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What do you do?


Stannis Eats No Peaches

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How do you make a living? What’s your profession? I considered putting this in the career thread, but wanted to catch a wider audience. I graduated from my Bachelor’s degree a little over 2 years ago and I’m getting pretty restless in my current role, but have little idea of what to do with my life, so I’m just curious to learn what kind of variety of professions there are on this board. Who knows, maybe I’ll get some inspiration! Be as specific as you like.

 

I’ll go first: I provide customer service in three languages for an outdoor clothing company, mostly via the phone and email, but with a little bit of social media as well.

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I’m a trainee curator in a small regional museum so this year I’ve curated an exhibition, overseen a few other projects such as updating the guidebook, and updating some interpretation signs - a lot of social media stuff, making little videos, trying to engage people, a lot of blog writing and helped kick start a museum podcast. Traineeship was supposed to be finished by now but I’ve been extended for a few weeks and I’ve been offered a full time role in the museum afterwards that is actually a proper job and not just a paid internship. So am over the moon really. 

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Worked in Finance, IT, Finance/IT, and PMO for mostly large private companies. Graduated (+1 year for spice) with a BA in Economics from an above average public school. Been regularly employed other than a brief bout of unemployment because I quit a contract job after significant restructure/reprioritizing.

Translates to an excel/powerpoint power user that can talk tech. Doesn't that sound like what every child dreamed of?

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Congratulations @Theda Baratheon!! I know how hard you've worked for that.

So, right now I'm a storyteller and editor for a conservation non-profit. I create, write, assign, or edit stories, videos, infographics, data visualizations, or interactive modules on our conservation work, research, and people. It's actually kind of an incredible job: I get paid to be nosy and generally just follow whatever interests me, so long as it somehow pertains to the organization's work, and since we work throughout the hemisphere, that means I get to be nosy about work in a lot of interesting places. The work is also adjacent to my primary hobby, so I end up getting to do that on the clock occasionally, too.

Prior to this I was a journalist and features editor at a magazine, and I still do a lot of freelancing. And prior to that I was a research scientist. 

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I'm a PhD student in city planning, and I study buses, basically. I did some more practitioner type transport/city planner work before, and both of these basically are going off somewhere and figuring out how people there need to travel and what kind of reform/intervention/invention of the transport system is possible and would be helpful. I still do a lot of freelancing on the side in stuff that's related to my PhD, some of it more research-y, some more applied (well, before all this, at any rate.)

I got into that with a BA in geography and then a Master's in city planning, and went through something of a swath of short term and part time jobs before and during college in more and less related stuff before it kind of all clicked together.

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4 minutes ago, Chataya de Fleury said:

Over twenty years, I've increased my salary by over ten times

tl;dr :cheers::cheers:

(only joking - I did read, But, impressive!)

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Got my Veterinary degree in 1993, worked in practice for 3 years, mostly in the farming area (dairy cows). Didn't quite burn out because of being on call / after hours, but I could see the writing on the wall. So I went into govt veterinary work for better pay, regular Monday-Friday hours and actual compensation for working extra time / unsociable hours with overtime pay. You have to really love clinical practice to stay there IMO, because here veterinary salaries have severely fallen away over the years. In my current non-managerial job I am earning 20% more than the top pay for a straight salaried vet in clinical practice. I get to work at home 3 days a week (even without COVID keeping people at home) and never work evenings or weekends. So better pay and better work-life balance. Sad to say, but here being a clinical vet is a mug's game right now, which is why we have a major shortage of vets...well not a shortage of vets as such, there are plenty of us out there, but a shortage of people with a vet degree willing to work in clinical practice. I am still a registered vet because my work still involves veterinary elements and so it remains beneficial for me to stay registered.

For the last 4 years I've been working in food safety, animal and plant health trade relations with the USA and Canada. The USA used to be dicks, but honourable and predictable dicks when it came to negotiations in these areas. Now it is increasingly just being a dick. Canada is earnest, but anal. 

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6 hours ago, Stannis Eats No Peaches said:

How do you make a living? What’s your profession? I considered putting this in the career thread, but wanted to catch a wider audience. I graduated from my Bachelor’s degree a little over 2 years ago and I’m getting pretty restless in my current role, but have little idea of what to do with my life, so I’m just curious to learn what kind of variety of professions there are on this board. Who knows, maybe I’ll get some inspiration! Be as specific as you like.

 

I teach ESL to secondary school students in China.  I really love my job.  There is never a dull moment, and being around teenagers on a regular basis help you feel young-at-heart.

Stannis, if you are having a bit of a "quarter life crisis", going abroad to teach ESL is a good temporary solution.  Most job contracts only last for one year, and it's a good opportunity to work and travel and think about life all at the same time.

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I am a professional tattoo artist. I draw things on an iPad or on paper, then I draw them again on a person. I do some other fine art not on other humans as well, mostly painting or illustration. And while it is not at all lucrative (it’s a wash, really, just a hobby that pays for itself and donates to a local animal shelter) I also design a line of cat themed enamel pins and donate some of that to the local humane society where I adopted a cat from. I am self employed, which is often pretty cool and pretty terrible during a pandemic. I have been doing this since the early 2000s, right out of high school, when most tattooers were still criminals.

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Like Chataya, I started in Accounting; did a masters degree in Business Studies, interned with Deloitte, worked during my last year at Uni part-time for MunichRe and was then recruited by KPMG straight out of Uni. Stayed there for 5 years, did my exam as tax accountant (although in Germany it's probably a lot closer to tax lawyer, because most complex tax law is done by tax accountants) and then my CPA exam.

Got married, had our first kid under way, realized that Big4, big city was not the way of life we wanted for our family. So I left, took over a tax accounting practice in a small city, which was a great break and very, very different from Big4 accounting. As of now I have 11 employees.

Clients are mostly smaller manufacturing companies, building companies, self-employed professionals, small independet retailers, restaurants etc. and I basically do everything for them from inheritance tax to VAT reporting to German GAAP and tax reporting, advice on tax optimization, payroll accounting.

At least 70% of my clients have a background in or close to the building industry (Windowconstructing, Painting, Roofing, Plumbing, Heating, Carpentry, Engineering etc.) or manufacturing (mostly mechanical engineering and component suppliers) and so I work with a lot of company owners who either have an engineering background (college) or qualified craftsmen (master craftsman). So I get to work with very down to earth clients without any corporate overhead and the difference in working with and advising the owners of a company instead of some corporate drone in a suit is... well it's done a lot for my mental well being. Also, in this smaller city I know whom to ask and whom to rely on with almost any practical problem from roofing, to cabinet building to car repairs, or if I need a tractor to pull out the root ball of an oak.

Salary depends on how much I and my employees work and how well my clients are doing. Definitively less than a partner at KPMG. But in terms of social standing, it is much more rewarding not to be part of the machine, but to have and make your own name - at least here, in a local community where my practice is probably one the bigger ones.

I'll probably expand a little in the next two - five years, I already have one junior partner lined up; goal is grow only moderatly and optimize the practice so that I can sell at 55 or 60 and then retire to my orchard, making cider and woodworking.

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I teach highschoolers German as a foreign language and Slovene as a first language. I only got this job less than two months ago, and I like it enough (not now that we all teach from home instead of in the actual school though) - more than I imagined I would enjoy teaching a few years ago, certainly. Teenagers are kind of fun to be around and the school I am at now is a good one, I cannot imagine how I would cope in some school where the kids who were already weak learners in primary school go.

But I still see it as a temporary thing. I can imagine staying in education for a few years, depending on what kinds of positions I find (my current contract is only for one year) and how other factors including my ongoing PhD writing develop. I actually want to work at university as an assistant professor in literature. Or maybe go abroad to teach Slovene as a foreign language. I don't have my life figured out yet at all, at this point I wonder if I ever will have it figured and planned out.

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I graduated in law, made also postgraduate studies in EU law. My first job was informing on EU funds and regulations in information point, it was during Poland's pre-accession period. Then I changed employer and switched to applying for external funds (mostly EU funds) for investments and soft projects on behalf of municipal commune. Recently Ive been doing this as a freelancer for various private bodies (people hate to read all the boring stuff and so I come into play!). I also coordinate implementation of the co-financed  projects. Some may say it is bullshit job, in fact this "profession" is ephemeral. It gives me a lot of stress and sometimes satisfaction. Not hard to tell I am an EU enthusiast. When Poland gets finally kicked out of the union I'll have to look for sth else, but so far so good :P

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My degree is in politics, which as you can imagine i use all the time as a police inspector.

I predominantly worked in wretched hives of scum and villainy. I spent the first 12 years of my police service working 2 of the shittest parts of london. Then I got sick of being tired and feeling like shit so I changed to project work, downsizing the estate due to huge budget cuts within the organisation. 

Then I went back to real policework for 2 years but in a rather nice part of london, which was boring as shit. 

Now I oversee a team who is responsible for improving relations/diversion/engagement with young people. Which basically means my staff get to do their hobbies (sports, performance, outdoorsy type stuff) with kids, and get paid to be police officers. It would be my most satisfactory role if I had the correct number and the appropriately skilled staff. 

I've bitched and moaned for years about our degraded pay and conditions, but right now I've got about as secure a job as anyone and I get to retire at 60 so I feel pretty happy. 

Also I look rather dashing in my uniform. 

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I run my own gym and coach strength athletes. 

I love it for the most part. It's long hours as the only staff are myself and my other half as we're only a small place and can be stressful at times but it's also very rewarding helping people achieve their goals. 

We originally opened it mostly for ourselves to have somewhere better to train and for the first 12 months I was still working 9-5 in a boring admin job but now 3 years in we're both full time and the gym is 3x the size of what it was when we started, we've now got 4 world record holders, multiple national champions and a horde of people who've competed at World championships. 

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I'm currently doing my second degree, a BSc in Physics (first was history). I've wanted to at least try to get into the sciences for a while. So last year I gritted my teeth and took the plunge. 

As for what brings in the money right now... honestly I think I'd rather not say. Partially because I've bitched about my job a lot on here, and if I said what I do somebody could pretty easily work out my exact position and employer based on my location. Also, because my personal ethics and politics have changed a fair amount and are now in tension with my job. I was planning on finding a new job this year, but covid has put a major damper on that.

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4 minutes ago, Alarich II said:

Most underrated perk! Are you allowed to wear a formal dress uniform for occasions like your moms 80s birthday or your sisters wedding?

Am I allowed? Not sure, never asked. Would I? Probably not, when you wear a uniform every day you just want to chill on your own time. 

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27 minutes ago, BigFatCoward said:

Am I allowed? Not sure, never asked. Would I? Probably not, when you wear a uniform every day you just want to chill on your own time. 

you still owe me a bobby hat!

 

and on the subject at hand i am a chef. started in kitchens 20+ years ago as a dishwasher. it is a good career, but very demanding of your time and body. my new gig is at a small spot that only does dinner five days a week and i still work 60 hours a week. but, it is work i love. as i type this i am excited to get into work and butcher today's feesh and get goofy at our menu meeting!

this pandemic put a lot of it into perspective for me a bit. i was defined too much by what i do for a living. i am called chef afterall, i think about food almost constantly, it fills my dreams at night.  it was difficult digging into myself during a near 6 month hiatus from cooking professionally and trying to identify who i am without it. 

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Chiropractor.

5 year MSc that took a little longer due to mental health issues. Opened my own practice, alongside my wife-ish* (massage therapist) 14 years ago. Keep it small, ethical and evidence based. Tough to turn a profit that way in a small rural community but we keep our heads above water. Way more importantly it gives a good work-life balance, means that I love work, and maintain good mental health.

*Got engaged 16 years ago, still haven't got around to the wedding but.

 

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