Stuck in a rut...

[chris_askham]

I thought that this was as good a time as any to start a thread like this, being as it is the start of a new year. And it's a sunday evening, always a time when I start to feel a bit desperate.

I feel well and truly stuck in a rut, and a deep one at that. And I thought that chances are there might be other boarders out there in similar circumstances, in which case, feel free to join in. I know hardly any of you personally, but I know that you're all generally pretty decent sorts so if anyone has any advice - no matter how insignificant it may seem - feel free to post it here.

As a bit of background info, I'm 38, married, with two kids and a mortgage.

I've got a degree in Illustration, and I graduated back in 98.

And since then I've had two jobs, both lasting around 5 years apiece, which I haven't really enjoyed to put it mildly. One was in retail, the other (and current) in a library.

And the rut I'm in is to do with careers. I'm fed up with doing boring jobs, and want a bit more of a challenge in life. Something that makes it feel like getting up in the morning. But I don't know where to start. I've lately been considering teaching, but I don't know if that's just out of desperation more than something I actually want to do.

I've tried to keep this as short and to the point as possible, but I apologise to anyone who got bored halfway through.

Thanks for your time, and if anyone has anything to add, then please do.

Cheers,

Chris.

[Zarjazzer]

Try the Open University. You can carry on working and do something that interests you and could lead to a more fulfilling career.

http://www3.open.ac.uk/study/index.htm?KWCAMPAIGN=RAPP_Brand&keywordid=ggluk_open_university_mkwid=spmL6TzBt|

Or is it you just don't know what to do?

I am going back to work tomorrow after a week on leave and am thoroughly dejected about it.
I hate my job. The only time I'm really happy is when I'm away from it.

http://www.vso.org.uk/
If you're feeling brave there's always the VSO.

Hope you get to escape from the drudge.

[SmallBlueThing]

If you look along that rut, to your left, that dot in the distance waving- that's me. Ive got a useless (to me) degree in 'new media', that i used for five years after leaving university, then decided that if i had to work with 'meeja types' for one more day, i would become the sort of person serial killers look up to. I quit.
Instead, i went off and got a menial job, did some post-grad work in psychotherapy, then went to work in social care. Ive been doing it for seven years now, and lead the (soon to expand greatly) outreach team. Ive gone from dreading each and every day at work, having sleepless sunday nights as a matter of course and devising fabulous ways to kill colleagues... to being completely at ease with my position, and generally quite chilled in general.
But! The rut still exists, and im still in it. We have little cash, large debts, and i work very long hours. When we first had the kids we decided being poor but without a borderline-psychotic, edge-of-breakdown daddy, was the best way to go. Seven years later, the lustre has rubbed off, and the rut (of poverty) is more pressing.
As for advice, i have very little. What I'M going to do is continue my education, somehow, get my counselling qualification (ive not got the time or money to do it properly and complete my psychotherapy deg, so i have to cop out and do 'counselling' as much as it disgusts me. Maybe i can break it from the inside!) and set up practise.
Either that or write me nov.
SBT

[House of Usher]

Hello, Chris. This is me waving at you from Rut City.

Never married, because couldn't see the point of either the institution or the expense; my partner agrees. Never had kids, mostly because I reasoned I'd never be able to afford them (turns out I was right). Prolonged my education because I knew what I wanted out of it, and that required a Ph.D. Unfortunately the goal posts moved every time I achieved what was required, and by the time I got the qualifications I needed they were no longer as important as a few desultory publications, and the size of the field of candidates for the posts I was seeking had more than tripled.

Of the two lecturing posts I applied for in the department where I studied, one went to a woman who'd been around for two years longer than me, had started teaching in the department before I even joined, so there were no teaching duties available to new students, and had had to make major corrections to her thesis, including new empirical research, because what she had submitted had been well below par. The other post went to a candidate with just a Batchelor's degree, on the grounds that she had studied on the course and was therefore more qualified than I to teach it. A list of her research interests later emerged that included the very topic on which I did my Ph.D. - bearing in mind she didn't have a research degree to her name.

I did a few crappy jobs on the way to doing a teaching qualification for F.E. which got me full-time teaching work for £12,000 a year. I quit because the money was so poor. I'm now home tutoring (mostly English) and working in retail after a summer of yet more crappy jobs. Swap you the retail for the library job you're not enjoying?

My one piece of advice if you're considering going into teaching is to do a PGCE for primary or secondary school. Don't even bother with further/adult education. There is absolutely no money in it whatsoever (didn't stop Labour introducing a new post-16 PGCE to create yet another revenue stream for the universitites to tap into, however).

[chris_askham]

Thanks guys, glad to hear that I'm not alone out here.

Zarjazzer, I had looked into the OU before, but couldn't find anything that grabbed my interest. But saying that, maybe I should take an evening class doing something (anything!) just to get out of the house of an evening. Again, I've been scouring prospectuses for the last 5 years or so but just haven't bit the bullet.

SBT, that sounds like a familiar story - good luck working towards getting your qualifications (and the novel, even!).

Usher, I thought primary school teaching did sound more appealing, although I have no idea where to start (or if indeed it is what I want to do). As a matter of fact, the missus teaches adult classes part-time but the hours she puts in are unbelievable. More than full-time I'd say. The library I work in is actually a service aimed at schools, and one thing it's shown me is that if some of those idiots I see who use the service can do the job, then I don't see why I couldn't handle it. Of course, I don't really comprehend exactly how much the job entails, so no offence to anyone in the teaching profession.
You have my sympathies, working in retail. I worked for just over 5 years at Office World, and then at Staples when they merged, but had to get out when the manager started lining me up for management training days. If there's one thing I do know, it's that that wasn't the career choice for me. Now I work in a mainly female workplace though, and that isn't always easy...

Thanks again for sharing guys. Nice to know that there are other folk out there probably as miserable as me!

[chilipenguin]

I also am a resident of rutsville, though I am slowly climbing out the other side. I finished uni in 2008 with a degree in journalism, a couple of months before the economy collapsed. The media job market shrunk with it and lo and behold I am essentially unemployable now as a result.

After working in pubs for several years, and a year and half full-time after I graduated, I was on the brink of total mental collapse. I dreaded every day, broke down in tears several times and eventually threw it all in.

After that I had to join the dole queue, where I was treated like every other pleb there and struggled to find another job. After six months, I found something I could very loosely claim to be in my field and that's where I've been for the past three months.

However, I have decided that teaching is a better prospect career-wise and that's the route I'm heading down now. I've applied to do a PGDE in Primary Education and have my interview at Moray House in Edinburgh later this month.

If you plan on taking this route as well, take my advice. Get as much experience as you possibly can. Volunteer with your local scout troop, or try and get involved with a school in some capacity. I applied last year but was turned away because of lack of experience. This year I managed to get some sessional work with the local drug and alcohol team which has gotten me the interview.

But at the end of the day dude, life's too short. If you are losing the will to live, make the jump. Responsibilities are always a problem, but your family will want a healthy happy you, rather than a burnt out husk 

[vzzbux]

I am in not much of a rut but it is still one all the same.
Although money and debt isn't an issue, my life is going nowhere career wise. I have no prospects and not much in education. I can't really see where I am going except just treading water in my current job. The trade I learnt in the army is now dinosaur. I will be 40 next year and it is my happy family life that is keeping me sane and giving me the gusto to go to work each day.
At least we are not alone (if that is any comfort).





V

[House of Usher]

The fact is, a lot of us are back where we were at 18, career-wise, because of a combination of market-led economics, audit-led production systems, and new experiments in education we may as well call credentialism. When you've invested the best part of 20 years in training or professional development it can be quite a blow to find out it was for nothing except the personal development you got out of it, which could have been achieved in a hundred different other ways.

I had looked into the OU before, but couldn't find anything that grabbed my interest. But saying that, maybe I should take an evening class doing something (anything!) just to get out of the house of an evening.

Adult education is a positive step (until councils decide to scrap it as part of their implementation of Tory spending cuts). I thought about an O.U. English degree myself (credentialism again - I don't propose to actually learn anything from it, I just want the qualification for the sake of employability), but without a windfall like a relative dying, the cost is going to be prohibitive.

if some of those idiots I see who use the service can do the job, then I don't see why I couldn't handle it. Of course, I don't really comprehend exactly how much the job entails, so no offence to anyone in the teaching profession.

Probably no more than your wife puts in at present, but you'd at least be on a salary, so earning double what she's getting, I shouldn't wonder.

Get as much experience as you possibly can. This year I managed to get some sessional work with the local drug and alcohol team which has gotten me the interview.

That's a worry! Drug and alcohol team experience relevant for teaching primary? Yikes!! Schools pretty rough round your way then?

[Cthulouis]

I am also in this rutsville place. It was particularly bad last year, when I had a bit of a funny episode. Not as bad as the one I had during the last year of my degree, but still fairly bad.

As with everyone else, jobs seem to be the issue of our times. I need to get out of the job I am currently in, but am deeply afraid of just resigning. I am, unfortunately, perfectly qualified for the job I currently have. I have sent CVs out to other jobs, but not heard anything back from them.

I can kind of imagine the things these employers think: "This guy has the perfect qualifications for a dead easy job. Why the hell would he want to go for a more difficult job that isn't anything to do with his qualifications?"

The answer is two fold. One, my job pays very little money. Now, I'm fine with this, I was brought up to be careful with money, due to the fact that we didn't have any. But then I think, before I went to uni, I had a higher hourly wage working for Tesco as a shelf stacker, and I think "What was the point?"

The second issue is that people see my job as "easy". Well, yes, in that it doesn't have much in the way of heavy lifting, and its one of the few jobs I know of that actually gets *quiet* around Christmas. On the other hand, the job revolves entirely around having soul destroying conversations with people for an hour at a time, and then doing the same thing again, and again, and again, every working day with no change for four years now. I would actually like a job that does physically push me a little, that would probably be good for my health.

People say "well, that's just work, nobody likes their job." Again, yes, I don't expect to bounce into work every day all smiles and rainbows and the like, but when your job is making you think certain very bad thoughts, that's too far off the other end of the scale.

So, I need a new direction, but seemingly every option for going in a new direction requires lots of money, of which I have none. Some jobs that might be the sort of thing that would be good to bridge the gap I am particularly unsuited for, due to health problems.

Over the past year, I have been getting into my art again, which is what has pulled me out of the worst of my gloom. This has been greatly due to several people on this board who have helped in all sorts of ways, probably without realising the full extent of what they have done. I just want to say thanks to everyone to balance out the negativity of this post.

On the other hand though, this is curing the symptoms, but not the problem. So, while I'm not as bad as I have been, the cause is still eating away at my mental health. The next few months are promising to be particularly bad; the job follows seasonal patterns, and it was the end of January last year that sent me off on one.

If anyone can offer me a full time job in the next *week* that would be greatly appreciated.

So, yeah, that is my venting. I remember when I first started on this board many years ago, I could only post when drunk, though fear of putting myself out there into the world. Led to many a crappy post, let me tell you. So, putting all this out there is a sign I have come a long way, I guess.

I've kind of lost track of where I was heading with this so, yeah, I'll just push post before I completely change my mind and delete all this.  

[chilipenguin]

Get as much experience as you possibly can. This year I managed to get some sessional work with the local drug and alcohol team which has gotten me the interview.

That's a worry! Drug and alcohol team experience relavant for teaching primary? Yikes!! Schools pretty rough round your way then?

There are a lot of drug related issue round here, yeah. But I've been doing tobacco education with primary 6 and 7s (11-12 year olds).

[Jim_Campbell]

I feel well and truly stuck in a rut, and a deep one at that.

It's your age. No, seriously!

At the age of 37 I took a long, hard look at my situation -- I'd been a graphic designer/production manager for about nine years; I'd been made redundant twice in two years; my salary was actually less than it had been five years previously. I lived in a shit house, no car, no holidays, no kids... having a creative career meant long hours for crap pay, working for people who neither understood nor cared what I did. Fuck it, I thought, I can put up with 37.5 hours of crap work for more money and less unpaid overtime.

So I jacked it in and attempted to go respectable... four years as a customer service supervisor/manager, followed by a move to the finance department and an accountancy qualification and -- guess what? -- the money was still shit, and I was still working unpaid hours for fuckwits who neither understood nor cared what I did.

So I took a chance on making enough money from lettering, which was a handy second income but by no means guaranteed to make enough money to actually pay the bills... but here's the only piece of wisdom I gleaned from all this:

All jobs are shit. And, if you're vaguely intelligent and reasonably articulate, you can always get a shit job. Take a chance -- try to make a living from something you actually enjoy. If it doesn't work out, there'll be another shit job waiting.

Cheers!

Jim

[House of Usher]

The wisest counsel there, Jim.

I opted for a compromise a year ago when I was ousted from a civil service job (and career) by a bunch of vindictive slags who hired me as a social scientist then fired me for not being a statistician. I had a last-ditch try at the respectable option of a professional (i.e. national average) salary with generous state pension, and it didn't work out.

After that I decided I would carry on with private tutoring, from which I can make half my income, and retail or whatever to provide me with something regular and dependable for the other half. So long as I can get this arrangement made permanent it'll tide me over indefinitely, without holidays, etc. In the summer months, when demand for tutoring is low, I may find the time to write reams and reams of stuff. Then if authors are still managing to sell manuscripts to publishers by then, I may be in with a chance of joining their struggling, starving ranks. I still dare to dream.

[Dog Deever]

I feel well and truly stuck in a rut, and a deep one at that.

It's your age. No, seriously!
...
All jobs are shit. And, if you're vaguely intelligent and reasonably articulate, you can always get a shit job. Take a chance -- try to make a living from something you actually enjoy. If it doesn't work out, there'll be another shit job waiting.

Cheers!

Jim

Amen- these are words of wisdom. I'm 41 and after moving from brainless minimum wage bullshit jobs into FE tutoring, guess what- it's brainless shit as well! AND you can't get the hours, so despite having a much higher wage scale, I'm not hugely better off. This means having to work (not so long ago) 3 separate jobs (on which you get taxed to buggery- far more than if all those hours were in one job), and all of them expect this extra unpaid work.

When I was an industrial window cleaner I drove shitty old 10+ years old cars which I struggled to afford to keep on the road. Now I'm a lecturer, I drive...
A T-reg car which I struggle to afford to keep on the road.
On top of that- as a window cleaner, when I finished work I was finished for the day, now I'm expected to pour extra hours in because the pitiful 'lesson prep-time' I get paid for is soaked up in bullshit meetings about meetings and purpose-less hoop-jumping paper work. Which all means you have to prep for lessons at home, in your own time for free. otherwise you're a bad tutor.
The excuse?
'Well, that's why you get higher wages- because of the increased expectation of responsibility'
Funny, cos I got told that the higher wages was what you got for enduring five years of abject poverty on a student loan with a wife and four kids and all the debts that that incurred. Now I have paid back my debt to the country for my higher education, I can only say- I feel totally cheated.
As Ush says, forget FE- it's a massive rut the depth of Loch Ness.

Life is one long stream of shit with highlights that you have to grab and enjoy whenever you can get them. These are the things that keep you going through all the rest of the pish you have to put up with.
I hope that doesn't sound harsh or flippant, it does occasionally wear you down to the point where you just want to do a Lucan, but life changes overnight sometimes and you never know whether the next day will be a cloud or a silver lining and sometimes you just need to dig deeper to find the resolve to muddle through to the next good bit.

All the same- you know best what you can and can't handle mentally (long term)- I took a massive risk becoming a 'mature' student from a steady (shit) job, mainly because of mounting industrial injuries but also because if I continued, I'd have been in serious danger of some sort of depressive disorder.

[Roger Godpleton]

I'm pretty much in a reverse rut. I don't have many responsibilities and I have a lot of disposable income. I'm constantly aware that I'm not challenging myself, but things are still a ways off from being suffocating.

[House of Usher]

it does occasionally wear you down to the point where you just want to do a Lucan

Murdering the nanny seems a bit much! Doing a Reggie Perrin instead, maybe?