The advent of my GA career looming so closely has stirred up the general career worries that always lay around in my head in odd places. In an effort to just get them on paper, errr, you know, here they are.
First, I LOVE my field. I love instructional technology and am totally excited to be getting my Master’s in it. I love love love it. LOVE IT.
But.
I also have never had the same job for more than two years. I worked for Borders for five, but in three different stores, in countless positions and with varying levels of authority. When I got bored of the cafe, I ended up as a musicseller. I sold books at one and transferred to be the IC. It was always changing. I loved my Americorps service, and was ready to sign on for a second year, but my program lost funding in the wake of 9/11. I taught for two years, and was totally done. (but I also had — and have — big problems with the school I was at, and the general state of affairs for a classroom teacher.)
Andy and I both marvel at the life lived by semester. I love it. 3-4 months of intense focus on a few key areas, and then a few weeks break, and 3-4 more months of intense focus on another set of areas. There’s something about the finite end of a semester that just works for me.
Dave has worked in his field for 11 years. He’s been doing what he does now for 6 or so of those years. He really enjoys his job. So much so, in discussions of who would replace his boss if he left, Dave doesn’t necessarily care to move up to a supervisory level, because he enjoys the field work so much. I’m cool with that, I’d rather have a happy partner who enjoys his job than an unhappy stressed out husband making twice as much. But also, I can’t imagine doing the same job for that long.
My mother taught in the same school for 34 of her 35 years. Most of that time was in the same classroom, and the last 20 or so years, at the same grade level. Can’t. Fucking. FATHOM it.
So I worry. The whole point of getting an advanced degree and specializing in this field is so that I can get a well-paying job that I will enjoy doing, and will be good at. I truly don’t doubt that any of that WON’T happen, I worry that after two years, I’ll be bored again, and I will never be an adult with a real JOB, where benefits accrue and I can reap the rewards of staying somewhere for longer than two years.
ARGH!
But for now, life is good. I’m going to grad school! Yay.
I’ve discovered that I can only hold down a single job for a long period of time if the job itself changes constantly. So, although I’ve worked with the same company for 5 years, my job has probably changed every 8 months, on average (not including the two separate summers where I took a leave of absence to pursue personal projects). This means I look all normal on paper without having to ever get excruciatingly bored.
I can’t fathom doing the same thing for that long, either. One of the big reasons I don’t want to do grad school is that what I really want is 7 or 8 more years of scattershot B.A. / B.S. education.