I realise that to most people it still seems like a long time until I return to the UK, and in some respects it is ( 3 and a half months). However, for someone as skilled in procrastination as I am, it is high time I started thinking about life after Vienna. I am pretty much a Grown Up now, or at least as close as I am going to get, and this means thinking about a Grown Up Job. Cue Scooby Doo style "Yikes" and pained expression. Just over five years ago I applied for university and was thrilled at the prospect of studying subjects I was interested in and a fairly high chance of finding a career afterwards. I have been told by countless people (college tutors, careers advisers, lecturers, personal tutor) that a language degree is highly valued in the world of work. However, over the years it has become apparent that this is not the case unless you want to go into translation/interpreting/teaching, which I definitely don't. The fact of the matter is that I am just not interested enough in languages to motivate myself to translate or interpret, neither am I actually good enough because these jobs take an awful lot of skill. I knew right from the start of my time at Warwick that I did not want to go into teaching and despite having a lot of fun working in Austria, my assistantships have merely confirmed that teaching is not for me. I am not sure about the situation in the UK, but teachers in Austria get a lot of stick. They are often criticised for not working hard enough as they are usually given a maximum of around 25 teaching hours. What people do not realise is that this is just the beginning. Having spoken to the teachers at Good School, and listened to them stressing, I would say that they work somewhere in the region of 50-60 hours on top of this; preparing lessons, correcting work, putting tests together (because they STILL don't have standardised exams!). My time at Bad School is also making me appreciate what a thankless job it is, it must be incredibly hard trying to motivate people to learn something they have less than no interest in. It's not for me, that's for sure.
It is always after those three options that careers advisers start to falter, and this is also where I am a bit stuck. I know I don't want to do any of those. I also know that I do not want to sell my soul to some big corporate firm, working all hours and been treated like a slave. Besides, I may be a reasonably intelligent person but I can't talk the talk that you need to get through the countless rounds of interviews and assessment centres to get onto these schemes. I have a 2:1 from a decent university and nowhere to put my skills to into practise, at least without doing further study which also does not appeal, if for no other reason than the huge financial implications.
So as you can see I am in a bit of a quandary. I think the main reason for putting this on my blog is to get it out there in the open in the hope that I will come up with a bright idea. Jobs I would love to do:
- air hostess
- travel writer/photographer
- wedding planner
- florist
Sadly I think it is unlikely that I would get into any of these things for one reason or another. They say it's not what you know but who you know, and with this statement I wholeheartedly agree.
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