Sketching out a Plan B (and C and D)

August 27, 2015 5:18 PM

I've put all my career eggs into a single basket. Can you help me come up with some alternate ideas? Scared chicken inside.

I've been out of the official workforce for a few years. In that time, I've been caregiving, doing casual work, and upgrading my mediocre GPA to prepare for applications to fairly competitive master's-level programs in allied health. I've run into a couple of hiccups. I'm working on addressing those, but want to explore ideas for a fallback plan. My criteria: 1) employers might at least entertain the idea of hiring me; 2) the work is suited to me in some way; and 3) it provides a hope of achieving a vaguely middle-class lifestyle within the next five years, and the opportunity to save a bit for my later years. (I am closing out my thirties.)

Hoping for some assistance exploring possibilities I don't know about or may have overlooked.

***
Education: BA in a social science; a couple of now-useless certs in dead industries; most of a second BA.

Work history: junior to mid-level admin/coordinator/jack of all trades (small non-profits & higher ed); various entry-level jobs in publishing (this is going way back); ESL instructor (unqualified); tutor.

Of my experiences so far, I've found tutoring and teaching the most rewarding. I loved working directly with motivated (adult) learners, and seeing them progress. As mentioned, I wasn't qualified, but one strength seemed to be intuiting how and why students struggled with particular concepts, and finding ways of tailoring explanations so that they made sense for a given student. (I found the "diagnostic" aspect of that work especially interesting.) Teaching is out, due to a longstanding glut of teachers in my area, but perhaps jobs involving similar functions are out there.

I've been described as "personable". I'm pretty good at quickly establishing a rapport with people, from all walks of life. I'm a good listener; strangers and acquaintances often surprise themselves by divulging things they normally wouldn't, in both personal and work settings. I think this is because I'm just really interested in people, and am willing to give them focused attention. (I think it might also be because I seem to have a bit of a knack for asking questions at the right time, if I may say so. In work settings, this has been helpful in getting unofficial background information, and in situations involving negotiation and "soft" persuasion.) I'm just about equally extraverted and introverted.

WRT personal exchanges - I'm more than happy to provide any support or encouragement I can when people seem to want or need it, but am sometimes drained when people get into very difficult emotional territory, or need more support than I'm able to provide. I'm not terribly comfortable when people express very strong negative emotions, or in the presence of conflict. (I mention this because social work, psychology, and related fields always come up as recommendations on career assessments, but I'm moving against those ideas for this reason. Also, because I think I'd be a strong candidate for burnout. And because the problems for which people usually see social workers or counsellors don't often have easy or tangible solutions. I like quick, obvious wins. Also, because of those hiccups I mentioned. )

I very much enjoy troubleshooting, and devising creative solutions to practical problems. I've received praise for making improvements to work processes and systems in the past. (One area of at least casual interest is ergonomic design / usability. I often notice design flaws in objects, and have ideas [of admittedly unknown quality] about how they could be improved. I'm also very interested in human factors, as they might apply to organizational or administrative systems [not so much HCI]. But I recognize that there's almost no way for me to get into that at this point, and I'm doubtful about whether I have the right temperament for the longer-term processes involved in e.g. manufacturing.)

I'm good in an emergency - i.e. both work "emergencies" and actual, physical emergencies. I'm able to act decisively and efficiently when there's a car accident, for example, or when someone breaks their leg, or cracks their head open on the sidewalk [drawing from actual events, here]. (Fast reaction times in general, for whatever that's worth [maybe it's worth something??] .)

I was decent at basic database stuff (i.e., designing simple databases using what is probably now obsolete software); got a kick out of solving those kinds of logical problems. It's not the sort of thing I'd like to do all day, every day, though. Same for copy editing, or working with e.g. Photoshop (or even my hobby-level music production stuff) - I can easily spend hours tweaking this or that defined problem. (Freelancing was terrible for me, in that I'd get completely absorbed in a project, losing sleep and all sense of life balance in the process.) I'd rather not spend most of my time at a computer, if possible.

I'd ideally like to spend time:
- Providing individuals with practical assistance in achieving tangible goals
- Troubleshooting problems, coming up with solutions
- Doing varied activities that involve talking to people more often than not, with some independent work

(I understand that all this is pie-in-the-sky stuff. Just putting it out there in case it might not be.)

Challenges
- Age. I won't be in my thirties for much longer. I'm often taken to be several years younger than I am, but I'm not sure how long that's going to last. And the dates on my resume are what they are.
- Lack of a viable professional network where I live.
- Not great at routine admin. I recognize that this is probably my most feasible option. It means spending most of the day doing things I'm bad at, though.
- Physical weakness. I have a number of musculoskeletal problems, and acquire repetitive strain injuries easily. This is another reason "talky" jobs appeal.
- Night owl/DSPS - this has been aggravated by my recent lifestyle. 9 to 5 is totally fine, but I'd have a rough time with hours much earlier than that. In a perfect world, I'd work late mornings to late afternoons.
- Probably many things I'm missing.
- Explaining not only the past few years, but my work history. It's as common as grass, and I haven't been able to make it work for me, for various reasons. There's no evidence of clear progression in a single career path, or a commitment to a particular industry; I'm up against better-qualified people almost half my age, in a highly competitive city; some of the job titles on my resume are idiosyncratic. Much of my good experience took place in another country; upon my return (at an inopportune economic moment), my professional network was DOA. I'm now certain that I lost valuable time in that first year back due to pitching for the wrong jobs and level for my experience. (I'd hoped to make something close to my last salary, doing work like the last job I'd done; didn't happen.)

I didn't feel I had many options at that point, which is why I decided to take a shot at retraining in what I thought might be a safe field. I started part-time, and was going to cut my losses if I got anything less than an A. I ran into hiccups during my final year. There's a slim chance I might be able to recuperate the GPA, but I'm blocked with fear - the stakes are paralyzingly high. I'm getting help with some of the disruptive hiccups, and with my anxiety, but there's only so much time available in therapy. This question is beyond the scope of what's happening there, for the moment.

In The Now Habit, Neil Fiore talks about developing a "safety net", an alternate source of self-worth, in order to make the failure of an important goal easier to accept and face. I need to think of a real safety net, and I'm blocked with that too, so any help from you lovely and clever people would be so appreciated.

I apologize for the length of this question; I hoped to be comprehensive. If for whatever reason, you feel even more information would help, please feel free to poke around my past questions or answers. (Also, please be kind… very anxious.)

posted by cotton dress sock to Work & Money (13 answers total)

my gut reaction upon first read here was NURSING.
posted by zdravo at 5:28 PM on August 27, 2015 [2 favorites]

Response by poster: Thank you, zdravo :) I would love to do that, but my body's already in rough shape :/
posted by cotton dress sock at 5:28 PM on August 27, 2015

So, on reading the first line, I just want to say - cluck, cluck! I feel you. I'm in a new town, job searching, can't quite decide what to do with my life or what area to move into.


I think some kind of IT support or helpdesk might suit your skills. I mean, with plain old helpdesk, people call with a problem, they maybe don't have the right technical language to explain it, and you interpret, then troubleshoot and fix their issue. Quick rewards, fixed shifts (and there are often early/late shifts etc), and you leave it behind at the end of the day. It would have to be the type where you fix peoples issues, not fob them off - so you aren't dealing with negative emotions! But mostly people are just really happy to talk to someone competent who wants to help them. Would have to be specialised enough that you can get a good income after a few years though.
This is just waaay too broad a category to be specific as to what tech to get involved in, but there is so much need for people who are good with PEOPLE rather than just the technical issues. And good at troubleshooting.

There's also providing IT Training? I'm thinking of people I've met who go round offices, universities, etc, teaching people how to use specific custom software to solve their problems. Oh, so you're spending 2 hours a week doing a horrible admin task? I can show you how to not have to do that. Etc.


Gosh. Ruthless Bunny is apparently away from Mefi at the moment, but I have seen her suggest learning salesforce, then doing that for companies.
Her advice is usually better than mine. Maybe you should learn salesforce. Maybe I should learn salesforce.

(And no, not nursing, super hard on the body, and emotionally whelming, if not overwhelming)

Good luck! (Cluck cluck)

(P.S. I am really confident that you would be good at any of the ideas above. Worst case, entry level helpdesk is reasonably easy to get into, if you can prove your worth, you can move up.
I totally understand about a safety net, I got here and freaked out, and the idea that I could join a paid medical trial for cat allergies, as a financial safety net, eased my anxiety about applying for new jobs. You are smart, coherent, and I believe that you can cope with your situation and rock helpdesk, at the very least
posted by Elysum at 5:46 PM on August 27, 2015 [3 favorites]

Best answer: I bet you would be a good health educator or care manager for a medical practice. Health education is a pretty booming field. Patients often lack very basic knowledge about their health conditions, way more than most doctors can give them during a typical appointment, and achieving a certain level of knowledge and self-empowerment is absolutely vital to managing chronic diseases. It's a growing field. (You would need some coursework to do this but since you're trying to enter an allied health field, you might have already done most of it). And it's a desk or classroom job.

Care manager roles vary a lot. Some of them are more clinical and tend to be nurses who are tired of bedside nursing, but we just hired someone for the medical practice where I work who has a bachelor's degree in something unrelated and whose job is literally to troubleshoot for patients. Home health aide not showing up? She'll figure out why, and how to fix it. Patient was a no-show to his post-hospitalization appointment? She'll figure out why, and how to get him in next time. (This can sometimes be a fairly thankless task, as patients sometimes don't really want the help we're offering, but she has the eternal and lavish gratitude of our entire medical and nursing staff.) And she mostly works on very concrete problems (why doesn't Mrs. Jones have a CPAP machine?) as opposed to the kind of global "everything about your entire life is terrible" things that our social worker and psychologist have to cope with.

As a safety net/temp kind of thing, would you be interested in tutoring for standardized tests? I have a friend who manages to put together a pretty good living doing it independently (mostly SAT/LSAT/GMAT/GRE), but with your experience and skill set you could probably get a part-time job with Kaplan or another tutoring chain that might keep food on the table while you work on something else for the long term.
posted by The Elusive Architeuthis at 7:32 PM on August 27, 2015 [2 favorites]

Teaching shortage is back, depending on where you live. Not great for night-owls though. Oops, (on preview) well, there's the option to move I guess, depending on need/desire for job. That's what I did anyway!
posted by bquarters at 7:43 PM on August 27, 2015 [1 favorite]

Teach overseas at a private language school. They mainly deal with people after work and on weekends, so a mid-afternoon start would be typical and basically require that you speak English and can show up. Though obviously this wouldn't work if you're wedded to your current locale.
posted by Trifling at 10:10 PM on August 27, 2015 [2 favorites]

Response by poster: Many thanks to all who have replied so far. I very much appreciate your suggestion in particular, The Elusive Architeuthis. I had never heard of this position, and I agree that it sounds like something I might be able to do.

Just a few quick things - I'd like to stay where I am (Canada) - I still have obligations, and I'm not sure I have it in me for another big move at my age (there have been a couple). I can do 9-5, so please don't let my mention of being a night owl rule out any ideas. I also realize now that I should have mentioned that one of the hiccups being dealt with is ADHD. I'm just starting treatment for that. I'm not yet sure what (if any) difference that will make as far as work preferences or habits.

Thanks again to everyone who took the time to reply.
posted by cotton dress sock at 11:55 PM on August 27, 2015

Best answer: From your description, I wonder if you might consider sales. I know there are certain stereotypes about sales people, and maybe you don't see yourself in that kind of role, but I think a position where you were selling something "complex", for lack of a better word, might check many of your boxes since there are many similarities between those kinds of sales positions and education. I'm thinking something like pharmaceutical sales.
posted by girl flaneur at 7:44 AM on August 28, 2015 [2 favorites]

Along the lines of what's been mentioned since you seem to have at least some interest in medicine and some of the admin/people managing aspects this job would require, have you considered looking into clinical research? Either as a research coordinator assisting a scientist/doctor with the conduct of trials (consenting pts, doing follow-up, completing case report forms, etc. very jack of all trades-y) or as a monitor working for a clinical/contract research organization (CRO). The big ones are PPD, Covance, Parexel, Quintiles, among others. The job might involve frequent travel for site visits, if that matters.
posted by Wretch729 at 7:57 AM on August 28, 2015 [1 favorite]

Response by poster: Great ideas - thank you all so much :) Sales might actually be a good match for me, girl flaneur, I agree. Definitely worth looking into, thank you.

The research coordinator roles I've seen are indeed interesting, Wretch729, but many of them require good academic references, at least in my area. I could probably see if someone might vouch for me, but I've been out of touch with anyone related to my program for a while. (This is one of the other "hiccups". They're basically all related. It's taken me a long time to find accessible assistance.)

I framed this question in a particular way, highlighting skills and traits past experience and reflection suggest I possess, together with current limitations, as if they were immutable facts, and asking how they might fit together, as a package, and whether they/I/this fait accompli might hold any kind of value in the working world.

Is this a reasonable way to approach the question? Caution/fear say yes. janey47's reply to another recent career question makes me wonder, though. Fear is a huge reason my career history is what it is. I have never really felt it is possible or right to do "whatever I want, whenever I want", the way this person did.

Like, is it smart for people my age and in my position to do what they want? Am I creating a self-fulfilling prophecy by focusing on the present, past experiences, things that appear to be given, the hope of security, perceptions about others' assessment of my value? Or is self-determination (and the hope of it) a luxury, for those with youth or other capital on their side (I think, probably yes)? Or am I taking a reasonable approach to real life? What is a sensible way to approach this question?

I haven't much talked about my interests, for example, because I feel they can't matter for someone in my position. (I mean, they do have low value in this market, they probably don't matter.) I also haven't asked for wild, out-there suggestions that might lead to learning, or further self-discovery, or even self-creation. Like, maybe I'd turn out to be a good stockmarket trader, given the opportunity, who knows. But of course, I would need the opportunity, which could only emerge from existing connections and background, or blind luck - or I'd have to make the opportunity happen myself. And of course, if I felt able to create an opportunity like that for myself, I wouldn't have asked a question like this. (I obviously don't want to be a stock market trader, that's an e.g., but it could happen? Why couldn't it happen?) Circularities going on there, probably best left for therapy, ok, but basically, if anyone is still reading - am I asking the right question?
posted by cotton dress sock at 3:45 PM on August 28, 2015

Response by poster: For this BA's GPA, it's one course that's tanking me, the rest are solid. I'd have to find a way/the courage to deal with that course. But LSATs are heavily weighted in law school admissions here, as far as I know, and I can rock any timed test, if I study for it. Most smart people are avoiding law school now - I might be able to get in somewhere. Maybe I could even finish it, now that I'm finally getting some help with ADHD (though it's early days with that).

I don't know, though. I'm also sick of school, just at the moment. (And quite honestly, last week, I even thought being a shoe designer sounded like a good plan. [Making stylish, accessible, orthopedic shoes with no contrast stitching was the idea.] It only lasted for 8 seconds, but still, that's the level of confusion I'm talking about.)
posted by cotton dress sock at 4:29 PM on August 28, 2015

Something in nursing or elder care seems like a good option for you. Health care is one of the fastest growing sectors of the economy so even if you shoot for Position A and you miss you'll end up somewhere pretty good. I knew someone who worked in an admin job in a hospital, but she was a R.N. before that. I'm unsure if you can get into that kind of position without doing some tenure as a nurse but perhaps its worth looking into.
posted by deathpanels at 7:53 PM on August 28, 2015 [1 favorite]

Response by poster: Thank you, both. I really appreciate your thoughts.

*stockbroker. Was clearly having some kind of moment, there, sorry.
posted by cotton dress sock at 7:32 PM on August 29, 2015