Back to School
The last week has been interesting (and not just because of the 4 feet of snow). Between blizzards I went to meet with a career counselor. It wasn’t really what I expected and felt more like psychoanalysis than career research. I spent about 90 minutes discussing my background and trying to find out what new career path might be a good fit. The counselor asked me if I really wanted to abandon marketing. Oh boy, back to square one again!
I understand where he was coming from. If you look at my resume, you see that I have a BS in Marketing and an MBA in Marketing. On top of that, there is the last 12 years of experience in sales. But if I wanted to stay in marketing or sales, I wouldn’t have paid to get career suggestions. I asked for a list of hot careers and suggestions that might work and he suggested a government website. All in all it was a waste of time and money.
Here is what I “learned”… Applying for jobs online is useless. There are too many applicants to make it through the clutter. The only way to get a job now is to network and have the job before you apply. So, you need to make a full time job out of meeting people to find a job, while not telling them you want to work for them. Then hoping that when they have an opening that they’ll remember you. That just doesn’t sound like fun. But it’s the way things work now. I was also reminded that we are now expected to cycle through 9 different companies over our working lives.
I would probably have left very dejected, except that I had already scheduled my 2nd appointment of the day. When I finished grad school, I was very excited that my days as a college students were over. So, it was a little surreal returning to the Drexel campus. However, as I walked across the quad to the advising offices for the College of Education, it started to feel right. I met with my advisor and mapped out the classes I need to take to get my teaching certification. Between the 8 graduate and 8 undergraduate classes I need to take, I’m going to very busy for the next 16 months. It’s an aggressive schedule but if I want to be be able to get a teaching job for 2011-12 school year, I need to finish by then. All of that just earns me certification. To get a second Masters degree I’ll need to take 2 more classes, but I’ll do that after I get my certificate.
The big question remains, is this the right career move? There is no way to be sure, but I’ve been feeling boxed in and not sure why. One of my friends summed it up well saying that I’m too “overeducated & under-experienced” to start in a new field. It seems teaching may be the exception to this rule as they look for varied outside experience.
As you can tell by now, I’m planning to go forth and teach unless something else comes along to change my mind. One of the final confirmations was an aptitude test that I took. It listed the characteristics of my ideal job:
I think that these match up fairly well with teaching. But we shall see. For now it’s time for me to hit the books (& the Financial Aid Office).
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This is by far my longest post to date, but I had a lot to say. I’ll try to keep it shorter in the future. This is why I want to teach math and not English 
