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Leaving my job...

09:43 / 10.09.04

Today is the last day of my job, prior to starting teacher training next week. I'm looking forward to it a great deal though, obviously, I'm a bit nervous (got to get a partime job asap, dealing with rampaging yoof etc). Since, over the last two years, I have actually spent more time on Barbelith as I have working, I thought it was appropriate to start a thread. I'm actually really happy about it, the move is long overdue...

No more 8 hour logins for me, I'll be online a lot less as I don't have the net at home but perhaps that's for the good for the time being, curb that addiction. Might take a while to respond to PMs etc. But I'll be back...

Anyway, so this isn't entirely narcisstic, if anyone's got any good career change stories or good memories or quitting fire away...

Goodness Gracious Meme

10:14 / 10.09.04

woohoooo!

Just offering my congrats, really.

Heart-warming career-change stories? How much time you got? I've got a zillion of these...

How about the interview I had with my mentor, 8 months and one passed exam into accountancy training. Who sat me down, told me I'd breezed my Part Ones and said he'd happily mentor me throughout my training/recommend me for a city secondment:

"If you can look me in the eye and tell me this is really what you want to do."

He then gave me a week off to think about it. A week I spent looking at MA courses and London rents.

Fast forward through 3months of incredibly boring/tiring temping/working 3jobs and studying to the day I got my MA acceptance letter, which meant that:

a)I wasn't going to be a secretary/machinist/barwench any more but instead spend a year talking art/theory/culture and gender.
b)I got to move to London
c)and away from my parents

wheeeeeeeeeeeeee!

Or the running away from london and a life of the temp trap(running away from the fear that I'd hit 40 and my CV would read: 70wpm, excellent phone manner, no brain), only to emerge a couple of years
later with a vocation/life path/profession.....

Which I've now got plenty of time to pursue and think about carefully, as well as plenty of offers and options....

10:24 / 10.09.04

Congratulations, Illmatic. My oldest friend quit his six-figure salaried city job to be a geography teacher, has just finished his training and started at his new school on Monday. He's never looked back or been happier. Best of British to you!

Goodness Gracious Meme

10:31 / 10.09.04

ooh, yeah, I have one of those. Or rather, someone who fell into a highly-paid retail management thing (and as she's a real fashion queen, there were defeinite perks) then ran away to do a PGCE several years ago.

She's now one of the youngest heads of dept in the country(sociology), loves her job and her kids(who keep, inspired by her, applying to our old uni/doing sociology degrees), and her career-love inspired/reminded her (now ex)corporate-fat-cat husb to a career switch.

They're quite alot poorer now, but immeasurably happier.

Haus of Mystery

10:40 / 10.09.04

I hope this doesn't mean you're going to stop posting as much, Ill. God forbid you find something worthwhile to do...

Good luck mate.

pointless and uncalled for

10:44 / 10.09.04

Quitting is my favourite part of the job, which is probably why I do it so often.

The last time I quit it was on two hours notice and the time before that my manager called me an "utter, utter bastard".

It's true what they say, nobody like a quitter.

10:45 / 10.09.04

yeah good luck. when faced with discipline problems, remember what god gave you fists for.

10:48 / 10.09.04

See the Martial Arts thread inna de magick, mate. Little bastards won't know what's hit 'em!*

Thanks for all the goodwill, everyone!

*joke - perhaps.

10:51 / 10.09.04

My best career change story began the day I gave up my stifling job shovelling coals, smoking woodbines and teaching whippets to sing "the blaydon races" in close harmony in the north east, to become a chimney sweep, fortune teller and disco pimp in London. A life on the rooftops! The soot! The singing! The talking cat in boots! Step in time! Step in time!

I had it all! Such sooty pleasures that I hardly dreamed of in my humble hovel made from mud and empty brown ale bottles back home. And in the evenings I had a booth in the east end were I would tell the futures of pretty ladies and filthy gents for a shilling. They all came to me to get their fortunes told. I had a box full of talking cockles and mussels that I'd captured myself and taught how to give cold readings to strangers "you will meet a handsome stranger" they used to say. That always used to go down a treat.

Sometimes I would get possessed by the Blessed Spirit of George Clinton or Bootsy Collins and go dancing in the local dance emporium. I didnt have money for platforms and wide brimmed hats back in them days, so I had to convince the ghosts to fashion them for me out of ectoplasm every night. The hours I wasted listening to the boys trying to recreate the greatest hits of Parliament with only table rapping and spooky "wooooooooooohhhhhh" sounds. Those were the days.

pointless and uncalled for

10:56 / 10.09.04

Hold on Gypsy, are you Shiny Dancing John the Northern Foot Wonder from the golden age of the Barn Door Socials?

10:57 / 10.09.04

Yea...Congrats to you Ill. You'll make a fab teacher. Roll on the tweed jackets and leather elbow patches. You really should be out for a pint tonight celebrating. Detox my arse!! (thats not an instruction)

As for big career changes i've got a bit of a whopper coming up myself. After 15 or so years working in the Arts/Media (Theatre, Interactive TV, Internet Design and Publishing etc) i'm going to go back to college to retrain as an Electrician (or maybe even a Plumber...should know in a couple of weeks). Although i'm cheating a bit as it's only a day or two a week for a couple of years so i can slide gently into it whilst doing other work. Really looking forward to it actually although i'm a bit worried my soft, delicate feminine type hands will be ruined for ever. They really havn't seen a hard days work yet.

If i do become an electrician i'm going to design a nifty Electro type outfit with the 8 wands image from the Thoth deck emblazoned across the back. If i become a plumber i'll proberbly just have something like a big toe stuck up a tap.

11:02 / 10.09.04

Congrats Illmatic

I have a fair few friends who are teachers, many of whom have goe the PGCE route - you are in for an intensive year - but , i suspect, a very rewarding one...

11:34 / 10.09.04

Congratulations! The last day at work is the best! It's kind of like that last day of the year in primary school where you've got all your assignments back and don't have any work to do and just sit around. And then the teacher gets you to move all the desks to the back of the room so that the cleaners can hoover properly. Don't forget to take all your assignments home with you or they'll get binned!

And don't forget to delete your internet history and deleted items ...

12:00 / 10.09.04

Yeah, good plan...

I like this time of year, lots of new things to think about - it's more my New Year that the New Year is, if you see what I mean. Funny how just one little thing can nudge you onto the right path - e.g. I got an admin job part-time with the intention of doing a part-time degree at another institution, then found I could do it at my work institution, get reduced fees and go on some of the training courses free... and since then more things just keep clicking into place. Amazing really. Not 'A SIGN!!!' or anything, just lots of little bobbles that make you go 'hmmm'.

12:02 / 10.09.04

Doesn't seem to have improved my vocab though. 'Bobbles'? WTF?

12:03 / 10.09.04

Heres to Bobbles!!

Hooray!!

12:11 / 10.09.04

I hope you haven't been drinking fermented smoothies ghadis. Remember your detox!

12:26 / 10.09.04

My detox is driving me mad! It's Friday! I'm gagging for a pint and am seriously considering using Illmatics last day at work as an excuse...

12:28 / 10.09.04

Not to worry mate. I'll drink to your health so that you won't have to.

12:31 / 10.09.04

Can I leave my job?
If not, can I drink to Illmatic's? Like, right now?
Though I really can't see me being a teacher.

12:39 / 10.09.04

You can all drink to mine, go on! Though I have not as yet succumbed...

Well done, Ghadis - be careful with that electrician/ plumber thing though, mate. Don't get 'em mixed up, could be nasty.

12:41 / 10.09.04

I just found out the other day that a friend of mine in Sydney is packing in her job to be a teacher as well. Looks like the trend has started. One day social historians will refer to it as the Illmatic Effect.

12:41 / 10.09.04

You can all drink to mine, go on! Though I have not as yet succumbed...

Well done, Ghadis - be careful with that electrician/ plumber thing though, mate. Don't get 'em mixed up, could be nasty.

12:46 / 10.09.04

Congrats!

I'm having my going away party tonight from my mind-numbing retail job! As of Monday, I'll be working as a 19th century pioneer for double the pay!

...it's the only good career change story I have of yet, but still! Woo!

12:53 / 10.09.04

Not much to add other than my congratulations and best wishes Illmatic. I hope you will find ways of working your immense knowledge and love of Jamaican music into your lesson plans. No career change stories of note here, but when I gave up being a repo-man to follow a very establishment vocational training course I believe I got mightily drunk on my last day, so I wouldn't worry about putting your detox on hold for a night.

14:08 / 10.09.04

I hope you will find ways of working your immense knowledge and love of Jamaican music into your lesson plans.

I really hope so, mate: "This week - Jamaican DJ's from Count Matchoki to Big Youth. Nicing up the riddim to rub a dub.. Next week - Eighties deejay from Eek A Mouse through to Capleton... gunman and slackness to conscious yoot. G'wan deh!"

Thanks for the good wishes.

14:13 / 10.09.04

So are you going to be the cool teacher whom everyone loves or the weird one who worries the kids by spending the entire year talking about your life experiences and not teaching them anything that will be on the exam?

Ex

14:19 / 10.09.04

Good luck. I recently left three jobs simultaneously, amid an embarassment of Nibbles (white wine and a packet of pretzels at 4.30pm).
Hope they get you something decent - I got ten quid in book vouchers ("You didn't look the Body Shop type") and a small stack of Green and Black's patent toothrot. I felt really appreciated and understood.
If they get you a wilting ficus, try to grin anyway.

14:25 / 10.09.04

Loomis, the latter, obviously.

Ex: They got me some top CDs - Boredoms: Super AE and a Deep Soul compilation. I slipped someone a list and he came through. Two CDs though - pretty good! I'd consider one a good deal.

17:24 / 10.09.04

occult-crazed internet-lurking teacher in child punching horror!

"he was fucking asking for it, the little prick! he's lucky i dint pull out a fucking one-inch-hex-punch on his scrawny little shite pipe!" said the crazed and dangerous suspected paedophile, 53.
one witness claimed to have overheard the deranged self appointed internet-sorceror saying "he needs to meditate on how much he's gonna fucking pay for stitching me up to his fucking absentee slag of a mum. i know people! in fact, fuck people! i know demons!" to a packed classoroom
after morning break, tuesday.

the headmaster has so far refused to comment.

17:27 / 10.09.04

by which i mean congratulations.
naturally.
ahem.

flufeemunk effluvia

19:57 / 10.09.04

Be really nice except for when someone isn't paying attention, in which case you slap their desk with a yardstick as hard as possible. That usually scares them enough to respect you.

21:26 / 11.09.04

I would heartily recommend anyone involved with children to read The Law of the Playground by Jonathan Blyth which has had me giggling horribly all week. Know thine enemy.

15:11 / 15.09.04

Can I join in?

I sent off my resignation letter today - hooray! (I have to give 3 months' notice though so unfortunately have to work till the end of the year...)