Job Discussion Forums

[doner]

[jdl]

doner,

Are you requesting career advice?

[johnslat]

Dear doner,

"deadend job" "it pays the bills"

Is "paying the bills" worth it, doing something you dislike so much? Maybe you think it is, but I'd say you're wasting the most precious commodity you have: time (and, at my age, I believe I have a good perspective on just how precious that commodity really is. The "dead" in "deadend" comes all too soon.)

Isn't there some other way to pay the bills, one that would be personally more satisfying, even fulfilling?

I hope so.

Regards,
John

[doner]

Yes because I do not want to see my kids out on the street.

[doner]

[johnslat]

Dear doner,

You keep insisting that it isn't - fine. But you need a career, one that will keep your kids off the street and make you much less bitter.

It's all guesswork on my part, but if you're attitude at home is anything like the one you display on here, I don't see how those kids can be so very happy at present.

Regards,
John

[jdl]

doner,

Are you requesting assistance in finding a career for yourself outside ELT?

One of the interesting asides in ELT is that many instructors are 'multi career' people who have experience in a variety of professions ranging from business to consulting to science to art to journalism to scuba diving to engineering etc. and a variety of related or unrelated trades.

As you are aware advice is is no shortage in these fora..... Some of it even good

[doner]

Multi career? I have not come across many engineers in TEFL. I did work with a Turkish Cypriot born in the UK who did a degree in engineering as a mature student and then went into TEFL when engineering collapsed in the UK in the nineties. I worked with `nasty nick` who was a diver-he did 4 months in saudi and then did a runner at the first holiday. Never met a journo TEFLer apart from a few TEFLers who wrote articles for free for bad english lang papers. Businessmen TEFLers-no but I have met a few who claimed to have walked away from great businesses but I always wondered why they never had any money. No consultants but the Booz Allen Hamilton teachers are described as consultants. Scientist TEFLers again no but I worked with one with a degree in chemistry but he did have a 4 week cert.

[doner]

[jdl]

doner,

You are probably right. Good luck. It will all work out.

[johnslat]

Dear doner,

Yes, I suppose they would be. But that doesn't mean that something in your work-life doesn't need to change.
Anyone as unhappy as you seem to be in what they do for a living had better be trying to find some way off of what you see as a "deadend."

All the best,
John

[doner]

[With Malice Toward None]

Bide your time, doner. It's good that you believe in God. You are not the first one to experience this. All of us have spent whole nights thinking about what we are going to do...Eat your bread slowly and reflect that you are eating it after all.
It seems someone compalained to Jesus that he doesn't have shoes. So Jesus showed him a man who had no legs.
Try and commiserate. And keep posting, you are among brothers.
Regards
WMTN.

[johnslat]

Dear doner,

Well, I've been down and out (through not in Paris and London), slept in the back seats of cars (the Volkswagon Bug was the worst,) been totally penniless, gone hungry and had a number of REALLY "deadend" jobs.

I survived and somehow, something better has always turned up.

Not to seem too Pollyannish, but my life so far seems to have confirmed the truth of Mr. Micawber statement:

�Something will turn up.�

Dear WMTN,

"you are among brothers" - and sisters.

Regards,
John

[With Malice Toward None]

Dear JS,

Didn't you know that I am a male chauvinist big?

Only following the Latinate tradition(or fallacy) in grammar, not the influence of L3, hope you understand.

I was talking to doner in the majlis, JS, and women are not allowed there, see.

Regards,
WMTN.