2008 Career

Here’s a summary of last year.

1. What went really well for you at work in 2008?

This is the first year since 1998 that I have thought of a job as a part of my “career” instead of a way to just get by. Along, the way I had forgotten that I used to have a great deal of intelligence and drive. I remembered again. This was a bit depressing seeing how little I have done, but I vowed to do more.

2. What did you do that you’re proud of?

I worked a job that didn’t piss me off for once in my life. Two jobs, actually. I used the first job to get recommendations for the second.

I put my foot down and refused to work a job that I can’t stand. This is after years of human blood, mouse feces, and abusive supervisors (and a few nice ones, but shitty conditions were the norm).

3. Who have you helped out?

God first of all. He came and told me to stop wasting my life and being an ass.

Also, my wife said the same thing but a bit louder.

Myself for caring for once in my life.

Buddha for all of his pithy sayings that convinced me that I could learn to like myself instead of the hot/cold relationship I had before.

Nurses who taught me how to be more decisive and quicker on my feet. Also, for showing me that I really don’t have what it takes to be any part of medicine.

4. How have you grown and developed professionally?

I have taken the first step which is trying to figure out what I’d like to do for the rest of my life. Since I have 10 years of school that has touched on zero of what I am really interested in, this is kind of depressing.

5. How have you grown and developed personally at work?

I actually believe that my work is always good enough. I believe in myself. I can honestly tell an employer that I am the best. I am not intimidated by people who were lucky enough not to have a nervous breakdown during the last two years of med school anymore.

6. Who has really appreciated your work?

Everyone I came in contact with both at the office and on the tour. While leading tours, I was given tips to show that I went above and beyond. At work, people told me “DON’T LEAVE!” I was offered to work remotely as well. This refutes the nine years of abuse I had suffered previously, being told that my work was not good enough which I learned later was just a way of manipulating me to work unpaid hours and to work even harder than I all ready was.

7. Who has helped you out and been there for you?

My wife. That’s it. Nobody in my family has been there when things were hard. They just gave me empty platitudes like, “You can do it.”

Oh, and random strangers on the road who treated me better than my family ever did.

8. Who have you admired at work in 2008?

My boss who earned his way there from a construction job to management. He knew how to motivate people. He was super-kind, and he always got the work he wanted from people by acting PROFESSIONALLY something my other bosses could learn.

9. What have been some fun moments at work in 2008?

Touring: The entire job was like a paid cocktail party. The speech was fun to memorize and give. The tour itself was like an hour long walking meditation. I loved it.

Office: The staff was funny especially the meeting. Especially exterminator meetings. I loved all the stories of the mice attacking the pampered students. I also loved all the hate mail directed to me, a stranger, by people who damaged their rooms. You’d think someone spending $30k would write a bit better and be more professional in email communication which lasts forever and is easily forwarded. No, I didn’t break any ethics rules, but I did laugh a lot to myself.

10. Which 5 things from 2008 would you like to have more of in 2009?

1. A job I can stand.

2. Money.

3. Free time.

4. Surfing.

5. Problems that I can solve.

6. Confidence.

7. Compassion.

8. Assertiveness.

I spent the countdown sitting in complete silence with lovely people. I hope this calm pervades everyone’s next year despite the craziness of life.

Career Survey: Computer Programming

Since this is supposed to be a career blog rather just a whiny
memior/auto-biographical rant, I’ll talk about careers a little.

But I’ll do it in an auto-biographical way.

I’m going to continue my (seemingly hopeless) search for the perfect
career by speculating what the actual job would be like, and what I
need to do to get there.

One job I think I might like is computer programming. The reason I
think I might like it is that I do it as a hobby. I find it to be
really relaxing, actually.

Pros

1. It’s fun. Like I said, I love it.

2. I’m pretty good at it. At least I think I am. If I’m not good, I
don’t mind practicing. I could pretty much spend the rest of my life
programming.

3. It pays more than I ever expect to get in my life. Advancement is
seemingly endless–see the programmers who got on the ground floor at
MS. They are all very wealthy.

Cons

1. It’s so fun the boss can take my project away to punish me. That
hurts. This actually happened.

2. It’s so fun I forget to write the features that I’m asked to write
because I’m obsessed with some obscure optimization or a cool hack
that nobody will care about.

3. It’s so fun it makes me into a zombie that can’t focus on anything
else. This creates an “unbalanced” life.

4. It is very tiring and after a day of programming, I can’t write fiction.

5. I don’t know how to get a job in this field. I don’t have
education, and I may have to go back to school. After ten years in
college including 3 years at the gradaute level, I’m deeply in debt,
and I am sick of school. This might not be a job I can get with a
normal education.

6. The domination of MS. Love ‘em or hate ‘em. I hate ‘em mostly because their platform sucks, but also because you can’t criticize them without being accused of being jealous. OK, I want a lot of money for doing such a crappy job, too. Who doesn’t. But I’d rather be well paid to do a _good_ job. Thankfully, Linux has taken over to a point that there are full time jobs that will allow one the luxury of never touching a MS machine. So this point is now moot.

Overall. I should have majored in computers. If I did, I’d be out of
debt by now. I would not have had to live in such awful ghettos. I
could have avoided working years of disgusting jobs.

The main reason I didn’t go into computers is that I didn’t want to be
a geeky person who could not relate to other people. I wound up
becoming this person anyway, but in a far less lucrative way. It seems
as if there is money to be made anywhere near me, I’ll be in the worst
position to exploit that.

I’m actively applying for computer jobs right now, and I am
voluntering on gnome-games to hone my skills and make a name for
myself. Lack of computer hurts this endeavor, but I can borrow my
wife’s machine for a few hours if I get up early enough.

Academic Confidence

I saw a speaker last night gave a talk on Buddhism and schizophrenia. His slides are available online.

One of the things he said that made a lot of sense was that people tend to conform to their expectations. Students that were labeled bright and given no other intervention tended to be brighter academically compared with those who were labeled as being slow.

I was not labeled anything, but my grades were always pretty poor up until sixth grade. Someone told me that Alison was the top student. I told them that I thought I could beat her. I really don’t know where this confidence came from.

I never did beat Alison, but I did get mostly A’s. I was never perfect in school, but I was far above average.

This winning streak continued, for the most part. In high school, I realized that I wasn’t the brightest bulb, but I idiotically felt that if I continued to work really hard then I would get good grades. This was mostly true, but looking back, I don’t think it was worth the effort. I feel like much of my childhood and teen years were wasted in front of books learning stuff I mostly forgot so that I could have a lackluster career which was mostly characterized by fear of employers and crushing debt.

I wish I actually spent my time in high school watching porn and playing role playing games and messing with my computer. After high school, I’d have no choice but to find a job. I wouldn’t be in debt. There are many jobs one could get right out of high school that pay as well as I ever earned and don’t require a college degree. Government work comes to mind.

The point is that sometimes what seems good could actually be quite bad in the long run.

You can regret anything

I don’t know why I do this. I call it the regret game. It’s completely worthless, and it causes a lot of pain. But it can be kind of exiting like cutting yourself with a razor blade.

When I was younger, I made it a point not to regret my life, and I think that this was my first mistake. Trying to be overly perfect creates too much pressure on one’s life, and it leads to unnecessary stress.

My parents were of the ancient mindset that hard work got you places so I worked hard in school. I’m not blaming my parents for my problems, I did that yesterday, and I’ll probably do that tomorrow. Today, I’m just talking about what actually happened.

I remember it well, when I in fifth grade some kids whispered about how smart Alison was. Without blinking, I told them that I’d beat her. I had shitty grades before this, so I have no clue where I got such confidence. I’m pretty sure I did not beat her, but I did very well, and my parents assured me that I’d have success and a good income. I believed in the world of Revenge of the Nerds. The studios geeks will inherit the earth and the cool people will be reduced to being their servants and lapdogs. Again, I ask, where did I get this nonsense from?

I worked hard in high school as well aside from a few classes where I started off badly. In those, I pretty much threw in the towel. Giving up, I don’t regret. That was smart. I passed anyway. Plus there was less stress. Finally, there was a lot less work.

I spent the bulk of my grade school, high school, and college life holed up in my room studying my ass off. Since I seemed to be so good at it, and because it was the only thing that brought me any kind of success, I plowed forward making it a goal to be a doctor. This was a job I knew nothing about. The more I learned, the less I liked it. Therefore, I limited my contact with the actual field in the hopes that I wouldn’t change my mind before I got there.

I believed in delayed gratification. Getting there, might suck, but once I did, I’d be in some kind of Xanadu with a big house, a hot wife, and lots of people sucking up to me. I know where I got these ideas. From friends, family, and TV.

While on my way to fame and fortune, I got into debt, something else I regret. I _knew_ signing any kind of loan was a really bad idea, but I was assured by friends and family that I’d soon be able to pay it off. If I could do one thing different in my life, I would take the PHEAA application and burn it. If they kicked me out of school then so be it.

So there’s the story. It’s possible to do all the right things and wish you hadn’t. If I could have done it over again, I would have joined every club in school I was vaguely interested in. I would have cheated on every test so I wouldn’t have to waste any time studying. I would have taken more drugs and cared less about what people thought about me. I would not have done anything that didn’t give me an immediate payoff. I would not have worked hard. I would not have gone to church. I would not have taken any job where I wasn’t excited about it.

I probably would have regretted not “making something of myself.” So I guess the point is that no matter what you do, you can regret it. I often regret the things I did not do as much as the things that I did. Basically, I would have followed this code:

1. Experience as many new things when you are young because when you get older, you’ll just get too tired to care and probably tied down with baggage.

2. If something is boring or crappy don’t stick it out. The people who win the Olympics and other feats of endurance are not any happier than the average coach potato so don’t waste your time.

3. Talk to as many people as possible. Be nice to everyone EXCEPT

4. Don’t let people treat you like shit. Stick up for yourself. Nobody is better than you. If someone is a jerk then they are definitely beneath you.

Reading is one of the few things I did that I did not think was a waste of time. Only, I wish I read a more variety of topics instead of just Science Fiction, though the SF was worth it. I just wish I spent more time whining about women reading instead. I wish I spent most of the nights I went out to bars at home with a book.

I wish I spent more time skateboarding rather than studying Chemistry or Medicine.

But if I did, I’d probably have regretted it. I’m really good at regret. It’s kind of fun.

Nailed the Interview!

Executive Summary: Today, I went to a job interview at an organization that helps children. I nailed the interview.

Read no further unless you want to hear me brag about how great my interviewing skills are.

They had a group interview “to save time.”

“Great,” I thought, “I’m all ready a stressed and nervous person. Nothing like a little competition to make me completely crumble.”

How wrong I was. The interview actually boosted my confidence. For one thing, i have been working on my competition skills. I do think that competition sucks. I hate competitive people because they are not nice. Given the choice between kindness and acting like a jerk, competitive people will choose the latter. Then they’ll justify it by assuming that “everyone does it” which is nonsense.

However, I am running out of money here, and I need a job. Also, i don’t want to be a complete doormat. Surely there can be a middle way between taking the air out of people’s tires and rolling over dead at the first sight of conflict.

So I rubbed up my greasy hands and rolled up my sleeves thinking, “Competition is what you want? Competition is what you get. Game on!”

From the first question, I knew I had the interview sewed up. When they asked us our non-profit experience, I was the only one with ten years in the field. I was also the only one who had volunteered to help children. Nobody mentioned volunteering at all. Finally, I was the only one who told cute anecdotes that made them smile and nod knowingly. I am the master story teller. After all making up stories is my calling.

Some of the other candidates did do a good job. One of them knew Spanish which may clinch the job as it’s the only thing I don’t have that is required of the job. Another had a lot of computer skills, like me. She also had hospital experience and experience with confidentiality. I had that, too, but I didn’t have a chance to talk about it.

I was the first to answer most questions especially the one that nobody else was ready for, “Why should we hire you?”

Afterwards we were able to ask questions. I had ten ready, but they only had time to answer one. The only other person who asked a question asked, “Is this a non-profit?” Just give it up dude!

Unless there is something out of my control, I have this job. I think I finally found the secret HR decoder ring. I’m still going to work really hard on practicing for interviews and to applying to jobs because I need to be ready.

Interview Preparation

When I went for my first job interview, eleven years ago, I thought that I would just go answer some questions and they’d give me the job. That is totally untrue.

The interview is actually a way of weeding people out. The questions they ask are usually these BS HR style questions that are just there to see if you practiced answering BS HR questions. The answers are actually pretty surprising. For example, when they ask you about yourself, they don’t care about you. They actually want your work history and how it relates to the job in question. Why don’t they ask normal questions? Because the working world is like a secret cult where it’s up to you to figure out the answers.

Reading HR blogs has been good for me. I have learned some highly disturbing things about HR people. Many of them had the same mentality as the “cool kids” in high school had. It’s all about who’s in and who’s out. It’s all based on keeping up with empty appearances and following empty gestures and rituals.

However, unless you have friends or family to help you out, you have no way of knowing this. Luckily I was smart enough to marry someone who would coach me on my interviewing skills.

At her suggestion, I got a list of common interviewing questions and wrote down the answers. It was like doing a bunch of mini-essays. I heard that the most effective answers are the ones that tell a cute little anecdote. The best way to craft these is to take a flashback to the Reagan presidency when he would answer all his questions. Reagan could get hired for anything.

The surprising thing was how absurdly bad the answers were in the book. I’m not yet an HR expert, but I could tell how horrible these little blobs of text were. I can’t believe these phonies sell books on how to interview people that are so bad.

Their interview answers were highly generic, cold, and empty. At least I’m not going to make this mistake. An example asking the person to compare their oral skill vs. their written skills. The answer basically said, “I’m good at both.” Yea, I’m great at everything. Bullshit. I know that they expect something a bit more substantial. One of them even suggested to present themselves as “highly competitive”. Do these morons even think about what competition means? The competitive people I knew were liars and cheaters. This answer would be the kiss of death for me. I want to work with people who cooperate with me, not those who are trying to let the air out of my tires. I want to work with hard workers which is much different than those who think that they can scam their way through the work day.

To avoid poor answers in my interview, I have been continuously answering the same questions over and over again in front of my wife. Also, I rehearsed some of my answers like it was a part in a play. I found that my answers sucked, but they got a better over time.

These days, all the best jobs in every field seem to go to the best actor. For example on TV who were the most respected people in finance? Those who told the people what they wanted to hear. The ones that actually predicted the economic collapse were mocked. The shit heads that sucked up to the TV people lost their employers a great deal of money.

I’d rather have the right answers even if it means being mocked. That’s because if I lie, I’ll get the wrong kind of job, and I don’t want to do that again. I will, however, give them the secret insiders hand shake. If only I can figure it out.

Working Publically Vs. Laboring in the Dark

One of my wife’s suggestions was for me to volunteer in “following my
passion” so that I could more easily get a good job.

Clearly my passion is computers, especially Open Source Software like
Linux and Gnome. I also profess a love for writing, though I tend to
spend waaaay more time programming than writing. Therefore, she
suggested I do some documentation on Open Source Software.

Yesterday, I started using my usual method of looking for something I
want done, and working on it. “Scratching my itch.” In this case, it
was to write the API for libeel, an obscure library that is not
recommended for public consumption.

At the last minute, I stopped working on this, and looked around for
task lists. Of course, there were many. I was going to start working
on one of those, but instead, I joined a mailing list and offered my
services. They gave me three tasks none of which I would have figured
out on my own. Hmmm. Should I work on what I want to work on and risk
having nobody care, or should I start working on something that
people actually asked for?

I am choosing the later of course, but in the past, I would not have
thought of this. Working with others is not something that comes
naturally to me.

Anyway, I feel like Captain Obvious mentioning this, but I didn’t know
about this until now, perhaps there is someone else who could use this hint.

Pre-college planning

Long time readers know–OK, I realize that there are no long term readers in this echo chamber–I made a big mistake in my career early on and suffered a shitty career trajectory ever since.

This should be one of the better articles because rather than just whining about my lack of career focus/success, I’m going to outline the first step to a perfect career path.

I know that there’s no one perfect path for all people. Therefore, I’m going to make a few assumptions about the reader. If you don’t fit the assumptions, then you won’t get that much help from this article, but you can help the next generation. Pass it on.

I assume that you are 18 and below, and are not going to drop out of school. If you are going to drop out, then I’ll write something to help you, too. Dropping out of high school is not a great idea, but this is the real world so we need to be realistic. In fact, I’d say that as far as getting people into good careers, this world really sucks.

In fact, your first job stands a good chance at really sucking. It will be less challenging than high school, guaranteed. At best, your job will be a massive disappointment and an insult to your abilities. Don’t be shocked when this happens, realize that there are no perfect jobs. Even millionaire childhood stars have their off years.

Despite all this, you should still plan for the future. A lot. You are going to spend the rest of your life there. Planning will not ensure perfect happiness, but it will make your future career suck less than mine did. I promise.

Start planning your career when in middle school. Be honest. Brutally honest. Money will not make you happy. Working for nothing will also not make you happy. Therefore, you should avoid extremes.

When researching jobs, ask yourself, what’s the worst aspect of this job? If you can’t find anything then you need to do some more research. You’ll find something really crappy abou this job. The goal isn’t to find the best job, but rather one that is less crappy than all the others.

For example, doctors get over $100 an hour. If you like school, you may think that this is a great career because you can stay in school for a really long time. Fun! Then when you are done, you will get a lot of money and respect.

True, but you will also deal with blood and cutting up dead bodies. Also, the hours are really long. Something that’s a great time for a single hour can become a real drag if you have to do it everyday for long hours for years.

I suggest that whatever you pick, you should find someone who all ready does the job and interview them. I know that this sounds really difficult, but if you aren’t jazzed enough to do this about a certain position, then you probably don’t want that job. Also, I suggest volunteering to work around the particular job you want to do. Also, read about the topic. Subscribe to a trade journal and try to read the articles. If all these things don’t fill you with ecstacy, then you’re barking up the wrong career.

Once you have the ideal career, find out to get there as quickly as possible. Write down a year by year plan. This is going to be really tough, and it’s going to vary from career to career.

Note that the best way to get into a career is probably going to look a lot different than what your college advisor is going to suggest.

For example, the best route to becoming an accountant is NOT to start in college. Get a government job as a book keeper (yes you can do this with a HS diploma) and work under a CPA while the government pays for your education at night.

A scientist can take a similar path. You can get a technician job right away. You may need to leave your town to do this if you don’t live in a big city. Do it. Apply to all the technician jobs you are qualified for in the closest big city as soon as possible. Then you can see if you like it, and work your way through school.

A potential doctor can even do this. You should start working in a hospital right away. I suggest taking a job like an orderly which requires a college degree and working your way up to a nurse aid which is usually a 6 week program you can save up for.

Note all these examples have one commonality. They don’t suggest going to college right out of high school. Please don’t do this even if you have a scholarship. College is a BIG investment. Like all investments, it carries a lot of risk. Unlike other investments, the risk is iron clad. That is, the time and money you waste in college is gone forever. For other investments, if you get deep into debt, you can get out of it via bankruptcy. College is different. With college you will take that debt to your grave. So treat college like the riskiest investment you can possibly imagine like junk bonds or something.

Also, if you start working right out of high school, you get four years work experience ahead of the other smucks who go to college right out of high school. This experience is rewarded by higher pay. Also, you have four years to invest while other people are wasting their time studying the pottery of ancient Peru. You can always take out a book on South America from the library and read it, if you wish.

Also, you can still attend all the college parties, but you don’t have so much homework. So you don’t miss out on the stupidity that is the “college experience”.

If you go the “traditional route”, you spend 4 years studying something completely different from your job. When you get out you will be the same place as you were when you are 18, only with a lot more delusions and pride.

Faith is a Full Tank of Gas

We just moved to San Diego, CA without jobs. Why would we do this? I can think of a few reasons:

1. We are idiots. This goes without saying. We are unenlightened humans so we’re going to make mistakes just like everyone else.

2. We wanted to bike across the country. This is also true. We couldn’t do this if we had a job waiting because we couldn’t be sure how long it was going to take.

3. We are really, really frugal, and we have a lot of faith in our abilities to manage money and our abilities to get a job.

This is also true, but there’s a limit to how long we can wait. Strange enough, I feel _less_ worried than I did when we started even though we have less money now. Why?

I have no idea. I was panicking last night, and this morning. I woke up feeling waves of regret that I hadn’t planned things better.

I even thought about the ultimate in selling one self out: going back to school. Shhh! I know it’s really bad. I couldn’t help it.

I don’t know if it’s just me, but career plans are like changing channels on the TV. One day I’m gung-ho about something and the next, I am totally against it, thinking why did I ever want to do that.

This kind of vacillation keeps me from committing to a long term plan such as going to graduate school because I’ll change my mind a million times.

Long time readers will know that this is because I really would like to sit around all day and write and get paid for it. Anything that cuts into writing time pisses me off. On the other hand, I usually have little faith in my ability to finish and sell a book, and I don’t want to die as a loser who never did anything because he had this impossible dream that didn’t work out.

What’s the answer? I feel that faith is the way to go.

After meditating for a few years, I got this amazing gift. It started at the beginning of this year. I started to believe in myself. Not some other power just me. It’s not that I believed that I could do amazing things, either. I was still the same, ordinary person. I just started to get a little faith in my ability to deal with any situation.

Since I never had any faith of any kind in my ability to do anything, this is new. It’s also a reworking of faith. In the past, faith meant making yourself believe in things that are absurd. It’s the way to go beyond the rational mind and come up with a a way we can live forever.

That faith died while I studied neuroanatomy. If you can change someone’s mind by tinkering with their nerves then where’s the immortal soul that makes decisions? I had this big crisis that also tied into me getting mugged. I was also living alone in one of the worst ghettos in a big city for the first time in my life. Prior to this, I never lived alone. Plus I was starting medical school.

Now ten years later, my faith is back, but it’s completely different.

I’m sure I’ll go through a million more crisises before we get jobs. But at this moment, I have no doubt that I can handle the situations.

The Marketplace doesn’t care about your passion

There is this belief that each one of us is gifted with this one field where we are the happiest. If only we can find our passion, we can follow it into a job of our dreams. Many find this liberating, but I actually find this belief to be annoying and stressful.

I am 35, and I still don’t know what I want to do with my life. I don’t think I ever will. I feel that actually, the people you work with and your boss determine your entire work situation.

I didn’t know that when I first got out of school. I had a Chemistry BS and some Medical education. I thought that my dream job would be making new discoveries to change the world. At least I could do this for eight hours a day until it was time to go home and write the Great American Novel.

However, I had nasty bosses for years. Each time I moved on, it turned out that they really valued my work, but they thought that being nasty was the only thing to _motivate_ me. The opposite is actually the case. I’d move mountains for a nice boss, but with a nasty one, I’ll merely do the job while looking for a way out. I had the a nice boss for the first time in my life last year at a temp job as an administrative assistant. This made me realize that I’m actually a great employee and the only problem with my “career” is that I always had crappy bosses.

This leads me to just look for a nice boss no matter what the field. I keep reading about following one’s passion, but I don’t have one in the traditional sense. I want to write novels. But I have to feed myself first. Does this make me some kind of fraud like an illegitimate worker? When they ask me why I want this job, I feel like I’m lying. I can’t say that, “I’m just working here until my writing career takes off.” This fills me with stress.

At least at my last job, my boss was refreshing. He told me, “Of course your time sheet is important. Why else would you come here?” Yes! Why do so many employers create this charade that no matter how shitty your job is, this has to be the thing you wanted to do all your life. I hate it because it makes me feel like a phony. I made the mistake of telling one research boss the truth, and they canned me shortly after that.

Even though I was always made to feel that I had to pretend I had my dream job, I feel that most people are _not_ following their passion. They seem to be happier than the ones who actually were following their passion, the scientists I worked under. The scientists seemed to be bent out of shape at the smallest thing, while the passionless people seemed to be more relaxed sometimes they even seemed happy. At my last job everyone admitted that they’d rather be on the beach, but they weren’t so upset all the time.

Note, I’m NOT saying take a job you hate. I’m just relating what I have observed. People don’t realize that is that jobs are not created to give people fulfillment nor are they made to give people interesting things to do with their time. Jobs are created because people need stuff to get done. People need to eat so there are farmers and cooks, for example.

Still, I think that people should spend a lot of time thinking about what they want to do in life. I regret not thinking my own career out a lot more than I did. I was so caught up in actually becoming a surgeon, I never realized that surgery was a terrible profession for me. I don’t like to stand on my feet knowing that if I mess up, I could kill this person. Even if I don’t mess up this person could still die. Plus, I don’t like the idea of not being able to go to the bathroom when I have to go.

They should get into an interesting field with people are similar to them. Their job should challenge them as much as they wish to be challenged. But you have to look at the big picture, too. Often the most interesting subjects in school don’t lead to the most interesting jobs.

I loved Chemistry in college, but I realized that working in a lab would probably suck because I would spend most of the time dealing with smelly chemicals, which I hate, and very little time in the imaginary world of atoms which I love. Ten years later as a lab technician, I was right, it sucks. I’m clumsy so I often mess up my experiments because I make one tiny mistake or another. I prefer a job where all my mistakes can be fixed with the backspace key.

Therefore, I actually love the day to do of a routine administrative assistant which sounds dull on paper, but it can be a great time when co-workers have a good sense of humor and the work is light enough to allow daily blogging. So I suggest those still reading to not only think of their passion, whatever that is, but how they’d like to spend time day to day. Because that’s what a job is. Day to day. Most of the really cool stuff you do in school will never come up in the real world. Out of all the complex equations I learned in Chemistry classes, I only use one equation. It was taught in high school Chemistry.

Another example: Medicine might seem like an awesome subject on paper. Doctors look so cool in their while strutting around hospitals. When you think of the day to day, it kind of sucks. You wind up seeing a lot of people who are dying. People who have given up hope on life. People who want to abuse you because their stay at the hospital sucked. You wind up dealing with blood, pus, feces, and urine. Part of your day, you have to stick your finger up people’s assholes. Yuck!

Once you realize what kind of day you want, you should pick a major that will lead to this kind of job. I never saw anyone suggest this. If you want to go home at five PM then look into office jobs, but don’t become a lawyer.

Finally, if you find that your dream job is not all your dreamed, that’s OK. The dirty secret is that dream jobs are never perfect. There is always something missing; and there are always things you have to do that you don’t like. For example, for all the glamor, models have to look like their having a good time even when they’re not. If that sounds easy then try it. It’s much tougher and more stressful than something that sounds boring like office filing.

The best way to deal with life is to be happy where you are rather than chasing this elusive “passion.” If your job sucks and you hate your life, you should probably get a new job. But, if your job is tolerable and you can hang out with the people you work with and you get paid enough to live on, you are as much of a success as anyone who is “living their dream.”