Mid life career crisis - help!
August 9, 2016 2:11 PM   Subscribe

I'm a teacher who doesn't want to teach anymore. I have a journalism degree and straight out of college I worked in PR for a few years. I've been trying to get back to PR for a while, but it's not working. Maybe I'm too old or maybe my experience is outdated in the eyes of employees. Is there anything I can do to offset this, or am I doomed to be an unhappy teacher for the rest of my working life?

My undergraduate degree was journalism. My graduate work was in political science. I did a couple of PR internships while in college, including one in a hospital, and landed a PR job within health care upon graduating. After a few years there, I moved to a PR agency.

Then I made probably my first career mistake. I was young and idealistic, and among the PR agency's clients were tobacco companies, gambling institutions, oil companies and the like. I felt I didn't want to spend my career helping those people. So I switched careers completely and went to work in a human rights related field. Did that for several years, then hit a dead end, lost my job due to government cutbacks and retrained as a teacher.

I thought I'd enjoy teaching because I enjoyed being the speaker at conferences as well as organising and teaching workshops (part of my human rights work), but teaching kids is something else and I don't enjoy it. I'm also not very good at it, and I'm sure I would have been fired already if there wasn't such a great teacher shortage where I live.

In PR, I liked writing much more than event management, but I can do both. I'm a good writer in my native language and a decent one in English. I've tried to apply for things like technical writing, but don't even get interviews. Ideally, I'd like to be a PR person for a non-profit, but I'm willing to do almost anything to get away from teaching. I'm not sure I'd be good at fundraising, though. I tried sales before college and I didn't have it in me. I have a kid, so relocating is not easy.

In my area there are a couple of large universities, and they do offer open university or continuing ed courses on things like digital marketing and online PR, but they're expensive and I don't know if they'll help me get a job or not. All the people I know who are my age and have gotten PR jobs lately either have been doing PR for a long time, have graduate degrees in PR or both. I can't get another graduate degree due to cost and I can't change the last ten years. Is there anything I can do?
posted by specialsnowflake to Work & Money (12 answers total) 6 users marked this as a favorite
 
Is it possible to try and get another job in the school system that is not teaching? For example, a friend of mine works in curriculum development, and one of my relatives is an instructional coach (basically doing teacher training).
posted by rainbowbrite at 2:24 PM on August 9, 2016 [1 favorite]


Could you teach at the continuing ed level (ie, to adults)? Or do workplace training (safety training, anti-harassment training)?
posted by ldthomps at 2:32 PM on August 9, 2016 [1 favorite]


Especially if you're interested in nonprofits, and if you like the writing more than the event planning you might consider grant-writing as a career.

I also have a friend that works in University Advancement (donor cultivation) which seems to have a lot of the elements that you said you were interested in. Although that's definitely more on the event side of things.
posted by DarthDuckie at 2:42 PM on August 9, 2016 [1 favorite]


What about looking into administrative jobs at the universities? Do they have journalism programs? You might find something in student services. Helping coordinate internships for college students is a big goal at lots of higher ed places, as is study abroad. You could work for a study abroad programs with your language/pr experience.
posted by feste at 3:04 PM on August 9, 2016


Just to add to my comments, administrative jobs at universities are low-paying (at least to start), but high job satisfaction.
posted by feste at 3:06 PM on August 9, 2016


I do communications for a non-profit and have for a while. What about focusing on non-profits that work in the education arena? That seems likely to be your best bet. A lot of times smaller non-profits are looking for people to do both comms and fundraising, but a lot of fundraising is stuff like writing appeals, etc., not necessarily asking people directly for money.

As for the continuing ed classes - I wouldn't really expect them to help that much, except to give you the current jargon if taught by a practitioner.

Another thing to consider is volunteering your services to a local nonprofit to get some current experience under your belt.
posted by lunasol at 3:54 PM on August 9, 2016 [2 favorites]


Response by poster: I've applied for administrative jobs at the universities several times, but never gotten as much as an interview. Grant writing is not a career here, I think (I'm in a small country outside the US). None of the universities here have journalism programs, and besides I only have a B.S. in journalism and not a master's.

I also applied to the government agency that handles harassment training and again, no interview. They hired a former teacher with no experience outside the classroom.

Recently, I applied to be a volunteer for a local charity, mostly doing some event planning. I went to their training event and e-mailed them afterwards, twice, but no reply. I can't even get a volunteering job, how sad is that?
posted by specialsnowflake at 4:12 PM on August 9, 2016


What about working in PR or communications for a school, either yours or another? I do think it will be hard to get back into PR, so something education-related might value your teaching background as well.
posted by bluedaisy at 5:10 PM on August 9, 2016


Response by poster: None of the primary or secondary schools have PR or communication people. My school has a secretary that handles the website, as well as the phones, registration, communication with parents, photocopying, etc. That's it, and it's not a job that I would want. Besides, it pays worse than teaching.

The state university has PR/web managers in most departments, and the private ones have communication departments. I've tried to apply for those jobs to no avail, even though I did spend two summers working under a PR/web manager in one university department locally.

Besides, my "teaching background" really isn't that valuable. I've only been a teacher for a couple of years, and I'm in no way an expert on education.
posted by specialsnowflake at 7:54 PM on August 9, 2016


Best answer: It sounds like you are doing a lot right, you might just need to keep applying.

Also, have you considered doing some informational interviews? Email someone who has the kind of job you want and ask them if you can take them out for coffee and pick their brain about how you might improve your profile or search.
posted by lunasol at 8:38 PM on August 9, 2016 [1 favorite]


Best answer: Keep applying and keep racking up side-gigs to have experience in your field. You'll get there. Also consider having an outsider review your resume, and even see if one of the folks hiring would be willing to chat with you about the position before you apply so you know specifically what they want to see in your resume.
posted by Toddles at 8:53 PM on August 9, 2016


Response by poster: It's been suggested to me that public relations is a young person's game, and that I've missed the boat by being out of the field for over ten years, and no amount of training, volunteer work or even a graduate degree in PR (that I can't afford) will offset that.

I'm not saying that's true, but what if it is? I'm not getting interviews for technical writing either, since I lack experience and technical background. Grant writing jobs are non-existent here (just checked with a former university colleague) and I don't really want to go back to journalism since job security is zero, cutbacks are rampant and working hours are not exactly family friendly. My only journalism experience is in print journalism, which seems to be a dying field.

Are there any creative, interesting or even just tolerable jobs that require writing skills that I'm overlooking? I think advertising is even more a young person's game, and I've gotten no response when I've applied for things like copywriting. I live in a highly unionised country where internships are not common and even considered illegal by the unions, so getting an internship to make switching easier is not really an option.
posted by specialsnowflake at 6:08 AM on August 10, 2016 [1 favorite]


« Older Fix my office lights   |   What gym bag should I buy? Newer »
This thread is closed to new comments.