Author Topic: What do we all do for a living?  (Read 33472 times)

Offline BBM-Cat

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Re: What do we all do for a living?
« Reply #80 on: March 13, 2008, 11:03:32 pm »
Wow, such excellent descriptions of the various levels of optical experts - thank you so very much Teri and Optom3! I hear people use these terms interchangeably all the time, but in reality, they are quite distinct. I bet this question comes up alot - thanks for helping me get it clear in my mind. And, how neat that both of you have this profession in common.
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Offline MsMercury

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Re: What do we all do for a living?
« Reply #81 on: March 13, 2008, 11:27:19 pm »
Thanks! I know a lot of people get confused about the differences. A lot of people even think an optometrist isn't a real doctor. The thing I like about optical is that you always learn something new.  I like being in the lab best. I sort of fell into this profession. It wasn't something I planned at all. As much as I like it, i'm ready for something different but I don't know what.

Offline skola

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Re: What do we all do for a living?
« Reply #82 on: March 17, 2008, 03:12:42 am »
What do you do?  I'm a Childminder, I run my own business

More than one thing? No, I work 60 hours a week as it is.

Work at home? Yes, although Home looks like a Nursery.

Seasonal work?   No, Full time

Are you doing what you wanted to do?  Yes, I only ever wanted to work with children

Would you prefer some other line of work?  Not really. but will be stopping soon, due to health reasons, I then will go to work outside the home part time training new Childminders, but not  quite yet. :)

Offline Kelda

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Re: What do we all do for a living?
« Reply #83 on: March 17, 2008, 04:30:50 pm »
Skola - I admire you - I have trouble keeping my 3 nieces under control!
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Offline skola

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Re: What do we all do for a living?
« Reply #84 on: March 17, 2008, 05:23:05 pm »
Its all in the way you say things.  ;) I can be very scary to a two year old.  :laugh: :laugh:

Offline BlissC

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Re: What do we all do for a living?
« Reply #85 on: March 17, 2008, 06:22:02 pm »
What do you do?   Local Government Officer/Web Designer & Developer

More than one thing? Yup, I work part time in local government, specialising in social housing and research and strategy making/policy, and part time self employed as a web designer/developer.

Work at home? Part of the time, yes. I'm disabled and although I do go into the office a lot, I'm also on a working from home scheme for disabled employees my employers set up and work a minimum of four days a month from home. Helps out because I don't have the hassle of getting ready and travelling to work if I'm having a bad day, and I can even work in my pyjamas! I have a connection to the server at work so I can do practically everything I do in the office from home. The web design I'm home based. We've turned the spare room into an office for me, though it's an extra living room/office really. I have a sofabed in there and often rather than sitting at the desk I lounge on the sofabed with my laptop - much more comfy!

Seasonal work?   FT, PT, variable, on call, hourly? Part time in local government - 18.5 hours a week. Web design - variable, depending on how many clients I've got, but I tend to work ridiculous hours with that and odd times of the day/night.

Are you doing what you wanted to do? I sort of accidentally ended up in local government. I originally trained as a teacher, but ended up working for a consultancy firm specialising in educational research for central government departments - both primary and secondary education, and adult education, but the role involved a lot of research and statistics work as well, and did a degree in psychology at the same time. When the company got into difficulties I decided to bail out and got myself the job in local government based on my research experience. I'd never worked in housing before, but as it was mainly the research role they wanted, they were happy to train me in the housing stuff I needed, and I went on to do the first stage of my professional housing qualifications.

About five years ago I "accidentally" ended up in web design after I volunteered myself to do a website for a voluntary organisation I helped out with, thinking "How hard can it be?" LOL! One site though and I was hooked! My first site was on the server for probably around 3 weeks, but after I posted it in the critiques section of a web design forum and got lots of comments like "It's really good for a first attempt, but...", I decided I was going to learn to do it properly, ditched Microsoft Frontpage, and started to learn to code by hand. I had one hell of a steep learning curve, and taught myself the basics from scratch, then did an 18 month university qualification learning various programming languages along the way. I love web design and I'd much rather do that than the local government work, which is tedious in the extreme, but can't risk throwing in the local government work and going full time self employed because of my health situation, because at least with the local government work I get paid if I'm off sick.

Would you prefer some other line of work?   In an ideal world I'd probably do web design more or less full time and the rest of the time concentrate on my writing. Short to medium term though I'm hoping to get out of housing and more into IT, which I find much more interesting than housing work, and I'm hoping to get some work experience in IT later this year. Anything has to be more exciting than the data input I tend to end up doing at work these days, which annoys me greatly because it's not what I was trained for, and I'm not using my qualifications and experience.


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Offline Kelda

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Re: What do we all do for a living?
« Reply #86 on: March 18, 2008, 02:27:49 pm »

More than one thing? Yup, I work part time in local government, specialising in social housing and research and strategy making/policy, and part time self employed as a web designer/developer.


I work in Social Housing too Bliss! But for the central scottish goverment.
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Offline BlissC

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Re: What do we all do for a living?
« Reply #87 on: March 18, 2008, 08:54:44 pm »
My commiserations Kelda.  ;) To be honest it was never an area I'd even thought about working in, and I originally got the job based on my research experience, but then as I was doing more and more housing related stuff, and my degree was in geography/psychology (the social geography bit did come in quite useful), I ended up the first stage of the Post Graduate Conversion Course with the Chartered Institute of Housing. I keep saying that one of these days I'm going to do the second stage, but given that ideally I don't want to stay in housing long-term I'm really not sure it's worth the hassle and keeping up with the CPD requirements etc. - just trying to keep on top of the government's ever changing housing policy is quite enough for me!  :laugh:


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Offline Kelda

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Re: What do we all do for a living?
« Reply #88 on: March 21, 2008, 03:58:59 pm »
- just trying to keep on top of the government's ever changing housing policy is quite enough for me!  :laugh:

 :laugh:

Yeah I did a marketing degree and got involved in a regneration project who were using a residents panel to gain opinions, did it as a sumer job while still at uni, and thats how I snuck in the back door. So no real housing qualifications for me either!
http://www.idbrass.com

Please use the following links when shopping online -It will help us raise money without costing you a penny.

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Offline shortfiction

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Re: What do we all do for a living?
« Reply #89 on: August 19, 2008, 03:53:41 pm »
Thought you folks might like to see one of my unpleasant work spaces.   It's a campus office that can be used by any faculty.    The photo of it is actually posted right now at:   http://rateyourstudents.blogspot.com

Look at the archive on the right and click on the one called "Oh, the tears."     I did not write the text for the photo, but it's funny.

You can even spot my bottle of water on the table!



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