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I'm at a crossroads and don't know which way to go.
I'm 50 years old and was an automotive engineer for 18 years until I was downsized out two and a half years ago. Since then I've completed a teaching certificate and am teaching high school chemistry and physics. Given my age, I did not want to try and restart an engineering career (I've heard horror stories about people over 50 trying to find work) and thought a new career was my best option. Unfortunately, I can't find reasonable work teaching either. I, currently, work in a charter school which pays less than a first year teacher with only a bachelors degree (I have two masters) would make as a permanent wage. I have no retirement plan and health benefits not worth paying the $650 a month they would cost me to cover just myself and my kids (my husband is on his own as they won't cover him if he has the option of buying insurance through his employer).
I need a game plan. Anyone out there have any advice for a 50 year old with a masters in chemical engineering and a masters in teaching looking for work? I really thought, with my subject matter expertise, that I'd be in demand in teaching. To hear the Michigan board of education talk, I'm exactly what the doctor ordered but schools prefer to hire holders of general science certificates because they can put them anywhere. I'm seen as limited. While I could get a general science cert, it would take me three years because I need 24 credits (12 in biology and 12 in earth science) and I have to work full time and have two kids so there's no going faster.
Okay, automotive has tanked. Even if it turns around, they are not going to start hiring people like me back. Teaching doesn't want me because the subjects I can teach are too narrow. I really need to deveop a game plan. What would you do if you were me? Realistically, I still have 15-19 years to work. It's not like a company woudn't get their money's worth but jobs tend to go to new grads or people who have particular areas of expertise that are in high demand.
Would you recommend I go back for a DI certificate and just work in charter schools until then or try to get back in engineering? Or maybe I should go back for a different engineering degree so I can go out as a new grad? I'm sure most of my undergrad courses are transferrable to something like polymer engineering. I need a plan and I can't afford for it to fail. Any advice?
I genuinely feel sorry for people like you. I see people with advanced degrees killing themselves at jobs and they might make $45,000 a year if they are lucky. I made more than that as a bartender/electrician last year. I don't even have a college degree.
Considering how much you ***** about teaching I would advise against continuing down that path. Why make yourself miserable? Also, get the hell out of Michigan. There is no future there.
I genuinely feel sorry for people like you. I see people with advanced degrees killing themselves at jobs and they might make $45,000 a year if they are lucky. I made more than that as a bartender/electrician last year. I don't even have a college degree.
Considering how much you ***** about teaching I would advise against continuing down that path. Why make yourself miserable? Also, get the hell out of Michigan. There is no future there.
I would be HAPPY if I was making $45K a year. That sounds like untold riches right now. I was making $90K with a 15% yearly bonus. Now I can't find a job making $35K WITHOUT benefits.
Teaching doesn't make me miserable. Working under the conditions I currently am does. I could be very happy teaching somewhere with a real lab and reasonably sized classes that paid a decent wage and didn't expect me to spend hundreds of dollars a year out of my own pocket to support my classroom. I don't mind buying extras like demos but I'm buying printer paper and white board markers because they are not supplied by the school in addition to lab equipment and demos. I even bought my own calculators because the school doesn't supply them to science teachers. Just to math teachers.
You need something. I have nothing. If I had decent pay and benefits, maybe not having a lab wouldn't seem so bad. Maybe if I had a proper lab, decent sized classes and the equipment I need to do my job it wouldn't seem so bad that I'm making less than someone with far less education than me. When you have nothing, you tend to not be happy with it. I have nothing where I am.
If I stay in teaching, I will get out of teaching science. I'll go into math. Even if the pay is the same, I won't have to buy $500 a year worth of equipment for demos and labs and I'll have about half the prep time I have now so I'll have time to do things like take a part time job either at the school or somewhere else. Plus I won't have to stay after school two days a week to accomodate students who were absent on lab days making up labs. It really bugs me that the art teacher makes more than I do because she's done when the bell rings at the end of the day and can run the after school program for extra pay. I'm still tutoring kids long after she's left and she gets a premium because she does an extra job.
Unfortunately, I'm stuck in Michigan for about 6 more years. My husband will be retiring in about 4 years and my youngest graduates from high school in 5 years. After they're off to college, it doesn't matter where I am but my husband's job anchors us to Michigan right now. If we left, we'd just switch who can't find work. He's doing ok. He's a little underpaid and benefits are expensive but he has them. If I could get to ok, we'd be doing ok. If someone offered me a position where I could get to $45K a year teaching in a few years where I had support, I'd be jumping for joy.
Being stuck in Michigan is why I need advice. Even if I were willing to move, I have the issue of being 50, female and out of work. People tend to blame the person when they find themselves in that position. They think that if we were any good we wouldn't have lost our jobs. The truth of the matter is 2/3 of the people I worked with lost their jobs. I was let go in the second to last round. I made it through the first 50% being cut. I'm not dead wood. The dead wood was cut long before they got to me.
How do I market myself? Most likely, I'm getting out of teaching. Part of my attraction to teaching was filling a needed void. Now that there's a glut of teachers, it doesn't have the allure it once had. And there's the low pay, no benefits and no classroom support thing too . I wasn't expecting that. I expected low pay for a few years but I expected, within 10 years to be able to get to reasonable wage with decent benefits. Instead I have wages $10K lower than the university said to expect with no benefits. Not even a matching contribution to a 401K. Nothing but medical benefits that are too lousy and too expensive to take. This caught me by surprise.
So, I need to start over. I need to get my resume out there but how do you market yourself when you're 50 and, literally, starting over? And what should I market myself as? I'd be fine with an entry level enginering position. I'd work my way up. I did it before and I can do it again. I need a game plan. One that will work. Teaching is probably not it. At least not in Michigan. There are states where people like me are snapped up quickly because the state requires a major or minor in what you teach at the high school level but I'm not ready to move.
Anyone need a chemical engineer willing to work cheap for the chance to start over?
Last edited by Ivorytickler; 04-02-2010 at 05:17 PM..
I just wanted to add that I go to the ed board to vent because I need to vent. Venting doesn't mean I couldn't be happy teaching. It just means I'm struggling in my current situation enough to need to vent. I'm the kind of person who lets off steam and gets right back in the game. If I didn't vent, I'm not sure I'd function.
It always takes my managers a while to figure out that it's when I stop talking that they need to worry. As long as I'm letting off steam, the pressure doesn't build up. I can deal with anything as long as I can vent about what bugs me. That I'm not supposed to vent, as a teacher, is a problem for me.
Is your engineering transferable? Meaning are you enough of a generalist to do other types like plant or production? How about engineering for a sewer/water authority?
Unfortunately your inablity to pick up and move limits you. Which is my moment of being Captain Obvious.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Ivorytickler
I just wanted to add that I go to the ed board to vent because I need to vent. Venting doesn't mean I couldn't be happy teaching. It just means I'm struggling in my current situation enough to need to vent. I'm the kind of person who lets off steam and gets right back in the game. If I didn't vent, I'm not sure I'd function.
It always takes my managers a while to figure out that it's when I stop talking that they need to worry. As long as I'm letting off steam, the pressure doesn't build up. I can deal with anything as long as I can vent about what bugs me. That I'm not supposed to vent, as a teacher, is a problem for me.
Many employers don't want employees that need to constantly vent to let off steam. It has a negative impact on employee morale. Just food for thought.
Is your engineering transferable? Meaning are you enough of a generalist to do other types like plant or production? How about engineering for a sewer/water authority?
Unfortunately your inablity to pick up and move limits you. Which is my moment of being Captain Obvious.
Chemical engineers are not generalists but we fit just about anywhere except as electrical engineers. We're polar opposites to electrical engineers. All engineers study mechanics, fluid flow and statics. While I'm capable of working something like sewer/water, they'd, usually hire a civil engineer. If there were a shortage, they'd hire me but with a glut, it's unlikely.
Plant production I have done and can do. I work very well with people (chemical engineers tend to which is why a high percentage of us end up in either management or teaching). Paint process engineering, extrusion and plastic molding are right up my alley. Even assembly is not a stretch because what chemical engineers do is optimize processes (education is a process to be optimized to me.) Getting the job is the issue. I have plenty of competition for those jobs. I'll, definitely, be applying for anything that comes along in this area. Also, I'm going to throw my hat in the ring with a chemical company that is undergoing a major expansion. Unfortunately, every position they have listed asks for a PhD in chemical engineering. I'm hoping there might actually be a shortage of PhD chemical engineers, in the area, and they may have to settle for someone with only a masters for one of those positions.
Many employers don't want employees that need to constantly vent to let off steam. It has a negative impact on employee morale. Just food for thought.
Well, then they'd miss out on an exceptional employee wouldn't they? When my last boss (not counting my current principal, who BTW is impressed with the amount of work I do and the quality and quantity of labs I do) hired me, I was part time. He told me at my 6 month evaluation that he'd "...pit my 24 hours a week against anyone elses 40 any day".
If you want someone who will get the job done when no one else can, I'm your girl but if you expect me to smile and pretend the world is all roses, go find someone else who won't do half the job I will. I have yet to have a boss complain about this beyond the first few months when they were figuring out that I say what I feel as a means to let off steam and muse over issues out loud. They learn to ignore it in time. In fact, it becomes a joke. They learn fast that they're in trouble when I stop talking. Besides, some of my complaints ended up resulting in fixes to issues no one else thought of. I don't just gripe, I find solutions to my gripes. You may not think so but that is valuable. You need to see the issues before you can fix them. Pretending there are none seldom results in anything getting fixed.
While my current situation is still bad, it's 50% better than it was the day I started. And yeah, I griped about everything from improper chemical storage to the need for a proper eye wash station and a chemical disposal plan that matched our, unique, issues as a school. As a result, they secured off site storage so that we could stage things in my room and create enough room to actually use things like bunsen burners (never used before in the prior 10 years the school existed) and do bigger labs (I can now rearrange the room for a better, though still lousy, lab arrangement). I'm attacking too large of classes next. One of my personal homework assignments this week is to put together a proposal to split my class in two for labs with half of the class going with a TA or sub and me working with the other half during labs to create a safer and better learning environment. I have no idea why you think it would be better if I just put on a smile and pretended that everything was ok until I had enough and quit like the previous six teachers did but to each his own.
I, probably, can't fix this one but it will run 80% better before I'm done. If what I'm hearing is true, I teach to a higher standard than any of the teachers before me and I do more labs and more in depth labs. If I hadn't been complaining about the room size, arrangement and storage, I'd be teaching just like they did because nothing would have changed and, as much as I gripe about having to take half an hour to rearrange the room before/after labs, it's better than what was before when there was no way to make the room better. It is my nature to identify and attack issues. And yes, I'm vocal about it. As any of my previous employers can tell you actions are worth 1000 words. I may speak 10 venting but I turn around and take care of 1000 in what I do.
Is my chemical storage perfect? No but it's the best I can make it given what I have to work with (and now that I have offsite storage, I'll make it better this summer (requires emptying all the cabinets and restocking them in the proper order)). Is my lab arrangement perfect? No. But it's the best I can manage right now given my class sizes. Is my staging plan perfect? No, but it functions. If I'm here long enough, they'll build me a closet I can use for proper storage and staging just to shut me up. As they say, the squeaky wheel gets the grease. Before this year is up, I will have identified and put into writing every issue with the current lab arrangement. No one will be able to say they didn't know. If they want to fire me for that, so be it but I'm not going to keep my mouth shut when I consider the situation unsafe as is. I couldn't respect the person who looks back at me from the mirror if I did.
That said, you'll never hear me complain to a parent. I know what side my bread is buttered on.
Last edited by Ivorytickler; 04-03-2010 at 10:43 AM..
Have you ever considered teaching at the community college level? Sometimes CC's are looking for people with Masters degrees to teach Engineering/Chemistry/Sciences/Math. All in demand at the Community College level.
Not sure what the pay would be, but worth looking into, even if you had to start out as an adjunct.
Even my teacher friends are having trouble finding teaching jobs. It's just brutal out there. Many of the CCs are now demanding a PhD as the terminal degree to teach. Not all, mind you, but many are going that way.
I have a masters degree and have vast experience in telecommunications, military, education (both high school and college), university administration, weather forecasting and prognosis, and technical writing. Although I have landed a job, it is a good 20K cut from what I was making before I was laid off.
I don't have any real answers for the OP but I wish you the best.
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. I wasn't expecting that. I expected low pay for a few years but I expected, within 10 years to be able to get to reasonable wage with decent benefits. Instead I have wages $10K lower than the university said to expect with no benefits. Not even a matching contribution to a 401K. Nothing but medical benefits that are too lousy and too expensive to take. This caught me by surprise. 
