Does anyone have a really interesting job that they love? And what is it?

OU OU OU I DO! Going from Admin coordinator (head reception for 3yrs) to Marketing Coordinator . I am now in control of all the art work and marketing for all 6 companies that this company owns. I was given this opportunity last August when it was decided we need something in house to cut costs and to give the President a bit of relief when it came to coordinating with the printers and other design firms. Since I was already doing up a lot of the art work on the side and always managed to be left with setting up and overseeing all events and functions – the President asked me to give it a shot. I love it! I get to use every inch of my creativity –stay busy – and be in control of my own projects. The only person I now report too is the president of all the company’s, so no one but him can tell me what to do (and he’s pretty down to earth so it’s all very casual). I now run with the big suites of the group of companies and I am given the same respect as they’d give each other (which means a lot to me).

I call that job but I don t get pay by the money.The job is get people together or for understanding show friends that is more in than you see .It is nice you know.The plesure inside me.I get satisfate more than if I am pay by money.The job looks like hey, lets do something or hi, this is friend of my let me introduse him or her to you.Basicly that it is.I don t know haw to describe it bether on.

go to work at 8.30 , i drink a cup of coffee, browse the net for some information , finish at 5.

My first job was at a movie theater. After a few months I was a projectionist. It ruled. An hours work for 8 hours of pay. We had a desk and a bed I fashioned out off old bags of ticket stubs and boxes.

Seriously, It took ten minutes to get the building going. Flicking breakers and such. 8 projectors times three showings per shift. 24 + 10 minutes of actual work in eight hours.

But we were payed for knowing how to fix shit. No sound on the first showing of Titanic with 500 people in the auditorium. That was bad. But I fixed it in 5 minutes. That is why they were cool with me falling asleep eating a cinnabon.

I’m an illustrator and I find it very interesting. Getting it to pay the bills is a work in progress, so I supplement with design, which at its best is fascinating and exciting; at its worst, soul-whoring drudgery.

i LOVE my job. it is different every day, and i feel that it is meaningful to me and to others. i am a teacher, which may sound ordinary (not that teachers are ordinary, but everyone knows what a teacher does), but i am not a traditional classroom teacher (although i love teaching in the classroom, as well). i am a technology coordinator. i teach weekly computer classes to our whole school – kindergarten through eighth grade. i plan all computer class activities and projects in conjunction w/ what’s going on in the classroom. but that’s just the beginning…

i maintain our school intranet as a collection of resources for both faculty and students. i find web resources for teachers planning units, i teach teachers how to use software and hardware, i manage our school website, and help teachers with their class pages (i am NOT a web-designer), i help teachers plan and implement technology projects outside of my own weekly computer classes.

i send a monthly tech-tips newsletter to my faculty, and run a year-long professional development series of tech workshops, as well as week-long opportunities in the summer.

i also read several edtech journals to stay on top of trends in educational technology, and to learn about new software and hardware, and spread the word about them, as well as deciding which ones are worth investigating for our own possible use.

I was a Museum Curator for 18 years – great job, never dull, let me use every talent I have.

I got to give nature walks and show off various live animals including alligators, I got to design exhibits, I set the policies for taking care of the collections, answered questions for the public, served as an “expert” on TV and radio, and in films, and gave fun talks to Elderhostel groups. I got to hang out with paleontologists, archeologists, and herpetologists and go on dinosaur digs and collecting trips, I got to travel and get paid to do so, and I generally got to spend a lot of time learning new stuff about my favorite subjects.

Because it was a small museum I also helped design and present living history programs, built exhibits, supervise operations, translated for Spanish language groups, set database standards, ran the computer network, and met interesting people. After all, how many folks have had the opportunity to host a Mayan Indian in their house and introduce her to escalators (very scary!) or chat with Buffalo Soldier reinactors visiting town with their horses? What about discover that the Civil War cannon ball that has been on exhibit for decades is live and filled with gun powder and it is your job to find out how to defuse it and who needs to do that?

It was never dull.

Unfortunately, because of my husband’s declining health and the needs of my kids, I had to retire. Now I sell books on the Internet and do community theater and independent film.

Well, my job is sort of interesting, but not nearly as interesting as my parents’ job. They were professional puppeteers. They started out performing with marionettes, but then turned to muppet style puppets that my brother crafted for them. They wrote all their own shows (music, scripts), and performed at local elementary schools for years. They were also on the local PBS station. I loved the fact that they were puppeteers because my dad quit a very lucrative job as an engineer to pursue his dream of puppetry. That took a lot of guts, but he did it and made a living out of it.

I love my job!

I’m an ecologist and because of my research interests I’ve lived on remote islands working on sea turtles off tropical Australia, discovered a new species of primate in the Amazon, discovered new aspects of mate choice in frogs, helped to save rainforest in Indonesia, worked on Crocodiles, dived with sharks, surveyed humpbacks, tagged fairy penguins, worked on Orangutans, surveyed Jaguars in Bolvia, built a research station in the Amazon, lived in a tent in tropical rainforests for more than two years, and now I work with climate change ecology issues living in a completely new country and continent for me.

So ecology has enabled me to live and work in incredibly remote and amazing places, allowed me to be a part of new scientitic discoveries, allows me to do research and constantly learn new things, as well as enabled me to contribute to our understanding of issues that affect all of us.

LOOOOOVE IT!!!!!

@Critter38 crikey! that sounds amazing… i take it you don’t have kids huh?

True, no kids at the time I did most (but not all) of that stuff, but now that my wife and I (also an ecologist and co-conspirator in many of those adventures) are located well and truly in Nordic civilization (moved here 6 months ago), we are safely raising our relatively newly arrived two little girls (oldest is almost 3 years) where the little ones are less likely to catch tropical diseases. I think we’ll give our girls a few more years to build up their immune system before we do anything too risky again. :)

But that’s just our approach. Jane Goodall had a kid and kept up her research and adventures while living in Africa,

but she had to sometimes leave her infant son in a cage when unattended in Gombe, to keep the Chimps from eating little Hugo. Just one of the minor added complications of bringing up kids while doing remote field work…

@Critter38 hmmm yes i’m not sure i’m brave enough to do that…. well done you though…!! wow

I gotta run, but just as a side if you like the idea of that stuff many ecologists occasionally need volunteers. You don’t have to be an ecologist full time to have these experiences, just often have to be willing to work for free (accomodation (tent) and food covered…) for a few weeks or a few months (you can get paid jobs…but they often requires experience). they just need reliable people. Just a thought… also, not all places are THAT risky…the world’s a big place…plenty to chose from.

Same goes for museums, etc.. etc..I imagine (thinking of “Darwin’s” job)

Student/ Hotel Worker. Pretty boring actually, but whatever.

@Critter38 – you can have kids and be a field ecologist too, you know. One friend of mine had her baby and then went on to spend a year in Costa Rica in the cloud forest. She set up caches throughout her study area with diapers, bottles, etc, and toted her baby along in a sling while she studied atelopids (colorful frogs also called “Clown Toads” for those who don’t know them).

Her husband had gotten a grant to study flower mites in Santo Domingo during the same time period so she single-mommed it for a bit.

Also, zooarcheology at one museum I was in was infamous for having playpens set up between the storage cases.

@Darwin , that’s just mental!! some people were born superheroes… I can’t imagine anything more terrifying than having your first child and trekking off into the cloud forest…

@Darwin, Oh absolutely. But we’ve been in the field for a very long time and for medical reasons we needed some timeout. Several of our friends have spent significant time in the field with kids of various ages.

So Im certainly not one to think kids prevent adventure, it just needs some thinking and a balance between their needs and your own. For us I think we’ll have a few more years here in Sweden and then perhaps spend some time in Africa where we have some project ideas on simmer.

all of these sounds pretty damn cushy when you think that we are discussing places inhabited by millions and millions of children less able than ourselves to avoid getting sick

@lynneblundell – she always said it was much easier than being the only woman, and the only American, in a vast stretch of Peruvian jungle, during the apex of activity of Shining Path, and having to eat monkeys cheerfully, hands and all. She also said Costa Rica was much nicer than Haiti, especially since she didn’t get Dengue Fever in Costa Rica.

It helps to be a bit crazy anyway if you are going to be a field biologist, although we prefer to call it dedicated.