Job Satisfaction

Sun Wukong said
English.

Transitioning out of teaching with a humanities degree is next to impossible. There are career coaches that will claim you have a lot of transferable skills but the reality is there is a stigma in the private sector about teaching not being a "real" job and there has been a major outflow of people leaving the profession. Upskilling or going back to school are often the only options.

I'm going back to school in the fall. Its a huge change for me at 41 and not without risks, but I can no longer function like this.

I'm fortunate in the sense that it's just me. No family or spouse or anything. So I can take this risk without impacting anyone else. And worst case scenario I can always reactive my teaching license so I do have a safety net of sorts. But that will be the literal last resort.

Maybe we should compile a list here of adjacent careers to those that people are sick of (lol literally everything).

I know of a lot of roles that are aligned with nursing and other licensed healthcare providers but aren't in direct patient care that I can suggest for folks. Sometime it really helps to think outside the box and apply for ish that you feel you are wildly unqualified for.

That is precisely how I found and landed the first job I had when I got hired into my current company. I had been looking for jobs & doing searches on what I thought best resembled my last job as a data analyst. I was getting results and lots of job interviews. But one day I was like okay, let me try a different search.

I had experience managing grant funded healthcare delivery transformation projects so searched "grant funded" or something like that & stumbled onto my job. I was like I know fork all about cell & gene therapy & I am not a scientist but I do know a thing or two about running grant funded programs. I applied anyway and got called back. I was truly astonished. Part of that was because I had a really competent boss who was a PhD scientist but also really adept at the business side of things (you often don't get both with scientists). He was explicit that "we don't need any more people like "us" (PhD) on the team. I need someone who can execute a project. Don't worry about the knowledge/content specific stuff. I'll teach you that". He was one of the best bosses I have ever had. He left in March 2020. Waited for our annual bonus distribution and dipped. LOL. We stay in contact to this day.