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Career advice needed, please help! (22 posts)
|  Career advice needed, please help! | SoCalAl
Oct 8, 2002 6:58 AM | | So here's the situation- I'm about 27, getting married next June, and have a Mazda PU with 207K on it; I need to start making money. I would be very happy working in the cycling industry somehow, but I have no idea how to get into it. I've checked some bike shops and even the large ones can't pay me enough to live and save money for a wedding/car. I've got a BA (completely unrelated to cycling in anyway), about four years of retail experience, eighteen months of substitute teaching, six months of HVAC/construction, and would consider myself to be a pretty smart guy who can learn things very quickly.
Part two-If all else fails, I'll probably be teaching high school math. I enjoy teaching it quite a bit and the schedule would allow me to devote time to cycling during the week and lots during the summer. On the downside because I don't posses a math degree, it will be a year before full time employment is even possible and not guaranteed. Does anybody out there have a career which allows ample time for cycling? I would especially like to hear from anybody in the L.A. entertainment business, it is the largest industry in the area, but the hours are terrible.
Any input and advice would be appreciated, thanks. |
| Teach at a college? | Lotka
Oct 8, 2002 7:50 AM | | I have a few friends that do that and they love it. Sure, you aint gonna make tons of money, but you get the summers off. My one friend drives me crazy with his "ya, I'm going out on the boat this week", and meanwhile I'm slaving away at the job 50 weeks a year. |
| Teach at a college? | EncinitasDave
Oct 8, 2002 8:52 AM | | While I'm sure that Lotka was well meaning, you should know that there is a WHOLE LOT more that goes into teaching at a college than just simply applying. I'm in year six of graduate school (going on the job market as we speak). By the end of this school year I will have my PhD in English from UCSB.
Now, in these six years I have:
1. Gotten divorced
2. Experienced LONG periods of financial insecurity
3. Taught undergraduate courses for exactly $1320/month
4. Worked LONG hours writing, reading, and keeping up on my research.
5. Been unable to afford time to ride or money for a new bike--let alone a new car!
Before you even CONSIDER this path, you should also know that approximately one out of every 10 PhDs gets a good job at a decent university. Even the community college market is crowded with PhDs--eliminating consideration of BA and MA candidates in many cases.
So, the long and the short of it is... don't try to teach at a college unless you are completely committed to the project of working through 3-10 years of grad school, publishing, doing research, and dealing with an aggressive class load.
But, you do get summers off!
Good luck with whatever you decide to do.
Dave |
| Maybe english profs get summer off... | PT
Oct 8, 2002 11:39 AM | | ...but in the sciences, summer is full-bore research. Professionally, I live for summers 'cause that's when the good stuff gets done. Riding? That's what happens while the reaction refluxes, the cells are growing, the centrifuge is spinning, the DNA is precipitating. And then if you want to see your family, you get them working in lab -- I pay my daughter 25 cents a box for stuffing pippette tips... |
| where are your slaves, errrrr, grad students? | dr hoo
Oct 8, 2002 1:04 PM | | Shouldn't you be making them do all the work while you go for a ride? Write grad support into your grants!
Actually, the english profs i know spend the summer writing. They can just do that anywhere they want! The freedom to schedule when you work is great, but most profs enjoy what they do so they DO IT when they can. That's the fun part.
I can't do my research wherever i want, but i can and do use breaks to travel. 3 months off? No way! But 3 weeks here, 5 days there, etc.... you bet!
dr. (writes AND rides all summer) hoo |
| Chained to the bench, of course... | PT
Oct 8, 2002 2:27 PM | | ...but unfortunately they're smart enough to pick the locks. I can't ask them to do what I'm not willing to do myself! However, I can and do ride quite a bit. I live/work just a few minutes from a lot of trails -- mtb in the summer, xc-ski in the winter. I chose this University based as much on physical setting as anything else. I can't imagine a much worse fate then being locked up in the middle of some big metro area where even the road riding sucks... |
| clearly you need to change your organization. | dr hoo
Oct 8, 2002 3:03 PM | | What you do is make yourself "Project Manager" or "Lab Manager" or some such thing, then make an advanced grad student "Assistant Project Manager" or "Assistant Lab Manager". With the title goes responsibility. It will be good for them when they go on the job market, allowing them to say they supervised others working, managed lab resources amongst different projects, etc. Heck, you can even make one lab manager and another assistant lab manager if you want.
That should get you a week at a time off at least :)
Seriously, it is good experience for grad students to think about juggling projects and managing smart people... that will make them more productive when they get out on their own. Plus your administration will like it because you can sell it as a "mentoring" program in your department. Admins eat that stuff up like candy.
dr. (formerly the assistant director of a paper series) hoo |
| Poor guy. 6 years in Santa Barbara. ;+) | Hi Life
Oct 8, 2002 12:10 PM | | Did they force you to surf? |
| Ah, career anxiety. | Earwicker
Oct 9, 2002 12:25 AM | | I'm also finishing my PhD shortly and entering the job market. I'm seriously considering taking a year off to ride and work in some dumb job given I've spent all my twenties at university. I enjoy research and writing, though (especially the writing; have several research papers and a book on the go at the moment). That's where the anxiety comes in. Given the paucity in the job market I am faced with lots of hard work selling myself, which I'm not particularly talented at, or a change in direction. This keeps me up nights.
At least I was on a good scholarship during my graduate study. And divorce?; I see how that can happen. |
| This should inspire you... | Steve-O
Oct 8, 2002 8:05 AM | | I read this early this morning before I saw your post...
GENERATION X
Generation Wrecked
FORTUNE
Monday, October 14, 2002
By Noshua Watson
Ten years ago grunge musicians and college-age Cassandras who had never held a day job preached that corporate America would crush their generation's soul and leave them without a pension plan. Films like Singles and Reality Bites chronicled their transition from college graduate to Gap salesclerk.
A few years later the core of Generation X--the 40 million Americans born between 1966 and 1975--found themselves riding the wildest economic bull ever. Salesclerks became programmers; coffee slingers morphed into experts in Java (computerese, that is)--all flush with stock options and eye-popping salaries. Now that the thrill ride is over, Gen X's plight seems particularly bruising. No generation since the Depression has been set up for failure like this. Everything the dot-com boom delivered has been taken away--and then some. Real wages are falling, wealth continues to shift from younger to older, and education costs are surging. Worse yet, for some Gen Xers, their peak earning years are behind them. Buried in college and credit card debt, a lot of them won't be able to catch up as they approach their prime spending years.
FORTUNE recently encountered the bitter and (now) experienced voice of Generation X in a chain restaurant in suburban Dallas. Age 32 and piercing-free, Karen Doss has found out that the alternative rockers were right. To pay for college she worked full-time as a secretary at Pillsbury world headquarters. After graduation in 1993, she accepted her sole job offer as an advertising copywriter, even though she despised the industry. She finally quit last year to get her real estate license so that she could better support her husband while he fulfills his dream of owning a bar.
Halfway to pension age, she has just $5,000 in a 401(k) and $20,000 in home equity. Ideally, someone her age should have at least $100,000 stashed away. "I don't have a corporate pension, and they aren't what they were," she says. "Social Security is obsolete and ineffective. And I already know that I'm going to have to have a private health-care plan. I'm angry that I can't seem to get a break."
Yes, yes, yes, we know what you're thinking. The free-spending slackers have only themselves to blame, since the dot-com boom should have made them rich for life. On the surface that's true. A 30-year-old today is 50% more likely to have a bachelor's degree than his counterpart in 1974 and earns $5,000 more a year, adjusted for inflation. But that's where the good news stops. He also has more in student loans and credit card debt, is less likely to own a home, and is just as likely to be unemployed. His salary probably topped out during the boom, whereas his predecessor's rose throughout his career. Social Security will start to evaporate as he turns 50--or before, if the lockbox gets raided--so he'll have to depend almost completely on his own savings for retirement. The comparison with a 30-year-old in 1984 isn't any rosier.
Gen X "has done worse than their parents have done according to a number of dimensions, like net worth and home ownership," says Edward Wolff, a New York University economist who studies trends in income and wealth. In a recent paper Wolff notes that young households lay claim to a smaller percentage of total U.S. wealth than they did in 1989.
Additionally, the inflation-adjusted median net worth of a Gen X household ($9,000) is lower than that of a comparable household in 1989, according to the Federal Reserve's Survey of Consumer Finances.
Silicon Valley and Manhattan aren't the only stomping grounds for disgruntled young professionals. FORTUNE interviewed more than 50 Gen Xers in Dallas, Louisville, and Seattle, with jobs ranging from construction manager to software engineer (see table). Battered by the economy and the bad luck of being born between Madonna and Britney Spears, they're Generation Wrecked.
The kids who toted STAR WARS lunchboxes are the most highly educated generation in American history: Almost 60% of Gen Xers have some college education, and 6.6% have graduate school degrees. The Census Bureau calls their pursuit of higher education the "Big Payoff," since historically a college-educated full-time worker earns 1.8 times more over his lifetime than a high school graduate.
When you can't find a job or pay your student loans, though, college can seem like the Big Rip-Off. Today, the median student loan debt is at its highest level ever, $17,000, compared with $2,000 when the baby-boomers were in their 20s. According to educational lender Nellie Mae, graduating students average $20,402 in combined student loans and credit card debt. Those who have borrowed to pay for professional school, especially doctors and lawyers, are increasingly likely to have immense debt that is not reflected in proportionately higher salaries. Twenty-eight percent of those surveyed by Nellie Mae had combined undergraduate and graduate student debt of more than $30,000, and for 22%, their loan payments ate up more than one-fifth of their monthly income.
After midnight at a young professionals party in Louisville, Steve Flores, 31, and his wife, Jessica, 32, mingle, while the rest of the revelers line up for last call. Steve is a communications specialist for the party's sponsor, Brown-Forman, the big distiller. While working full-time, he is also pursuing an MBA. Although Steve worked to help pay for college, five years after graduation he has $40,000 of undergraduate debt to pay off; Jessica, an art therapist and professional harpist, has $50,000 in student loans. "I haven't started paying back my student loans for undergrad because they're deferred. I'm not taking any student loans for grad school," Steve says. He isn't so jovial when he thinks about the total tab. "We're dreading the day we actually have to start paying."
Those Big Payoff estimates rely on what 50-year-old college graduates make today to guess what 50-year-olds will make 20 years from now. That's not all that useful. "Whereas their parents experienced rising wages over their lifetime, Generation X may not. So college may have been a bad investment," says Wolff, the NYU economist. Adds Bruce Tulgan, a Gen Xer and founder of RainmakerThinking, a consultancy that studies labor trends: "I had a college president say to me, 'I don't know how much longer I can pull this off because people will start to ask, Is it worth this much money to be that much smarter?' "
A common misconception is that Gen Xers left college to find work in the dot-com go-go years. Not so. In fact, the climate in which they began working--the late '80s and early '90s--was pretty similar to today's: an economic downturn followed by a jobless recovery. Gen Xers managed to survive in that environment by denouncing long-held workplace tenets like corporate loyalty.
It would take a skilled cartographer to map 28-year-old David Li's convoluted dash through org charts at both big and small companies. After college in 1996, Li started out as an analyst for Accenture, worked as a health-care IT consultant for two other firms, and then became CTO of Claimshop.com, a medical claims processor.
Now, unemployed for a year and living in Dallas, Li says, "I'm not really looking for an entry-level position. But I need to realize that the job market now is a lot tighter than it had been when I first graduated from school." He's looking at jobs that pay around $50,000, 40% below the salary he was collecting at Claimshop. "I'm just hoping for something more along the lines of what you would normally expect to see from someone who has been out of school for four to five years."
Li will probably find a job--at 6%, the unemployment rate among Gen Xers is around the national average--but he and others are discovering that previous experience means next to nothing. Jenifer Garcia is temping as a bartender in Seattle after having worked as a hardware tester for Intel, a programmer for MSN, and a manager for Barnes & Noble's online division. Now the 29-year-old is applying for a full-time file clerk position again. "I feel like I'm 18 again, and not in a good way. I've gone through all of my savings and moved back in with my mom."
Even some of Seattle's dot-com winners have been humbled. Across town in a tonier part of Seattle, Rachel Best-Campbell and Alex Campbell bought their $700,000 house with proceeds from Alex's stock options. They sold most of their shares of Cache Flow, now known as Blue Coat Systems, at $96. (The company's stock now trades at $3, after a recent reverse split.) The Campbells' luck dried up in April, when Alex was laid off, rehired as a contractor without benefits, then rehired yet again as a full-time employee but at a lower level.
After months of wondering whether Alex would have a job, Rachel feels no guilt about getting rich during the boom. "Clearly someone out there had $96 to pay for that share of stock, and they wanted it, and they bought it. My dad likes to say, 'My 25-year-old daughter--she's retired now.'"
Those who didn't fulfill their early-retirement dreams in the late '90s are beginning to realize that they may be in the workforce longer than their parents. "You don't find many 65-year-olds working in advertising, so at some point the money must get good enough for people to retire. I don't know," says Luke Blackburn, a 32-year-old senior manager at a Louisville advertising firm. Luke has a house--he used money he received as a gift for a down payment--but little in the way of retirement savings. (Total: $0. He should have $50,000. Although he and Doss are the same age, his savings estimate is less since his living expenses are lower.) "I don't see much future return for investments, either stock or even Social Security benefits. I plan for the kids, but there's not much room for extra." Luke doesn't have a financial planner either. "The brokers only call you if they think you have money," he says. "They started calling me when they saw my job promotion announced in the newspaper."
At least the brokers' attempts aren't laughable. At a recent Department of Labor summit, a group of the country's top economists, politicians, and marketers decided that the best way to get Generation X to plan for retirement was through targeted advertising campaigns. Slogans included "It's your money, it's your choice, and it's your future," "Save for independence day," and "Wazzup." Whatever.
Instead of creating catch phrases, the government should focus on creating retirement options that give Gen Xers --and baby-boomers too, for that matter--the flexibility to withdraw money from their accounts if they're temporarily unemployed, starting a business, or just taking time out, say financial planners. Most important, the retirement accounts need to be portable to match the winding job paths of Gen Xers.
A New York Life Investment Management survey of high-net-worth Gen Xers found that the respondents thought they needed $2 million to retire. Not even close, says Beverly Moore, who conducted the study. A Gen Xer who makes $100,000 and wants to retire at 59 needs $7.3 million net of taxes to sustain that lifestyle. (That means saving $2,600 a month and assumes an 8% return.) The truth of the matter is that very few Gen Xers are saving enough to reach even the $2 million benchmark.
And a return to economic good times doesn't guarantee that most Gen Xers will reach that level. Remember that many of the problems that existed in the early '90s including falling real wages and the slow disappearance of the middle class, weren't erased by the boom. In the case of wages, they only inched up during the dot-com years. (Economists are still trying to figure out why they didn't rise more. One possibility: the influx of skilled foreign labor.) And of the wealth the boom created, the richest households gobbled up a disproportionate amount.
Back in Dallas, Karen Doss says she's angry that she hasn't been able to rely on family, an employer, or the government to help with her future. "The biggest problem with Social Security is that we have no control," she says. "Sure, you can put your money away, but Enron will not go away, and there is going to be another WorldCom. [Corporate America] will still lie and steal our money."
So is Karen prepared? On this subject, she does her best slacker impression. "I can't even tell you how much I have in my 401(k), and I have two of them floating out there with companies. I'm just going to hope it works out at this point. I just wanna die young so I don't have to deal with it." |
| this is not unusual | moschika
Oct 8, 2002 9:15 PM | | there are many peers that are having a tough time with work since getting out of college.
i would recommend not getting into human services at this time.
and as for teaching, there is a glut in many places, unless you want to work someplace and worry about your safety. in socal it may not be so bad but in the norcal it is very difficult to get a job teaching. my wife has a teaching credential and a masters degree in education and can't find a job. and even if she did there is no guaranty that she would have it the next year. some schools have closed because of lack of enrollment. so be careful with the teaching thing. |
| You Gotta Wanna Do It... | hfly
Oct 8, 2002 8:19 AM | | ...but have you considered Nursing? I find my job here in Moab (taking care of lots of biker injuries, etc.) to be very satisfying, and the schedule is awesome! Our base schedule is to work for six days, then have eight days off, six on, eight off, etc. Thus, for the five years that I've been working full time here in Moab, I've had something like SEVENTY week-long vacations!
The work issues that constrain many other professionals to cities are non-existent in nursing. You can literally go anywhere. Pick a mecca. Move there. It's that easy.
With a core of experience under your belt (usually a few years of hospital work), you can undertake Travel Nursing. This is where you join a company that places you in assignments of your choosing around the country. Each assignment typically lasts about 13 weeks. Think Tucson in the winter, St. George in the Spring, Vancouver BC or Alaska in the summer & Brevard (Pisgah Forest) NC in the fall. All of your travel, housing and utility expenses are paid, and the money is very good.
The fact that salaries for nurses are finally starting to reflect the demands of the nursing shortage is good, but I would probably accept less money to do my job if I had to. To "turn around" a critically ill person in the ER is immensely satisfying, as is helping out almost everyone who walks through the doors. Though some nurses lose sight of it, it is indeed a privelege to help people out as such. It only takes one thank-you note to make your year!
Anyway, I hope this helps.
hfly <-- liberally misquoted in a recent LA Times article
email: moabdublab AT citlink DOT net |
| Things to consider... | sdbelt
Oct 8, 2002 8:30 AM | | To teach at community college usually requires at least a Masters, or extensive experience in a field, neither of which, it sounds like you have.
To teach in the public system only requires a BA and a teaching certificate. To teach in the private sector requires whatever that private school says, and pays the least.
The nursing advice is good, but that'll cost you 2 years of college. If you have the urge to teach, and I commend you if you do, I'd spend that 2 years getting a Masters and teaching, even if it doesn't pay quite as well.
There's tons of free time in insurance sales and real estate. Both of which are reasonably good jobs, though they both take close to a year before you are actually making money.
--sdb |
| Partially true... | free-agent
Oct 8, 2002 9:37 AM | | some states are so deperate for teachers that they hire individuals with a BA to teach in that area under an emergency license. Check into it, but IMO don't take a teaching position unless you really want to teach and inspire young minds. There are already way too many "teachers" that do it because they are out of options, causing already bored students to dread school even more. Bonus: teaching gives you summers off to train/race/travel/ride, but its not worth it unless you really enjoy the career. |
| A master degree means spending lots of $$ | Chan
Oct 8, 2002 11:31 AM | | I think that spending 2 years getting a Masters is a great advice but those are pretty expensive programs right? Is there any decent college were you can get a full time MBA for less than $15000 a year?
Sebastian |
| Words Of Wisdom. | Bikebreath
Oct 8, 2002 8:48 AM | | In fact words of wisdom I got from this very board a few weeks ago. Enjoy.
***************************************************************
On Work by Kent Nerburn
I often hear people say, "I have to find myself." What they really mean is, I have to make myself." Life is an endlessly creative experience, and we are making ourselves every moment by every decision we make.
That is why the work you choose for yourself is so crucial to your sense of value and well-being. No matter how much you might believe that your work is nothing more than what you do to make money, your work makes you who you are, because it is where you put your time.
I remember several years ago when I was intent upon building my reputation as a sculptor. I took a job driving a cab, because, as I told people, "I want some job that I will never confuse with a profession." Yet within six months, I was talking like a cab driver, thinking like a cab driver, looking at the world through the eyes of a cab driver. My anecdotes came from my job, as did my observations about life. I became embroiled in the personalities and politics of the company for which I worked and developed the habits and rhythms of life that went along with my all-night driving shift. On the days when I did not drive and instead worked on my sculpture, I still carried the consciousness of a cab driver with me. Whether I liked it or not, I was a cab driver.
This happens to anyone who takes a job. Even if you hate a job and keep a distance from it, you are defining yourself in opposition to the job by resisting it. By giving the job your time, you are giving it your consciousness. And it will, in turn, fill your life with the reality that it presents.
Many people ignore this fact. They choose a profession because it seems exciting, or because they can make a lot of money, or because it has some prestige in their minds. They commit themselves to their work, but slowly find themselves feeling restless and empty. The time they have to spend on their work begins to hang heavy on their hands, and soon they feel constricted and trapped.
They join the legions of humanity who Thoreau said lead lives of quiet desperation - unfulfilled, unhappy and uncertain of what to do. Yet the lure of financial security and the fear of the unknown keep them from acting to change their lives, and their best energies are spend creating justifications for staying where they are or inventing activities outside of work that they hope will provide them with a sense of meaning.
But these efforts can never be totally successful. We are what we do, and the more we do it, the more we become it. The only way out is to change our lives or to change our expectations for our lives. And if we lower our expectations we are killing our dreams, and a man without dreams is already half dead.
So you need to choose your work carefully. You need to look beyond the external measurements of prestige and money and glamour to see what you will be doing on a day-to-day, hour-to-hour, minute-to-minute basis to see if that is how you want to spend your time. Time may not be the way you measure the value of your work, but it is the way you experience it.
What you need to do is think of work as "vocation." This word may seem stilted in its tone, but it has a wisdom within it. It comes from the Latin word for calling, which comes from the word for voice. In those meanings it touches on what work really should be. It should be something that calls to you as something you want to do, and it should be something that gives voice to who you are and what you want to say to the world.
So a true vocation calls to you to perform it and it allows your life to speak. This is very different from work, which is just an exchange of labor for money. It is even very different from a profession, which is an area of expertise you have been sanctioned to represent.
A vocation is something you feel compelled to do, or at least something that fills you with a sense of meaning. It is something you choose because of what it allows you to say with your life, not because of the money it pays you or the way it will make you appear to others. It is, above all else, something that lets you love.
When you find a vocation, embrace it with your whole heart. Few people are so lucky. They begin their search for work with an eye to the wrong prize, so when they win, they win something of little value. They gain money or prestige, but they lose their hearts. Eventually their days become nothing more than a commodity that they exchange for money, and they begin to shrivel and die.
I often think of a man I met on the streets of Cleveland. He was an assembly-line worker in an automobile plant. He said his work was so hateful that he could barely stand to get up in the morning. I asked him why he didn't quit. "I've only got thirteen more years to go to retirement," he answered. And he meant it. His life had so gotten away from him that he was willing to accept a thirteen-year death sentence for his spirit rather than give up the security it earned.
When I spoke with him I was about twenty. I was young and free; I didn't understand what he was saying at all. It seemed incomprehensible to me that a man could have become so defeated by life that he was willing to let his life die as he held it in his hands.
Now I understand too well. Lured by what had seemed like big money at the time, he had chosen a job that didn't offer him any inner satisfaction. He lived a good life, rolling from paycheck to paycheck and getting the car or the boat that he had always dreamed of having. Year by year he advanced, because businesses reward perseverance.
His salary went up, his options for other types of employment went down, and he settled into a routine that financed his life. He married, bought a house, had children, and grew into middle age. The job that had seemed like freedom when he was young became a deadening routine. Year by year he began to hate it. It choked him, but he had no means of escape. He needed its money to live; no job he might change to would pay him as much as he was currently making. His fear for the health and security of his family kept him from breaking free into a world where all things were possible but no things were paid for, and so he gave in.
"I've only got thirteen more years to retirement" was a prisoner's way of counting the days until the job would release him and pay him for his freedom.
Most people's lives are a variation on that theme. So few take the time when they are young to explore the real meaning of the jobs they are taking or to consider the real implications of the occupations to which they are committing their lives.
Some have no choice. Without money, without training, with the pressures of life building around them, they choose the best alternative that offers itself. But many others just fail to see clearly. They chase false dreams, and fall into traps they could have avoided if they had listened more closely to their hearts when choosing their life's work.
But even if you listen closely to your heart, making the right choice is difficult. You can't really know what it is you want to do by thinking about it. You have to do it and see how it fits. You have to let the work take you over until it becomes you and you become it; then you have to decide whether to embrace it or abandon it. And few have the courage to abandon something that defines their security and prosperity.
Yet there is no reason why a person cannot have two, three or more careers in the course of a life. There is no reason why a person can't abandon a job that does not fit anymore and strike out into the unknown for something that lies closer to the heart. There is risk, there is loss, and there likely will be privation. If you have allowed your job to define your sense of self-worth, there may even be a crisis of identity. But no amount of security is worth the suffering of a life lived chained to a routine that has killed all your dreams.
You must never forget that to those who hire you, your labor is a commodity. You are paid because you provide a service that is useful. If the service you provide is no longer needed, it doesn't matter how honorable, how diligent, how committed you have been in your work. If what you can contribute is no longer needed, you are no longer needed and you will be let go. Even if you've committed your life to the job, you are, at heart, a part of the commercial exchange, and you are valuable only so long as you are a significant contributor to that commercial exchange. It is nothing personal; it's just the nature of economic transaction.
So it does not pay to tie yourself to a job that kills your love of life. The job will abandon you if it has to. You can abandon the job if you have to. The man I met in Cleveland may have been laid off the year before he was due to retire. He may have lost his pension because of a legal detail he never knew existed. He may have died on the assembly line while waiting to put a bolt in a fender.
I once had a professor who dreamed of being a concert pianist. Fearing the possibility of failure, he went into academics where the work was secure and the money was predictable. One day, when I was talking to him about my unhappiness in my graduate studies, he walked over and sat down at his piano. He played a beautiful glisando and then, abruptly, stopped. "Do what is in your heart," he said. "I really only wanted to be a concert pianist. Now I spend every day wondering how good I might have been."
Don't let this be your epitaph at the end of your working life. Find out what it is that burns in your heart and do it. Choose a vocation, not a job, and you will be at peace. Take a job instead of finding a vocation, and eventually you will find yourself saying, "I've only got thirteen more years to retirement," or "I spend every day wondering how good I might have been."
We all owe ourselves better than that. |
| Very Elegant, Very Real | hfly
Oct 8, 2002 9:10 AM | | Thank you so much for that! Have you ever read "The Reinvention of Work" by Matthew Fox (a free-thinking Jesuit)? Your words here call to mind the message I derived from that book years ago. Thanks again. You write very well.
hfly |
| Who me? | Bikebreath
Oct 8, 2002 10:05 AM | | Oh please sir, don't credit me with such ability. You must have gotten lost in the words and missed the first line I wrote: "In fact words of wisdom I got from this very board a few weeks ago. Enjoy."
Kent Nerburn is the writer you wish to praise, not me.
Bb, [ believe it, feel it, but could never put it so nicely in those words. ] |
| oops | hfly
Oct 8, 2002 10:18 AM | | Thanks. I did miss that.
hfly the inattentive |
| Some advice | BH
Oct 8, 2002 9:07 AM | | First of all, what degree is you BA in? Buisness, Marketing, Accounting, etc. - with a degree in any of these disciplines you should be able to work for any big company. If not, you should be looking in the specific field that you studied in. Why spend 4 years on a degree and a lot of $$$ and then turn your back on it.
50% of the bike shop owners that I know hardly make enough to get married and buy a new car. I know a couple owners who don't even own cars. If you are dead set on the bike industry, look at the larger L.A. based mail order houses like Supergo and Jenson. These places are always looking for buyers, sellers, etc. and make more money so they can pay a higher salary and benefits.
A bit of advice: If you want to make decent money, get a job from a company that makes a lot of money.
Teaching is a wonderful profession but it doesn't pay squat. Getting an MBA takes the same amount of schooling as a teaching credential and you can potentially earn 100X more.
Entertainment industry- you had better know somebody to get in there.
Check some of the employment agencies/head hunters. Check newspaper listings. Did you attend any career days at your university?
As far as working and riding, I work 40 hours a week (no overtime) and ride about 13 hours a week. I have a girlfriend and no kids. I would like to ride more but she already thinks that I ride too much and don't spend enough time doing my share of the cooking and cleaning. I have given up most of the other hobbies I had when I was single. We are both professionals and earn a combined income of a little over 6 figures and are barely making it (at least in my mind). L.A. is expensive. We live in a nice apartment in a good neighborhood. We both drive newer vehicles (97 and 2002). I am out of debt (except for one of the cars). She is paying her debts off. We rarely take vacations except a weekend to Vegas or the River or Big Bear or Mammoth.
The important thing that you want to do is stay out of debt because it will cost you far more in the long run for things if you don't. A big wedding isn't in our future though a wedding is and so is a nice house. Save a set amount of your salary each month and treat it like a monthly bill. Limit your monthly expenses. Dump the cable and any other unnecessary expenses. When you come into extra money, don't immediately think of ways to spend it. Save up at least a few thousand dollars in reserve to cover emergencies, big bills, etc. Life is hard and expensive and everyone has their hand in your pocket.
Thats my $0.02. Good Luck.
BH |
| Thanks for the response . . . | SoCalAl
Oct 8, 2002 12:22 PM | | but y'all are getting me a little depressed. I'm leaning towards getting an hourly job which pays well (hardware stores, banks, high end retail) until I fulfill the requirements to teach. The reason I bring up the entertainment industry is because I know many people involved in "the industry" but have never gotten into it because of the outrageous schedules they put in. Unfortunately the degree's in music, something I do love, but will never be able to make a living with it. Teaching college is a long-term goal, but would require a master's, something I see no sooner than four years from now. I'm probably going to go down to Supergo this afternoon and talk to the manager to see if they might have anything to offer me.
If all else fails, I could always pimp. |
| Crane Operator | MtnBum
Oct 9, 2002 9:03 AM | | I was watching the History channel last night, . . . all about cranes. Everything from shipyards, to construction. Salaries range from $60,000/yr to $100,000 depending on experience, plus most are union jobs, AND no college degree is needed. It can be quite lonley, but then again there's something to be said for that. |
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