jimsjournal
| Working -- 08/23/02 |
I work in software training (job title is "Senior Education Specialist") for a Big Blue Computer Company. I teach courses for employees, business partners, and customers. I also design and write courses and train other instructors. I did choose to do this; I used to be a programmer/analyst and I chose this career change.
2. If time/talent/money were no object, what would your dream occupation be?
A successful novelist.
Or perhaps a motion picture director.
3. What did/do your parents do for a living? Has this had any influence on your career choices?
My father was a steam-fitter and pipe-fitter, worked in construction and ship-building until he was fifty; then he went to work for IBM as a coordinator in facilities maintenance (i.e., he assigned internal requests for plumbing, electrical, carpentry work, etc.) My mother had worked for many years in shirt factories but for most of my life she was a homemaker.
No direct influence on a specific career choice -- I've never wanted to run a sewing machine in a shirt factory or do plumbing work -- but a strong influence in terms of the importance of working hard and taking pride in what you do.
4. Have you ever had to choose between having a career
and having a family?
No. I don't see them as incompatible. (I didn't say it was easy, just that they aren't incompatible.)
5. In your opinion, what is the easiest job
in the world? What is the hardest? Why?
I have no idea which is the easiest job in the world and which is the hardest.
I have worked a lot of jobs and I couldn't even say which was the easiest
and which was the hardest out of that list: general purpose go-fer in a
furniture store; dishwasher and general farm work at a country hotel; supermarket
cashier (multiple times); overnight crew floor cleaner; hardware/houseware
dept clerk in discount store; camera dept. clerk; police officer; teacher
(various, junior and senior high school English, also one year teaching
literacy to prison inmates); waiter; salesclerk in menswear dept; insurance
salesman; computer operator (entry level to senior operator/shift supervisor);
computers (various titles and jobs, from programmer/analyst to senior business
systems analyst).
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