Thinking out loud.
There is an 80% chance that I'll lose my job. I say 80% because things have been changing every day, but today was an especially bad day. I won't go into detail unless it actually happens.
This makes me think about my job a lot. I love teaching. I also hate teaching. I love the challenge to be a better educator. I love inspiring kids to love what I love. I hate working with lazy, incompetent people. I hate the general bitchiness involved in working in what is predominately a woman's field.
I've always felt that if I stay in education, I'll want to do something bigger, eventually - become a supervisor, research/write/lobby about education, move on to higher education. I like to move around.
On the other hand, I feel like I could leave education just as quickly as I entered it, provided I find a job/career that satisfies my goals.
My goals:
1. I want to do work that is (my definition of) meaningful and/or rewarding. I don't want the ultimate goal of my position to be to make an owner/CEO more money.
2. I want to have adequate down time. I want to love my job, but I don't want it to swallow my life.
3. I want to challenge myself. I hate being bored at work.
NOT my goals:
1. To make as much money as humanly possible.
2. To be in any particular field. I like the idea of writing/editing for a living as much as I like the idea of teaching for a living. I would also have been happy to continue working at Century Air, provided there were opportunities for me to take on more responsibility and/or more money (there wasn't).
Perhaps fueling my desire to look elsewhere is the fact that it is a really, REALLY bad time to be a teacher. If I do lose my job, my chances of getting a new one are almost nil - everyone is cutting. No one is hiring. If they are hiring, they are hiring whomever they just had to fire.
While I traveled this summer, I thought about how much I would like to work for the National Parks Department in any capacity. So I searched USAjobs.com and found that the US Forest Service is hiring a writer/editor. I've completed the application (very tedious, government applications), so now I'm letting it cool off until tomorrow when I can edit it and send it in. I guess we'll see how that goes.
This makes me think about my job a lot. I love teaching. I also hate teaching. I love the challenge to be a better educator. I love inspiring kids to love what I love. I hate working with lazy, incompetent people. I hate the general bitchiness involved in working in what is predominately a woman's field.
I've always felt that if I stay in education, I'll want to do something bigger, eventually - become a supervisor, research/write/lobby about education, move on to higher education. I like to move around.
On the other hand, I feel like I could leave education just as quickly as I entered it, provided I find a job/career that satisfies my goals.
My goals:
1. I want to do work that is (my definition of) meaningful and/or rewarding. I don't want the ultimate goal of my position to be to make an owner/CEO more money.
2. I want to have adequate down time. I want to love my job, but I don't want it to swallow my life.
3. I want to challenge myself. I hate being bored at work.
NOT my goals:
1. To make as much money as humanly possible.
2. To be in any particular field. I like the idea of writing/editing for a living as much as I like the idea of teaching for a living. I would also have been happy to continue working at Century Air, provided there were opportunities for me to take on more responsibility and/or more money (there wasn't).
Perhaps fueling my desire to look elsewhere is the fact that it is a really, REALLY bad time to be a teacher. If I do lose my job, my chances of getting a new one are almost nil - everyone is cutting. No one is hiring. If they are hiring, they are hiring whomever they just had to fire.
While I traveled this summer, I thought about how much I would like to work for the National Parks Department in any capacity. So I searched USAjobs.com and found that the US Forest Service is hiring a writer/editor. I've completed the application (very tedious, government applications), so now I'm letting it cool off until tomorrow when I can edit it and send it in. I guess we'll see how that goes.