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Author Topic: So what's your day job?  (Read 53856 times)

oldkid

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Re: So what's your day job?
« Reply #260 on: December 05, 2018, 07:08:34 PM »
It's so great that people are doing things they love, even if it isn't exactly perfect.  I'm especially overjoyed for Martin.
"It's not art unless it has the potential to be a disaster." Bansky

Sam the Cinema Snob

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Re: So what's your day job?
« Reply #261 on: December 06, 2018, 09:12:34 AM »
Got a new job near the end of October working as an advisor for career/technical degrees at a two year college. It's a nice change of pace from the old job which was becoming insufferable in that last year with lots of arguments with my boss about the ethics of certain situations and managing tons of people without getting recognized or paid as a supervisor.

Sandy

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Re: So what's your day job?
« Reply #262 on: December 10, 2018, 09:07:14 AM »
That’s great news, Sam!

Sandy, the property I was working on got sold and the new church tore all the gardens up, including all the fruit and memorial trees we planted.

I’m sad about their decision to do so. It was a wonderful use of the space and provided a sense of accomplishment for those who worked in the gardens, let alone good nutrition!

Keep us posted on your new projects, please.

Sam the Cinema Snob

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Re: So what's your day job?
« Reply #263 on: January 31, 2019, 04:29:24 PM »
Well, I resigned from the job above and have my exit interview tomorrow for a plethora of reasons I'd rather not get into.

As for the future, I'm studying for the COMPTIA A+ Certification and am looking into other certs to pick up in the future as I've always liked working with computers and I think it's time for a career change where I can actually make a decent living.

Feel pretty good about this change. The job felt like a final sign that education is not the place for me right now. Maybe down the line I could land a gig teaching, but right now I'm ready for something new.

oldkid

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Re: So what's your day job?
« Reply #264 on: February 06, 2019, 12:09:53 AM »
Sounds like a positive move then, Sam.
"It's not art unless it has the potential to be a disaster." Bansky

Sam the Cinema Snob

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Re: So what's your day job?
« Reply #265 on: August 30, 2019, 04:45:18 PM »
Last 7 months have been a ride.

I got my A+ Cert, looked for tech jobs, but in the meantime started working for my friend's boardgame store making enough money to get by while living with my parents. They eventually made me manager and gave me a tiny raise, was still barely above minimum wage.

Early July finally get an offer to work a contract gig for this cellphone repair company. Basically would go in each day and have a number of jobs lined up and I just go to the location and do them. Sounds good enough. Well, they say they can't hire me because my car is too old. Then they call me back a couple of days later and say that's not an issue but since then they've filled the job but it should be opening up again soon. It was weird, but I wasn't picky at this point. They said training will probably take a while.

So I tell the manager at the store I'm working that I've got an offer elsewhere and want to do whatever to make the transition easy. He decides to simply stop scheduling me. Should have spoken up at this point, but there had been some stupid drama at the store and I figure I may as well enjoy a couple of weeks off. I tell the owner anyways just so he knows what is going on.

It's finally at the end of July I get training scheduled out of town. They put me up in a hotel and promise to pay me 100 buck for my time. It goes pretty well, I'm not perfect, but the guy says I'm doing well enough to get out there. So they send me back to my town and I try to schedule the ride-along with the city lead and that's where it goes to crap. He says maybe in a couple of days. Then he just straight up tells me they don't have work for me but hopefully will soon. I'm not given a timeline for when I might be needed. At this point I've signed an insurance liability policy that's $55 a month.

Fast-forward a month and I haven't heard anything and I get the insurance bill in the mail. I contact the insurance company, tell them the situation, and cancel the policy because I'm not going to pay for something I haven't used. They're super nice about it. I contact the company, which still hasn't payed me the initial $100 or basically spoken to me at all in a month and I basically get thrown off to someone else who hasn't gotten back to me yet.

Same person stars asking me for a picture so they can make me a badge, not getting the whole part where I say I've not been paid, haven't gotten contacted about working, and basically told her I have to move onto finding other opportunities. I'll contact them again in earnest next week, but I'm basically done at this point. Just want my $100 and to hand back the tools they gave me (which are more worth than $100, so hopefully they'll have incentive to pay me.

My mom has been telling me about trying some online or remote work for a while now and finally I look more into it and it sounds like it might actually be a great fit so I borrow some money from her to start taking a Facebook ad course I could work on both remotely and with people in my city, and then start investigating some other options. One of those options is finally writing and self-publishing a book, so I've started that on earnest on the side.

I'm also thinking about launching a new website with more of a niche focus for several reasons. I have moderate traffic to Creative Criticism, but one thing I didn't realize that now hurts me is that a lot of ad companies look to see if you're just copying other people's work, which I'm not, but the problem is that they don't know that because I post everything here as well, so the bots just see my work on this site and assume I'm plagiarizing. The thing that would suck about the new site is I won't be able to post the content here, but that's just the nature of the beast if I want a website where I can make some money. Still, it'll be a niche topic, so I'll probably still post movie stuff here.
   
I do want to be engaging here more, but I need to start getting cash-flow so I'm spending time I would have spent writing here working on getting some income by writing that book, which takes up most of my writing energy for the day as I'm rebuilding that writing stamina I used to have. In the meantime I'm trying to see if I can sell stuff on Ebay and maybe work more limited hours at my friend's store again just to have some income.

At this point I'm tired of applying for traditional jobs and not even getting called back for an interview. I've not been making money for a month and I need something, even if it means I'm basically looking at going into business for myself, essentially. I feel a lot more hopeful about this situation but know it'll probably require a growth period as I figure this all out. Only real concern is insurance, but once I start making enough money again, I'll start looking at government health care or something similar.

TL,DR: Worked at my friends board game store until July, spent July trying to get in with tech company, didn't work out, now just going to start doing Facebook ads and write a book to make money and thinking about launching a website.

oldkid

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Re: So what's your day job?
« Reply #266 on: September 06, 2019, 02:50:39 PM »
Crazy.  Getting jobs is tough now, but I would think that you'd have an easier time of it now that you got your A+ cert, but I guess not.    Dang.
"It's not art unless it has the potential to be a disaster." Bansky

Sandy

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Re: So what's your day job?
« Reply #267 on: September 06, 2019, 11:17:56 PM »
Sam, you're one of the finest writers I have the privilege of knowing. I wish you the very best on your book and web endeavors.

Eric/E.T.

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Re: So what's your day job?
« Reply #268 on: February 04, 2020, 01:25:44 AM »
Been wanting to post something here, since my day job colors A LOT of how I view the world, films, etc.

I'm a middle school engineering & technology teacher in West Phoenix. Nearly all of our students qualify for free and reduced lunch, and most are Latinx. I taught English for 13 years previous to this one, but when Verizon decided to dump a half-a-mil into our school to build this state of the art tech lab, I lobbied hard for the job and got it. I've gone through lots of training and work closely with Arizona State University on the curriculum development and implementation, and I'm pretty proud of the "maker space" we have. Kids have learned to build and prepare 3D models and environment to be seen in VR, utilized AR to add another dimension of information to their projects, design and print products and prototypes on a 3D printer, code, engage in machine learning, program Alexa, build their own tablets, and we have a pretty neat robotics program for them to go to after school. Before, the more scientifically or academically inclined had little out there for them. I'm glad we are getting people involved at a high level.

Also, I think this is a great opportunity to make it a point of getting girls involved in STEAM fields. Something like 3/5 of the school tech team are girls, and an even higher ratio represented our school at the regional robotics tournament this past winter.

Where it's pertinent to films, I engage better with works of social realism and certain documentaries or docudrama style because it seems more honest, more representative of what's happening in our country, including in some of the more forgotten-about places. My students mean a ton to me, and I enjoy hearing their stories as well as seeing them represented in various art forms. Films about the privileged, that seem not to even understand how privileged their subjects are, *ahem* Marriage Story *ahem* can often leave me quite cold in retrospect.

Anyway, I know I've mentioned my teaching here before, and I'm sure it might come up again, but only as context for understanding my views. It's something that's defined me since I was 6 and my teacher started giving me extra copies of assignments to take home and teach to my stuffed animals. :)
« Last Edit: February 04, 2020, 01:30:22 AM by etdoesgood »
A witty saying proves nothing. - Voltaire

Dave the Necrobumper

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Re: So what's your day job?
« Reply #269 on: February 04, 2020, 06:34:08 AM »
Teaching English to teaching Tech, quite a jump. Sounds like a great way to freshen up your job. How many students at the school and what is the grade range?

Loved the note about you teaching your stuffed animals.

 

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