I finished high school as a welder and really liked it, but a friend of the family's constructions company was in trouble with having too much work and not enough hands. So I graduated on friday and started in construction on monday, did that for four years, I told him and his sons from the start that if the company was doing fine and I found something else that I would take my chance. In 2010 I moved with my ex-wife to a new house where after a while I became really good friends with my neighboor. One day he came to me and said their were government admission test for doing the same work as he did. I did the test, ended with the 20 best of 1400 people and got the job. I don't know if there is something like it in America, closest would be a correctional officer I think. We transport prisoners to jail, court houses, hospitals,... We do the security of the trial appearance, extraditions,...
Been doing it since 2010 and loving it, every day I see and hear differant people, lives and their stories. The good, the bad and the horrible truth sometimes...
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I was a junior doctor for 3 days. Now I'm unemployed for 6 months.
Applied for several job, no success. Finally got a call weeks ago, but declined it because I don't think they want to hire me.
Actually, I think I don't really want to find a job, I wish to go to the forest and live as a hermit.
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That's tough. I know in Ireland junior doctors have a terrible time. Illegal shift lengths (according to EU law), poor working conditions, very few opportunities for advancement. It seems like an incredibly tough career, and that's without considering the actual work.
I sometimes think that hermit life would suit me too. But then I remember books and games and feel pretty shallow that I couldn't leave them behind.
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Ireland is heaven compared to us here. I didn't quit because of the working condition and the long hours. I'm just not good with people. And some other reasons.
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I did an Undergraduate degree and a Masters in History, travelling a bit between the two. I decided to teach for a year overseas before attempting a PhD and trying to get into lecturing. Traveled to Japan and 9 years later I'm still here. Had a few teaching jobs and now help with the running of a teaching program at a university. I've completed a second Masters degree while I was out here, this time in teaching.
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Wow! How do you find living in Japan? You obviously like it to have stayed so long. I assume you work as an ESL teacher?
I follow a blog called Zooming Japan and the author is a German woman who lived in Japan for about the same period as yourself. She recently moved back to Germany and her posts on reverse culture shock are quite interesting. It's not something I would have thought about before.
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Yeah, I like it. There are obviously a lot of differences from my home country (the UK) but I'm not in a rush to move back. There are positives and negatives, a lot of them are connected. For example, it's very safe here. There is very little crime, particularly random crime like mugging, burglary, alcohol related attacks etc. which are a much bigger problem in the UK. At the same time, people are more standoffish, strangers rarely interact and socially it's a bit colder.
I don't actually teach at the moment, I kind of manage teachers,but yes I work in the area of ESL.
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Not really a "career" change, but I thought that I might as well share it.
(I'm not sure about the english names for all this, so I used google translate for it)
So in 2013 I started studying Business Economics (bachelor degree). It went pretty well, but after a year and two months, I didn't really like it anymore. It was pretty boring etc. So I decided to quit the study. Then I went on to find a new one and ended up going for computer science (bachelor degree as well) and I'm going to specialize in Software Engineering (starting in year 2). Now I'm almost done with my first year (february starts my 2nd year) and I'm loving it. I now happily go to school (although sometimes it can be annoying, as I have to travel 5 - 6 hours per day) and I'm having a great time with it.
It was a hard decision to make, but one I'm now glad I made.
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Yeah I do. Although when I signed on our house was for sale (I still live with my parents) and it wasn't clear where we were going to move to. There was a high possibility that we were going to live about 30 minutes away, but unfortunarly not...
But it is worth it to me. I can listen to music then (something I really love) and sometimes do some homework (I use the bus and train (and 30 minutes on a bicycle)). The only thing that annoys me is if I have to go to school for 20 minutes or so (it happened to me twice this year) and if people complain they have to get up really early, while I have to get up two hours before them.
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I took a summer job in real estate. The original position was supposed to be data entry, which I AM qualified (3 years of tech support experience), but somehow I got shunted over into another department dealing with HOA issues, without any knowledge of real estate, home owners' associations, or really what I was doing and with only minimal training.
I'm studying theology. I did not last long.
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I did my undergrad degree in Biblical Studies, which has an heavy emphasis on working with the text (exegesis, biblical languages, text criticism, and stuff like that) and my personal interest is in hamartiology (the doctrine of sin). That said, I'd like to say I'm a comprehensive theologian alongside being a scholar, and I'll probably end up preaching and teaching alongside each other. I'm currently trying to decide which I want to emphasize; the academy is rigorously academic, provides great opportunities for study, and is completely spiritually draining between where I am and where I want to be (I'm doing my M.Div., which is another 2 1/2 years, and then I'd need a PhD to be competitive for the hiring process anywhere which is another 6 years of being forced through the academic grinder). On the other hand, ministry is great but I don't have the best people skills and management abilities, and I know I do not have the resources to work with youth, so my options are a little limited. That said, I'd be happy anywhere really.
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I went to a university that shared its grounds with the country's only pontifical college and theology majors there were almost unfailingly going on to be high school teachers. It's good to know that some people are actually interested in the subject!
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not really. i ended up as a software developer, which was one of the jobs i wanted to do as a kid. of course, i dreamed about making games, not inspection software for the industry. ;)
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Briefly dug up dead Mayan babies in the jungle in Belize, but neglected to consider how humid archaeology can be. Finished that degree, then promptly taught in Japan, Korea, and Dubai for half a decade. Currently a scuba divemaster in Thailand and working on a Master's in early childhood development, but moving to Malaysia in a week or something to try to start teaching again. We all have our random walks.
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That is really cool. Welcome to Malaysia by the way.
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13 years ago I built and tried to patent this:http://imgur.com/a/JB0jZ
Once I finished losing all of my money and going into some deep debt, I got a job at a call-center.
I was crap on the phones, so they stuck me in data entry. I was lazy so I automated everything and played freecell all day. They investigated why I was able to finish a week's worth of sheets in one day, and caught me playing freecell. Instead of firing me, they put me in charge of the reporting department.
Now I'm working for a BI consulting firm.
Long story short, I started a hardware nerd, and now I'm a data nerd.
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No story here. The only job I ever considered was online moderating, and that's exactly what I ended up doing. :P
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they offered nice pay (in the beginning) for someone without any experience, so...
i think that for some degree programmers should be able to since in school or university you still can learn only basics and all useful experience is coming from jobs or self-learning
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I wanted to join the army since really young then join the GIGN (kind of french SWAT), so I wasn't really much in study and just wanted a high school degree and sign up there for 5-10 years. I didn't have the grade to go to normal high school, my middle school teacher told me they already supported me 4 years and wouldn't put up one more year with me so they put me on the worst professional school around my hometown i ended up with electricity major. I wasn't interested at all and failed miserably, only 4 out of the 32 students graduated... I went to see the recrutor again and he advised me to learn a foreign language instead (croatian, serbian or chinese)
I worked in a restaurant illegaly for one year to save up money , booked a language school in china for one year to learn chinese and was planning on going back home after that.... A couple of days ago it's been exactly 10 years i'm here, I had real estate jobs, waiter in expansive restaurant, managed a bar for more than a year then i was kicked out of the country but found a way to come back, i opened a small shop selling clothes, taught english to kindergarten for a couple of month, worked in a korean company, opened a small agency to help foreigners get chinese visa etc Now i work for more than a year as a translator / interpretor / sale (french and/or english to chinese and chinese to french and/or english) in a chinese company doing solar panels, I really like my job, I meet awesome people, salary is alright, i have a lot of free time and travel to different countries (Congo, Dubai, Tunisia so far). Next step? I'm saving up money to open either a bar or a bakery but it's not before another year or. so, plus life has taught me that "sometimes" things don't go as planned.
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That's so interesting! What are some things you like and dislike about living in China? Do you find that as a westerner you get treated better when it comes to jobs? A Dutch friend of mine moved to China a few years ago and claimed that being white was almost enough to get him any job, that he didn't have to be especially good at it.
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Well it depends, you can get a job for just sitting in an office and doing nothing all day just for being white, since some chinese think that it will bring some "prestige" to their company to have you there. Or you can easily find teaching job even if your english isn't that good or even if you've never taught anything before. But if you want a decent and/or interesting job you'd better be good at it coz the competition is really present here, but same skill, same salary there's more chance they'll pick the white guy/girl yeah.
Things I like, chinese people are really friendly, life pace is pretty fast plus there's a lot of opportunities and people don't really get butthurt about trivial things (starbucks cup etc). Things I dislike, how dirty the country is, when talking politics everyone having the same, sometimes wrong, arguments, TV, the lack of international news and how lots of people like/hate the same things like they all have the same personality. But overall i really like it here, on the other hand since i seldom time go back in france going back home feels weird sometimes. But it's pretty difficult to find words to explain the feeling it does :)
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I commented on someone else's response (someone who had ended up staying in Japan for ten years) that I follow a blog written by a German woman who lived in Japan for almost a decade. She recently moved home to Germany and has said that she is having a lot of strange reverse culture shock. So I guess you experience something similar - but there's something so strange about feeling out of place in your own country.
What part of France are you from, if you don't mind me asking? I've only been to Paris and some of the suburbs around Montpellier where I have friends, but I've always hoped to explore more.
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That might be it hehe :D
I'm from Lille, north part of France, I don't know if you've heard of it? 1h by train 2 by car from Paris, 1h30 to Brussel, it's also really convenient to go England via Calais from there. We have the biggest flea market in Europe every September :)
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I've heard of Lille, certainly! I took French at school (mostly forgotten, unfortunately) and we had little maps of France with major cities and important things in each place. Lille had the Palais des Beaux-Arts - I always thought that sounded beautiful! I didn't recall how far north it is, though. I imagine that culturally Lille might have more in common with parts of Belgium than southern France - one country can have a lot of diversity!
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I started university to become a journalist when I was 18 but I never finished that.
My career after that went from dishwasher -> cook (assistant) -> internet marketing -> eventplanner at a bar (concerts and special evenings) -> College (Application Manager, staff support, Webmaster, organising all kinds of projects and all kinds of trouble shooting).
My organising and computer skills got me where I am today. Didnt learn that at a school, anyway, not really.
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I'm quitting job as a private physician after 10 years. I can't stand the entitlement attitude of patients (in the US) and the government that honestly hates physicians. I love medicine and solving problems with the body and helping people but it's just too tiring trying to fight the system.
Before med school I had 4 jobs at once and several volunteer positions - worked at a gift shop, did a little programming, ran ethernet/phone cable back before 2k, worked as clinical research lab rat.
I've enjoyed staying at home with my kids since investing in them is better than any pathetic money I was making as a physician. I'll help them grow up to be superstars. Plus my wife makes good money so she can wear the pants (I'm so lucky) :)
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That's a shame but it sounds like you're happy with your new direction.
I'm from Ireland where we have fairly socialised healthcare (considered a poor system compared to other Western European countries but we're actually quite lucky with what we have) so what I hear of the cost of healthcare in the US really confuses me, to be honest. What were some issues you encountered?
Being a stay at home parent is no easy task, so kudos to you!
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Yeah watching kids is never easy. Most people think you can just toss some chicken nuggets in the microwave and turn on some cable TV show and you're done "watching" the kids - I guess that works if I want to have children who grow up idolizing Kim K or Miley.
The problem in the US is that it is a 1/2 way approach. We have private companies (insurance) taking pure profit out of the system while providing no actual product (insurance doesn't heal people - medical staff, medicines and people's own bodies do the healing). We also have Congress writing laws based on what the insurance and drug companies want (read lobbyists) instead of listing to physicians and nurses who actually do the grunt work. I don't want to sound cocky but sadly I think I could do better than 95% of Congress with a reading comprehension test and better than 100% of them based on a high level math test. Engineers and Scientists are not setting the policy unfortunately - just people who look good and have a slick tongue.
On top of that the patients in the US are just ungrateful. When I did volunteer work in Mexico I was paid nothing but every patient said thank you and a few paid with food like bringing in pies or some fruit. Sadly if those same people come to the US they begin to believe things are owed to them - healthcare is a coughrightcough. In this country I get yelled at by family members and patients even when I am working for free seeing uninsured patients who I never send bills to (mind you I still have to pay for my own malpractice/license and expenses like gas just to get the hospital). Some people even threaten to sue me when I don't indulge their opioid seeking proclivities. When I start spending my own money to do charity work and then get chastised for it - well, I would rather be at home with my kids. I've seen over 1000 patients for free and only 2 have ever written thank you notes - that's disgusting. It's like wining a GA and not even having the courtesy to say thank you - except some of these people I treated for 3 weeks sometimes and not even a thank you (forget even getting paid). I could always sell my soul and make money buy doing Botox injections and laser treatments but I would rather sell my own blood before I do that.
Trying to help people who don't want to help themselves is very tiring. After 10 years I've burnt out. Hopefully I've built up enough karma (haha, karma get it, hehe, eh, ok not) to move on.
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I understand that burnt out feeling. It's sad to feel that way about a job you had so many hopes for, but remembering that you are not your job is important. That helps with the moving on.
Best of luck with your kids. You're giving them a great start in life :)
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How do you deal with family members and friends who oppose your decision to quit your job? And, do you have any advice for a medical school graduate but have zero passion and no intention to practice medicine?
Also, here's an interesting read. The article only provide half truth, but it should give some picture of the situation
http://www.freemalaysiatoday.com/category/nation/2015/03/30/one-in-five-doctors-quit-housemanship/
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If you're in the IT/programming world, I recommend blogging. Publish publish publish. Contribute to forums. Get it to the point where people searching for a solution to a problem find your name. Make a name for yourself and jobs will come to you.
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Quality is more important than quantity, of course. Write about what you know, and read to learn more. Of the last 10 books I've read, 8 were technical.
Also, I've found that trying to figure out other people's technical problems can give a more in-depth understanding of the technology.
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I didn't find it easy. It took a lot of persistence. Each field seems to have its own tricks too.
Ensuring your CV stands out is a big help imo - make sure it conveys exactly what you want as clearly as possible - and tailor all your cover letters; a generic letter just doesn't cut it anymore.
Even if you don't use LinkedIn, having a well-populated profile page and a nice photo is a big help, so friends of mine have said. In my previous job no one cared about your LinkedIn page, but in my current industry it's a big networking thing - even as a receptionist I have lots of people looking to link to me as a way of staying in touch with the company, even if I've only sent them an email or two regarding business. (PS, I hate LinkedIn :P )
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Have an Engineering Degree with a Psychology Minor. Went on to be a Human Resources Associate, Payroll Manager, Professor, and Game Developer.... (yes all at the same time!)
Of those, I only like one of them and none of them pay well. For Charity, For Charity, For Peanuts, For Peanuts
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This felt like Reddit in its best, thanks snugglor and everyone else :>
I don't have much to share myself, I'm a Sysadmin now, I guess I will change careers in my 50's.
I would like to be a sort of a 'mentor' for teenagers, but highschool teacher doesn't really fit with me. We'll see.
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Thanks! I've been really happy to read everyone's responses. Some great stories here.
Have you considered volunteering? Something like the Big Brother/Big Sister programme could be good - or even giving time to a local youth group teaching them a few skills.
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i still don't have a job, but i can share my change in planned studies.
i was very convinced that i wanted to study computer science and become a programmer. so during our last high school year we went to this expo in which every college/university displayed every study field and gave info about it. of course i went to the computer science stands and got a lot of info and booklets from the different universities (one even gave me a plan for the campus and how to get there). my best friend wanted to study biomedical sciences, so i accompanied her to that stand. The queue there was terrific so i decided to take a brief look at the stand next to it, which happened to be pharmacy. And then my entire life plan changed and i realised i wanted to make a difference in someone's health.
and so i've gone from computer science to pharmacy
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yup! when i started studying it i wanted to work in a regular pharmacy. now i'm in my 1st master in medicine development. if my grades allow it, i'll do an advanced master in industrial pharmacy or a phD in medicinal chemistry. sometimes i regret this choice though (especially now that i have exams)
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Crucial information shouldn't be exclusive to the TL:DR summary. Just saying.
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Well, both the old and the new jobs are only mentioned there!
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I finished college a year ago and still haven't found a job, unemployment here in Spain is over 50% among people of my age. Not a science degree though...
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Have you ended up in a job that you really didn't see coming? Let's share our stories!
Here is mine: I went to university and earned a first class honours degree in the life sciences. I went on to pursue a PhD but it turned out my supervisor was a sociopath, so after a few years I ended up quitting in order to preserve my mental and physical health. I didn't know that regular people who aren't combat veterans or victims of extreme natural disasters etc could end up with PTSD, but I ended up needing to take a year off to get my head straight. Nightmares, panic attacks and extreme unshakeable anxiety were commonplace, but luckily I have a beautiful wife who supported me through everything and worked hard to keep us ticking over financially.
After over a year out I went back to work as admin staff for a private company in a field completely unrelated to what I studied. And I'm happier than I've ever been. I've been with that company for two years now and I'm currently negotiating a promotion. I earn enough to keep my wife relaxed about her job (even though it's not much) and the nightmares are much less frequent. Looking back it seems crazy. I never thought I'd end up here.
TL;DR: Used to make genetically-modified plants for a living, now I'm a receptionist. Couldn't be happier.
Your turn!
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