I don’t sell bullets and I don’t sell crack
It’s an excited free man coming to you from the bottom of the globe today. I’ve been racking my brain since my undeserved windfall yesterday to come up with the best use of a year of sponsored free time. I’m leaning towards adding some tools to me personal toolbox. My university isn’t the best academic institution in South Australia, but it’s definitely the most vocationally oriented. They offer a wide range of one year graduate certificates that are targeted to people like me. What I’m trying to work out is what would be my best bet for enhancing my career opportunities - a certificate in secondary education to give me more teaching opportunities? Should I learn to write properly and do some communications course work? What about a business certificate so I can put that suit to good use? Or should I consider my geography and get some environmental engineering or water management know how?
A lot of you, my readers, are clever people. If you were given a chance to retool your career, what would you focus on? What careers are going to be in demand in the next decade or so? Any economic Nostradami out there? Australian opinions are particularly welcome.
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Speaking of paying the bills, you may have noticed some changes up at the top of my sidebar. Now, I’ve never been a big fan of advertising or sponsored posting or any of the money making ploys that some folks employ. But a self-hosted site isn’t free and while I’m not blogging to be a millionaire, I’d like to at least not lose money in this gig. So, I’m grateful to BlogHer (and Nichole for pointing me there), the community for women who blog, for taking me on despite being demonstrably not a woman. Says so on the box, in fact. Once we get the code sorted out, there will be a likely pretty garish ad dominating the top of my side bar. Beyond having to scroll a bit further down the page to get to recent comments (which Dr. O’C has already given me an earful about) nothing else will change here at A Free Man. So don’t call me an ad whore or I’ll put my dog on you.
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Now, I typically don’t get into the whole blog award game, but having just gotten a golden egg laid on my lap I figure it’s time to start paying back some of that karmic debt. I found this present from Bluestreak this morning on her site. I don’t speak Spanish, but I’m pretty sure that this means I am now queen of butterflies that land on toilet paper rolls. My first order of business as Lepidoptera Queen is to secure some knights of the loo roll realm. So, here are eight bloggers who have written posts recently that earned them a tap with our royal scepter:
- Bobbie at The Right Blue for her post on photosynthetic nudibranches.
- Maggie at Okay, Fine, Dammit on her encounter with a 10 year old me.
- Boyhowdy at Cover Lay Down for his most recent edition of kidfolk. If you’ve got kids and like music, this is for you.
- Doug at Hey Jenny Slater for outstanding college football coverage.
- Matthew at Pop Songs 07-08 who managed to score a series of guest posts by Michael Stipe.
- Strange Scottish Girl at Wake Up It’s Tuesday has been on lately.
- I’ve been stalking Breaking The Ice lately and it’s time to out myself.
- Finally, appropriate to the karmic theme, fellow expat Ian from Letters Home posted a bit of Buddhism for bloggers.
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The Beastie Boys’ “The Sounds of Science” is available from 
.
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Yes, that´s exactly what it means, that you´re queen of butterflies and toilet paper. Actually, I don´t know what it means either, cause I think it´s in French or Portuguese.
I looooooooooooooooooooooove Beastie Boys. “Cause I´m mello like jell-el-lo, cool like lemonade”.
And to answer your question, hmmmmmmmmm, if I had a year to build up my carreer a bit. I don´t know, the only thing I can think of is going back for my PhD that looms over my head as the thing I never finished.
Bluestreaks last blog post..Drum roll please…
15 Oct 2008 at 5:22 pm
Woah… see above maybe I should finish mine. Anyways dude thanks for the link and congrats on your award… I gotta post soon about what’s going on in my head about what I should be doing cos I need to get it out and get some blogosphere advice… its just hanging over me at the moment. What do you like to do best? if writing, do courses there. Why not in publishing? or creative writing? or maybe computing/website stuff? Or any biology course you wanna do for the hell of it? or maybe train to be a nurse? or do forensics (cool) or maths or something? or, yeah, maybe chemical engineering, i heard u get paid a lot for that in Oz.
SSGs last blog post..Fond food memories
15 Oct 2008 at 6:07 pm
yo, i was just asked to complete a survey of ure website or somesuch poo, then was told they already had enough people? or maybe it just popped up randomly. weird.
SSGs last blog post..Fond food memories
15 Oct 2008 at 6:09 pm
I can really only talk about teaching, and getting a DipEd (or whatever the SA equivalent is, am guessing it’s probably the same thing) in secondary education would be a good on-the-side money spinner. I’ve done quite a lot of relief teaching - the money’s not bad (in Victoria it’s about 38 dollars an hour now I think) and you are free to pick and choose when you want to work. In the first term of this year I was doing relief teaching and for a while I was working nearly full time at several different schools - at that rate of pay I was doing quite nicely. And now I’m full time (but on a salary) I do find myself at times longing for the heady days when I arrived at 8:30 and left promptly at 3:15, with no meetings or reports or parent teacher interviews or other added extras! So the ability to flit it and flit out is quite an attractive benefit!
Agness last blog post..October 10 In A Row
15 Oct 2008 at 8:07 pm
Ohhh, man, I was all set to rail against BlogHer and then I saw you gave me this sweet nod. Shit.
I’m gonna do it anyway. Right there on their advertising page they say you have to be a female blogger to host their ads. Know how I know this? It’s right next to the part that says you can’t have profanity in your URL. Guess how I feel about the fact that they are implementing their rules arbitrarily??
SIIIIGHHHHH.
But I’m happy for you. I am. Losing money at this thing sucks. It’s not enough to make me quit, but it sucks.
As for career advice, it’s an incredible windfall and I have no idea what you should do with it… it’s so different for everyone, but it really comes down to that one thing that makes each individual deliriously happy. For me, it would be getting my MFA.
Good luck and congratulations and thank you for the award.
16 Oct 2008 at 1:01 am
If I had the opportunity you have I would choose to either take pastry arts/cooking classes or genetic counseling courses (photography would be cool too). I’m sure these have nothing to do with anything you’re interested in, the cooking would mainly be for fun because I don’t really want to be a professional chef (though I toy with the idea of owning a bakery/cafe some day) but I’ve been seriously considering what I should do if this whole research thing doesn’t pan out, and though I really like the idea of a teaching school, those jobs aren’t easy to land either.
I have no Australian perspective to provide you with, but I can’t imagine writing courses wouldn’t help both your other job and your prospects in teaching.
16 Oct 2008 at 1:57 am
First, thank you for the award. I’m glad you liked the article.
As to your question - I was faced with a somewhat similar situation at one point when my husband had an opportunity to take a lucrative overseas assignment, but at a time and place that provided me (as a rather newly minted PhD) few opportunities to pursue the same professional course that I would have if we had stayed home. We had a big deal debate on all the pros and cons. In the end ‘we’ took the assignment, even though there were virtually no job prospects for me. I did do a little consulting during the period, but the opportunities were meager. On the other hand, I didn’t “need the money,” since my other half was being paid quite enough for both of us during that time. So, I ultimately construed it as a sabbatical for me, and I spent most of my time working on niche research projects that really interested me and were useful (in the broader sense), but which had little hope of being funded by traditional means. In short, I did the research ‘pro bono’ (there’s a nice polite term!). I wasn’t being paid, but I was working in my field, thinking about issues, keeping up on the professional literature, further honing my skills, and ultimately making a contribution. It was time well spent, and I learned a lot about doing work for its own sake without major institutional support. I have worked independently ever since!
In respect to re-tooling your career, clearly it would be a waste of your time to take a writing course! On the other hand, you could use the time to write more — and read more (which then influences what and how well you write).
It might be useful to look into a particular industry that interests you, e.g. environmental engineering, which you mentioned, so that you could discover ways to combine your present writing/teaching/research skills in an applied environment.
Best wishes to you. I look forward to following your passage through this stage of your life and career.
The Right Blues last blog post..Colony of Long Red Sea Whips - Indonesia
16 Oct 2008 at 4:53 am
I’d love to have the ability to teach high school, but that would require me to quit my job, take a full load of courses and THEN student teach for a semester to get that teaching certification. It’s like having two BS degrees and two Master’s degrees basically disqualify me from being a good teacher…at least until they’re supported by those rigorous Theory of Teaching courses. Sorry, I’m a bit jaded.
16 Oct 2008 at 5:07 am
Speaking as someone who actually has his teaching certification, I agree with Nathan’s seemingly implied cynicism of Theory of Teaching courses. While they might have some small amount of value in regards to understanding the different learning processes that various people use, I’ve felt that this topic could be covered in something less than an entire course, and certainly something much less than a series of courses.
On the flip side, I do think that proper training of teachers is very important. This training should be in both the pedagogy of teaching, as well as a thorough understanding of the subject matter.
Isn’t it funny how there are such strict standards for grade school teachers, but collegiate professors are never required to take a “how to teach” type of class?
16 Oct 2008 at 5:46 am
What in God’s name would you want to teach secondary for? At least the students you lecture WANT to be there and have demonstrated SOME ability to perform academically.
As for Theory of Teaching courses Nathan, perhaps if they were a little more rigorous there wouldn’t be so many teachers out there prone to assessment by gut instinct and unable to modify courses for pupils with special needs >:-(
From an Aussie perspective, the water management and environmental engineering. Definitely.
arizaphales last blog post..Sorry To Disappoint
16 Oct 2008 at 7:02 am
Bluestreak - Did I seriously get the language wrong? Shocking. I’ve always considered myself educated. Now I feel like what Sarah Palin must feel like.
“You got you got you got you got you got
You’ve got the boomin’ system but it’s sloshing out doo-doo
You think it’s chocolate milk but it’s watered down yoo-hoo…”
SSG - Nursing? Seriously? You see me as a nurse? I thought you knew me pretty well. I hate touching people.
Agnes - Yeah, I don’t know about what the SA equivalent is, need to talk to some of my teacher friends. Hadn’t thought of using it as a part time gig, that’s interesting.
Maggie - I forgot about your tussle with BlogHer. I’m not in the business of defending BlogHer. In fact, they still don’t have the code sorted so they’re fixin’ to get the sack, but to their credit they do say “written by women, OR with a demonstrated female audience”. I think that I fill the latter qualification. I do think that their rejection of you is their loss. I mean “dammit” is hardly swearing. My grandma starts her morning with a “dammit”. Dammit.
April - Genetic counseling is an interesting idea as well. Certainly going to be more demand and I am pretty passionate about genetics. Nice one.
Bobbie - Why would it be a waste of time to take a writing course?
Nathan - My only worry about teaching high school is I’m not interested in the disciplinary crap that goes along with it. “Johnny, stop talking.” “Mary, put your clothes back on.” “Robbie, please put your gun away.” Beyond that, I think it would be great. Thinking about posh private schools where presumably the parents are paying enough that they’ll take some responsibility for discipline.
Jason - “Pedagogy”? What the hell?! You’re dead right, I’ve had no proper teacher training and have taught at one of the best universities in the world. Madness.
Arizaphale - Totally. You’d have to be a dickhead to want to teach. Can’t imagine what sort of masochisitic person would choose that as a career.
16 Oct 2008 at 7:46 am
Didn’t mean that “lack of training” thing as a knock against you. To the contrary, I’m sure you’re a fine teacher. Though I could give you a list of several professors you and I both know that are less than satisfactory….
I didn’t even think when I used the word “pedagogy”. Its one of those teacher terms that just slips out every now and then even though I haven’t had much of a use for them in nearly a decade. Both “pedagogy” and “rubric” are equally weird education terms. I’ve got a bunch more too. Don’t make me go all Bloom’s Taxonomy on you…..
16 Oct 2008 at 8:25 am
I’m sure that I’m not, Jason, I agree with you actually.My point is that we’re kind of gypping university students because often times (as you know) they get crap instruction. Remember Mol Bio at Mizzou? What was his name, Luke Skywalker?
16 Oct 2008 at 8:45 am
geriatric nurses will be increasing in demand for a while.
also, it is a rewarding career (although the pay might not be worth it?) anyway, that’s what i’m thinking about. and as an anthropologist, i think it’s perfect.
carries last blog post..it’s VINTAGE
16 Oct 2008 at 9:24 am
If it were me I’d go secondary cert simply to have another pool of employment opportunities.
Starrlights last blog post..You’re Packing A Suitcase For A Place None Of Us Has Been
16 Oct 2008 at 9:29 am
When I said that a writing course would be a waste of time for you, I meant that you already are an accomplished writer. You do not need any Writing 101 type course.
Now, perhaps something along the lines of learning the ins and outs of the commercial publishing process, or a course targeted at fostering the writing skills and scientific knowledge you already have into, say, science journalism — that might be an option. You don’t need to be taught to write (and in fact I doubt most people actually can be taught to write), but you could be taught the mechanics of writing for a particular type of market.
The Right Blues last blog post..Colony of Long Red Sea Whips - Indonesia
16 Oct 2008 at 9:36 am
Blooms Taxonomy - that gave me a chuckle! I’m a big fan of Vygotsky’s zone of proximal development myself - I find it especially relevant when writing reports. “Johnny has been working well within his zone of proximal development, demonstrating an increase in skill when manipulating numbers and completing basic algorithms.” What could be simpler?
Agness last blog post..October 10 In A Row
16 Oct 2008 at 11:15 am
Why take a course? Why not develop a course in an area that interested you? Science and media in the internet age? Approach the Dept head and see if they’d be interested in a senior elective in the area of your specialty/choosing. Maybe develop it in concert with someone in a very different area so you get to learn during the development. (I bet you could teach a course in Tiddlywinks here if you called it interdiscipinary Tiddlywinks)
In the end you may have added value to your Dept., making you an asset and giving them reason to keep you on. You’ve also added to your teaching portfolio and you can retain the IP rights of the material so it goes with you if you choose to leave.
That said …. the most useful thing to me would be something like a management bootcamp. Probably not a full-on MBA, but not a “dealing with difficult people” seminar either - something in the middle. You think that the lack of teaching instruction for academics is bad? Think about the rest of it. It’s the only profession I know of where you’re judged on one set of criteria (research ability, papers published, whatever … ) and then you’re set a completely unrelated set of duties - manage a small team of people, work through collegial processes, manage budgets and resolve disputes, and yes, learn how to use pedagogy in a sentence and sound like you know what you’re talking about.
But with that said, I wouldn’t do that either … metal fabrication would be my choice. I want to be able to stick to pieces of metal together with electricity. Mostly putting old cars back together. As a plus, you could make gigantic tetanus-causing sculptures in the back yard!
16 Oct 2008 at 11:53 am
Tough call - getting more education can only make you more marketable, but what do you want to be when you grow up? Then there’s the whole having extra paid time on your hands and you have a tiny person who’s growing up right before your eyes - would taking a chunk of that time to stop and smell the baby also merit consideration? I also like Chris in Saskatoon’s idea of creating a new course to teach that reflects your talents. Oh, and the whole welding thing sounded fun too - I’ve always wanted to weld found-object sculptures.
I know - I’m no help at all.
we_be_toyss last blog post..Brief Candle
16 Oct 2008 at 1:23 pm
Belated thanks for the award, and right back at you. Us daddy/music/bloggers have to stick together, eh?
PS: If I had a year off paid, I’d probably do the best parts of what I usually do, only for the benefit of people who could not otherwise afford or have access to that. Sadly, if I had stayed in private secondary school teaching, this would have been my sabbatical year, too. Sigh…
boyhowdys last blog post..Covered in Folk: Harry Nilsson (Covers from Marc Cohn, Steve Forbert, Glen Phillips and more!)
16 Oct 2008 at 1:27 pm
“My university isn’t the best academic institution in South Australia, but it’s definitely the most vocationally oriented.”
I now have a pretty good idea which institution it is. Back in my wayward youth, I was a tutor there–Miss Betty has an amusing story about it from those days.
I’ll put you in touch with my old boss, who knows more about frittering away study leave than any other human being on the planet. (Just kidding)
The words stick in my throat, but how about an MBA there? Useful in later starting a science-based business, maybe. Not useful in learning any actual business skills, because those are bollocks. But useful to know the jargon when you submit a business plan to a bank or something.
headbang8s last blog post..One man’s belief.
17 Oct 2008 at 1:26 am
I often think about going for the same type of graduate certificate type thing, but I haven’t a clue what I’d do. Something maybe along the lines of grant writing or something communications related. I don’t know. Something that will look good on my resume and get me a pay bump.
Now, if I were just going for my own edification, I’d do some folklore classes, maybe more writing classes, etc.
18 Oct 2008 at 3:20 am
Thanks for the shout out! I’ve been neglecting my blog lately but I’ll definitely up my game now that you’re stalking it.
A whole year to better yourself… what a wonderful opportunity. I’m doing a philosophy class at the moment, and there’s nothing like a roomful of people with crazy opinions to argue with!
If that doesn’t float your boat go and do something that you’ve always been interested in but never pursued - what’s on your non-fiction shelf?
MyBoyfriendIsAPirates last blog post..Before and After
18 Oct 2008 at 10:58 pm
[…] lo, Chris at A Free Man generously awarded me with a tap from his royal scepter a few days ago, and I’ve found the […]
18 Oct 2008 at 11:34 pm