule, or use it as an excuse.
Why are you using an extreme example of nuclear physics to illustrate your point, there are millions of people who are content and successful in their jobs who aren't nuclear physisists?
Maybe
The one sensible thing you've said.
Sounds like something Norman Tebbit would say.
And have you ever stopped to think that maybe getting off your sorry arse and making a bit of effort to improve yourself is a bit better than crying that the world owes you a living? Have you ever considered that the good things in live might require a bit of effort? Have you ever thought how wonderful the state school system is that gives you free access to education and once in this free state run education system you are on the path to your Nuclear Phisics degree? Have you ever stopped to consider that this is not communist Russia and you do have a choice? If more people started to look positively and motivated people instead of pigeon holing people as losers, perhaps this country would be a little better,no?
Just like wot I done!
Finance Director. I usually love what I do - I'm stimulated, well-rewarded, and mostly am allowed a great deal of freedom. Obviously we all have bad days, but there are not too many of those.
I've had to work extremely hard to get there, though I'm not entirely sure that I know how it's happened - there are many people who are much better than I am in a technical and managerial sense. I'm not a great political infighter, nor do I charm people particularly.
The only real downside is the workload, which is less than ideal from a work : home perspective. But I made this choice, I have no desire to change, and I'd be useless doing anything else. I'd hate to be a postie (as an example); I really need that mental stimulation.
Financial security figures highly for me, but you could double what I'm paid and it wouldn't alter my output. Probably the same if you halved it, to be honest.
I'm a Key Account manager and I you could say I have that 'middle class' problem with coping with the stress. After 3 years of earning great money i've decided its not worth the stress. I'm making a whole new lifestyle choice which will mean having to move with no partner to support me. The uncertaintities are causing me lack of sleep but I know that when its all over and i'm settled in another role/house/lifestyle that i'll be happy. With crisis comes opportunity someone once told me. Good advice. You have the power over your destinty...always.
nickf - do you need a very efficient strategic planner / analysis manager?
I used to be the Sales Director of a major company in IT/telecoms that effectively went bust (55,000 people globally to nothing in two years - pretty good eh?). I had a really bad time - making lots of people redundant, closing down operations, etc. I didn't know that it had an effect on my health until having a total breakdown a year or so after I left, whilst in my next job - which I also hated! I had a young family, bills to pay, and an expensive lifestyle.....then 6 months off work with serious depression, no money, etc....
What did I do..First off I went on a course with a psychoanalyst to understand more about what was wrong with me. Then, I followed a bit of a dream, which was to break out of the rat race and do my own thing; whilst realising that 6 months off with depression and a fairly nasty looking medical record had probably made me unemployable! I set up my own consultancy business and have been doing that for the best part of 10 years, and I love it! To be able to do it we have to make some shifts in lifestyle and expenditure but hey, it's only money!
I wish I'd done it years before and I absolutely wish I hadn't let myself get so wrapped up in the corporate world that I let myself get so Ill (I won't go into details but those of you with any empathy with this story may well know what this is like and where you choose to take yourself).
The lesson of my story is that you MUST find something to do that's fulfilling and is a good fit with your skills and aptitude.....if that means that you walk tomorrow, then just do it and make that change....
The upshot of this is that I can sit in fornt of my PC on a Friday morning on STW, ten go out for a ride, before my first client meeting of the day at 12:30! Life is now very good indeed!
(NOte - I have cut a VERY long story VERY short above!!!!)
Don Simon, the best predictor of a child's academic achievement in the UK is social class. Not pretty but it's true. Free schooling is not the be all and end all.
Don Simon, the best predictor of a child's academic achievement in the UK is social class.
Maybe so, but the availability of free schooling gives them the opportunity to break the cycle, no? That's all I'm saying, if you want something badly enough, you'll go for it. And here in the UK everyone has that opportunity. 😀
I think the figures are that an average middle class kid overtakes a clever working class kid by 7.
You've about as much chance of dodging that bullet as taking up a different religion to your parents.
Not read all of the above (seemed to be going off topic a bit!!) but,
I worked as an electrical engineer for 25 years. I say "worked as" as I had no qualifications but was bloody good at my job and worked my way up. But I hated it. In the end I became very ill (other factors contributed) and couldn't work for a long time.
As I got better, I took stock of my situation. Decided I wanted to work with, and to help, people.
Looked at several NHS careers and decided on Occupational Therapy. Did a 1 year full time access course, and start a 3 year degree in 2 week's time.
Thing is, I wouldn't have done this without getting ill first. That re-set the clocks for me. I couldn't have imagined not earning for 4 years+ and then maybe not to get a job at the end of it.
BUT it can be done (a flexible mortgage helps).
If it helps I'm 42 years old, no savings, not much of a pension and definitely (and proudly) working class.
ps. completely disagree that everyone that goes through our education system has the same opportunities; privileged, blinkered and utter tosh.
I think the figures are that an average middle class kid overtakes a clever working class kid by 7.
I'm AWESOME then as I was taken from my working class background and put on the King's School scholarship exam shortlist. 😀
I worked as an electrical engineer for 25 years. I say "worked as" as I had no qualifications but was bloody good at my job and worked my way up.
And what stopped you taking it further, oh yes, that's right.
But I hated it.
Not a lack of opportunity, not a lack of chance. You prevented yourself from pushing it further.
If it helps I'm 42 years old, no savings, not much of a pension and definitely (and proudly) working class.
And long may it continue, I salute you.
Stanley, its a pity you hated the engineering industry, electrical engineer is what i do (for the last 7 years....sparks for 10 before that) and I still pretty much enjoy it....reasonably interesting and challenging...not too stressful and for me pretty varied....office, site, survey visits, meetings in fancy architects offices and so on...I am due to be made redundant next week and have managed to get 2 firm job offers already and a third potential one if I and lucky, so for a trade or career I guess things could be worse....my wife works for the NHS and there's no way I could cope with her job.
You wouldn't want to do it (probably) but you asked...
IT. Batch automation specialist. Background in automated software distribution working for a couple of large banks in the north. Pays well, very stable job and since moving to my current role a year ago, I'm really enjoying work for the first time in years, helped by a really good bunch of people I work closely with and less of the red tape you have to jump through in the banking sector. See my boss once a fortnight or so and I'm pretty flexible where I work. 3 days in the office this week, sat at home today. Last week was the first week since the end of May I'd done a full week in the office.
In my experience, some IT roles are awful. I've landed on my feet with this one!
Can i add some Clash lyrics to this thread..."jack your useless employment in forever tonight, or shut your mouth and pretend you enjoy it"
Those lines always inspired me to do something about my crap jobs, being on the dole with no qaulifications, a bankruptcy, a house repossession. Made me go back to college and eventually qualify as a psychiatric nurse and now i work with young people and hopefully can make a difference, and apart from the politics of the nhs my job is great, most of the time.
Don simon,
You seem to think that everyone has to aspire to be "their best"?
What stopped me taking it further? I didn't want to. "Taking it further" was the last thing I wanted to do.
I didn't "push it further" as it was making me ill. Lots of pressure, bosses only in it for the money, back-stabbing colleagues, etc. What good can come out of that? Unless of course you only aspire to have a "top" job, a flash car and a stomach ulcer.
Hey Donks, the last 4 or 5 years of my previous career sounds similarish to yours. I was designing automation process control stuff- drives, plc's, etc. Was under constant pressure to pull in ~£60 per hour though. Felt like I was ripping customers off. No job satisfaction. Call-outs and long hours too 🙁
Had a few offers to go back to the industry, but NO WAY- not for me 🙂
daveyboywonder - has the "rationalisation" settled down yet? I still can't quite believe I got out/they let me go when they did 🙂
My dad's always said if work was enjoyable you'd be paying them. 😀