What is your career/job?

Discussion in 'Science & Society' started by laladopi, Nov 19, 2008.

  1. draqon Banned Banned

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    Fraggle, how old were you when you did all those things?
     
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  3. Fraggle Rocker Staff Member

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    Let's see... I was 24 when I became a computer programmer, a project manager at 34, a program manager at 40, a consultant at 52. I've done training, writing and editing all my life but I got my first job with the title of trainer and course developer at 54, I became a published writer at 57, and my job title became technical writer and senior editor at 63.

    I've played music since my parents gave me a glockenspiel when I was 8 and I always sang in the school choirs and glee clubs. I took up the guitar and became an unpaid folksinger with a small but loyal following at 15. At 31 I discovered I was born to play the bass guitar and started playing in dance bands.

    I was 20 when I married my first wife and 34 when I embarked on the successful marriage.

    My family always had a dog or two but for some reason I became a cat person when I was around 21. My wife and I both had cats when we got married but we got back into dogs when I was about 40 and we now breed Lhasa Apsos; our last cat died many years ago. We also bred various species of parrots for several years and we still have pet birds.

    I've been going to concerts since I saw the Kingston Trio when I was 17, and I've recently seen the Cult, Shakira, the Killers, Rob Thomas, the Cure, Filter, Sheryl Crow, CSN, Kelly Clarkson, Zappa Plays Zappa, Jean-Luc Ponty, and Apocalyptica. (And a bunch of symphonies and chamber music too.) I rode my motorcycles all over the USA and much of Europe in my 20s and 30s and also competed in enduros. Since then we've taken more sedate trips by car and plane to Hawaii, Mexico, Jamaica and other places.

    I've been eating desserts for as long as I can remember and now I'm married to a chocolatiere.
     
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  5. laladopi time for change. Registered Senior Member

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    definitely, careers have nothing to with eternal happiness.
     
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  7. Mr. Hamtastic whackawhackado! Registered Senior Member

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    <weeps with pride> You've come so far laladopi...

    I was an electrical foreman. Now I'm considered too crazy to work. I suck off the government, and would become a pothead again, if I could get it locally for cheap.

    Nine Inch Nails is my band of choice. Tom Petty. Pink. King Missile. Type O Negative. GWAR. Anything from the Baroque period. Love harpsichord.
     
  8. laladopi time for change. Registered Senior Member

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    Thank you Mr. Hamstastic!

    i went to a GWAR concert once and was so disgusted, sweat people with sticky dye everywhere ew. i listen to old swing, classical, radiohead, tool, bob dylan, madvillian and pink floyd for the most part.
     
  9. Mr. Hamtastic whackawhackado! Registered Senior Member

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    lol GWAR is the hometown band around here. Not something on my playlist, but a fun show. Pink Floyd is a given. No one under 40 should be allowed to go without exposure to The Dark Side of the Moon.
     
  10. Hercules Rockefeller Beatings will continue until morale improves. Moderator

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    Nonsense. They obviously have something to do with happiness for many people.
     
  11. Fraggle Rocker Staff Member

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    That's not true. We spend more of our time at work than any other single activity (including sleeping, for many people). Your career needs to be at least a moderately positive experience or you're just wasting a huge chunk of your life!

    Not to mention, the older you get the more of a sense of responsibility you feel. You'll really regret it if what you gave back to civilization was not at least roughly equal to what you took from it.
     
  12. Fraggle Rocker Staff Member

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    We saw "The Wall" from the 16th row.
     
  13. Mr. Hamtastic whackawhackado! Registered Senior Member

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    What a memory to savor, Fraggle. Lucky you.

    laladopi, btw, said ETERNAL happiness. Afterlife or no, they have a point.
     
  14. laladopi time for change. Registered Senior Member

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    well obviously you get satisfaction of a career you love, and have been able to choose yourself, what im saying is that the everlasting effect your career can have has a limit, for the most part. there are some exceptions, like everything else.
     
  15. Fraggle Rocker Staff Member

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    Still, everyone should put a lot of effort into preparing themselves to secure a career they personally will find fulfilling. We devote more of our lives to our careers than to anything else. To have it be something that's not important leads to one of those "lives of quiet desperation."
     
  16. scorpius a realist Valued Senior Member

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    paint houses
    cant say I love it,but at 21$/hr it brings home the bacon and is pretty easy job.

    Im carpenter by trade,but got tired of working outside in all kinds of crappy weather so gave that up.
    I also tried welding at one time,its interesting but too dirty/unhealthy.
    .. learned to fly few years back,even got commercial licence,but the jobs werent there so thats just a hobby now
    would like to do more traveling but that doesnt pay anything,unfortunately.
    am also thinking about writing books..once I settle down somewhere.
     
  17. Trippy ALEA IACTA EST Staff Member

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    Currently I work for the local equivalent of the USEPA, I deal mostly with discharges to ground water, or surface water (predominantly sewage, and landfill leachate - i've seen some... Interesting things).

    Prior to this job, I worked for something like 5 years in Mental Health, but I found that very unfulfilling, and at times out right soul destroying.

    Between leaving that job and starting the one i'm currently doing, I worked for a few months at a Gold Mine doing Assaying, and sample preperation for the Assaying.

    Yes, otherwise I wouldn't be doing it (in essence).

    The mental health work was originally only meant to be a temporary job, I got my current one through a combination of hard work, persistence, and good luck. In the end they effectively head hunted me - I applied for a job, came in second, I was one of two people they interviewed, and the other person had more experience. A few months later, I recieved an email from the HR person essentially saying 'Hey, we've got a position that's an immediate start, when suites you to come in for an interview?'

    As it turns out the interview was the day after my baby girl was delivered by emergency C-section (both are well).

    The one part about my job that occasionaly gets to me, is that although it's applied science, my role is (essentially) a law enforcement role within a political organization, and there are times when the politics seems to obfuscate what's the right thing to do (if that makes sense).
     
  18. thecollage Registered Senior Member

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    clown, juggler
     
  19. geonuc Registered Senior Member

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    1. Engineer in the nuclear power industry. Specifically, I perform calculations to demonstrate that safety systems will perform as designed when required.

    2. I hate it. Along with being incredibly boring, the work is not that useful. Nuclear plant safety systems will work as designed and recalculating everything to a gnat's rear serves no purpose other than to satisfy the regulators. But it pays well. And because I'm one of the few people who do what I do, I have job security.
     
  20. dixonmassey Valued Senior Member

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    I've met two truck drivers having a degree in aerospace engineering. Having 27,000 posts under your belt, you'd better learn how to double clutch asap

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  21. draqon Banned Banned

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    your shi***ng me, dude...whatever it was they told you, it surely was not an aerospace degree. So don't lessen my struggle. And my post number tells you that I am socially inept at most in real life, that is all.
     
  22. dixonmassey Valued Senior Member

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    You'd be amazed to know how many degreed people drive trucks these days. Education pays, that's for sure

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    Engineers are especially prone to truck driving, even aerospace ones. More exactly, engineering degree holders. Legally, you cannot call yourself an engineer without having Professional Engineer license.
     
  23. Fraggle Rocker Staff Member

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    Aerospace was a big economic sector in the USA during the Cold War. Half of the university graduates I knew in the 1960s through 1980s worked in that field. But since the Perestroika Recession the industry has lost ground and there aren't as many jobs available.

    The job market is obviously correlated with economics, which is highly vulnerable to politics. If I had children I would not raise them with the expectation of becoming truck drivers. In the long run the price of petroleum will surely continue to rise, making trucks a very expensive way to ship goods. We will probably see a resurgence of the railroads, whose energy efficiency is greater than trucks by an order of magnitude.
    That's not true in the USA. I'm a software engineer but my degree is in accounting.
     

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