A summary of your career.

[Forever Blue]

Yes, interesting topic! Here's mine:

First of all, I never worked before I was 18. My parents felt it was good to be a kid & focus on studies in high school. They got me everything I needed, so I had no need to make money for anything.

So, from 18 in 1993 & up, I always was in college & had a part time job, usually retail. There was a time I had clerical & 1 fast food job too. There were a few other little things I dabbled in throughout the next several years: Having an online business, getting a notary public certificate, being an extra on a TV show & movie, tried to get my real estate's license, but after not passing the state exam, I was done with that.

When I graduated with my BA, the next best job was to be a substitute teacher, so I did that the month after graduating. I did it starting in 1998. I also had a call center job starting around this time that lasted just about 8 yrs. Then in 2001, started working on a couple of teaching credentials & a MA degree in Special Education. This is still while sub teaching & te call center job on evening /weekends. 2006 was a busy year studying for my Masters exam & student teaching where you don't get paid! I finally got those credentials & degree in 2006. Got a job right away as a special ed teacher. It only lasted a year.

I was alwys kind of interested in speech-language pathology so in 2008, I went back to school & substitute teaching & started that long journey of taking undergrad classes & getting accepted & starting grad school for the 2nd time in my life. I had gotten my SLPA (speech-language pathology asst) license too in the meantime. Then started grad school in May, 2011.

I'm halfway through now where I'll graduate with my 2nd Masters in 2014...hopefuly. But I already got hired for the job I'm going to school for now since it's such an in-demand field. I got that job about when I began grad school in 2011. Currently, I'm in work & grad school.

Throughout it all, I've stayed living in the same city. My toughest, most hectic time in my life is literally RIGHT NOW! I'm now 37. Getting a PhD was never totally out of the question, but just recently, I've decided that when I graduate w/ this 2nd Masters, I'm completely through going to school!

[brightdoglover]

I don't have a summary of career. I've had more jobs than I care to count and work as a professional at this point, but do not consider myself to have "my career." I work for a living and am an honorable failure at finding anything that can both support me and matter personally.
When I can stop working, I'll leave smoke and forget about the whole thing- especially, or mainly, or only the interpersonal BS that doesn't have to happen and has nothing to do with the job at hand.
Am I the only poster who doesn't view myself as having had a career or having one now, even though I've got a professional credential and licensed job? To me, a career means more than that.
Boy, I've had a lot of jobs.

[mb919]

Originally Posted by brightdoglover

I don't have a summary of career. I've had more jobs than I care to count and work as a professional at this point, but do not consider myself to have "my career." I work for a living and am an honorable failure at finding anything that can both support me and matter personally.
When I can stop working, I'll leave smoke and forget about the whole thing- especially, or mainly, or only the interpersonal BS that doesn't have to happen and has nothing to do with the job at hand.
Am I the only poster who doesn't view myself as having had a career or having one now, even though I've got a professional credential and licensed job? To me, a career means more than that.
Boy, I've had a lot of jobs.

No, I feel very much like you. As far as being a "failure" at finding something that can both support me and be personally fulfilling, most of us are. I don't know how personally meaningful my job is now, but I like doing it. And it supports me, so that's more than good enough.

[Pivot Point]

Before and during college
High school - summer camp counselor
College - geology library - No one ever came to that library, so there was no work; I got paid to study for 2 yrs
College - summer research assistant for a professor

BA
- Business travel research assistant - credit card company
- Business travel coordinator - promotion; I didn't like this job. I got a tip from a friend about some entry-level openings at a big national insurance company, and got hired:
- Insurance analyst trainee
- Medical insurance policy analyst- promotion; very big pay raise
- Field physician policy analyst - promotion

Master's degree
- Employee wellness program manager - health insurance company
- Employee wellness program director - promotion; I was content for many years. Unfortunately, the organization came under new (mis)management during my last year-and-a-half there. The stress levels were crippling; everyone was having stress-related problems, like strokes, heart attacks, high-blood pressure, ulcers, migraines, insomnia, etc. I resigned.

I took a couple of years off, and did the housewife thing. I went back to work at a much less stressful job.

- Employee wellness program manager - financial services company

[7G9C4J2]

It's fascinating to see the arcs that so many people's professional lives have taken. Interesting, too, to see some folks in the early stages of their lives, just starting to explore options and alternatives, while others of us are approaching the point of winding down a long worklife. I'm in the latter group myself, which I must admit feels odd.

Like many folks, I had a series of low-paying jobs in food-service in my late teens and early 20s. I did a couple of years of college, didn't know what I wanted out of life, couldn't justify continuing to spend money on tuition without knowing where I was going, so left school at age 20.

Moved with my spouse halfway across the country when I was 24, and discovered that I couldn't get any job that involved dealing with the public because I didn't speak Spanish. Spent three months in an intensive job search and finally wound up with an entry-level clerical/basic bookkeeping job with a local retailer.

I worked for that company for 18 years - didn't leave until we moved back to the Midwest. I started at minimum wage doing basic inventory and payroll work, and during my time there, was promoted to accounts payable manager, assistant internal auditor (helped establish the internal audit department, in fact), visual merchandise manager, buyer, and executive assistant to the VP. During those years, I discovered that I was most interested in accounting, but there wasn't a decent university within hundreds of miles, so I didn't get back to school while we lived there.

When we returned to the Midwest, I spent a month job-hunting again and discovered that the experience I had gained wasn't enough to get me the job I really wanted. I took an office manager job with an apartment rental company and started taking night classes for an accounting degree. I worked at the rental place for five years, during which time I was promoted to purchasing manager, going to school at night and pretty much not sleeping.

After five years and within six months of getting the bachelor's degree, I got hired as accounting manager for a retail business that was eerily similar to the place where I spent 18 years. Loved the place, the people, and the work, finished the bachelor's in accounting and business, put in long hours, was promoted to assistant controller and then to controller, and I really thought I'd be there for the rest of my career.

Then the economy tanked. The retailer's business tanked along with it. There was about a three-year stretch of steadily dropping sales, belt-tightening, layoffs, more cost-cutting, more layoffs, closing locations, more layoffs, more cost-cutting, more layoffs, and on and on, and I really started to get nervous. Competitors went out of business, but it never seemed to translate into higher sales for my employer; things just kept getting worse and worse with every quarter. And the stress kept getting worse and worse along with the business.

If I had been a couple of decades younger, I'd have hung on and toughed it through, figuring that even if the company folded entirely, I'd still be able to land something else. But all I kept hearing was that the combination of being laid off and over the age of 50 was the professional kiss of death, and I just got spooked. So I started job-hunting quietly, and just about a year ago, I landed my current job. I'm now an accountant for a governmental agency, not nearly as interesting or demanding as the last one, but also not nearly as likely to keep me up nights worrying about the future. And while the gross pay is a slight decrease from what I was making before, when I calculate what I was making per hour working 60 and 70 hours a week to what I make now working 40 hours a week, I'm actually making significantly more per hour now than I was then. And I have a life now, which is a first. I have zero interest in returning to the stress and the long hours of my former positions; I'm completely content with a low-key, quiet job for the final decade of my career.

The longest I've ever been out of work in my life was the three months it took me to land the job when we moved to the other state, in 1981. The second-longest gap was the month it took me in 1999 to get my first job in our current city. The job changes I've had since then have been over a weekend: I left the old job on a Friday (after giving two to four weeks notice, of course) and started the new one on the following Monday.

[Sound of Harmony]

Can people say what degrees they have? A business degree in my opinion is not a liberal arts one.

[H34T]

Basic Info:
Currently am 24 years old

Pre-College Graduation
13/15 years old - Started off making $14 an hour reffing kids soccer games. Quit while I was making $21 per game. It was good pay and good work, but only every Saturday.
15/16 years old - Worked at my dads company making $7.30 per hour.
16/19 years old - Worked at a local grocery chain for $6.70 per hour.
19/20 years old - Worked at Radioshack making $7.80 per hour PLUS commission.
20/21 years old - Worked for my Uncle performing maintenance on foreclosed homes for $14 per hour.

Post-College Graduation - Bachelor in Business Administration
22/23 years old - Made $38K per year. Worked for an email service provider performing HTML manipulation and launching email campaigns
23/24 - Made $55.6K per year. Worked for a marketing service group developing email campaigns and reporting out on results.
24/present - Make $70K per year. Build emails, QC, test, launch, and report out on email campaigns. Implement strategy and user targeting.

I am young so I have yet to develop a "bad" year. I have been quite lucky since I managed to enter a lucrative industry. My cousin introduced me to the business and he is doing very well for himself now. Who knows what life will bring next...