What do you want to do for a Career?, Or state it if you got one. Options

[Zelda_Zealot]

Personally I want to end up working for Bethesda, using the Construction Set, or maybe writing the books. That would be a great thrill for me, having my own works found by adventurers far and wide across the face of Tamriel. Writing the quests, plot, and short stories found in an Elder Scrolls game would be a dream job for me... Too bad I need to go to collage first.

So how about all of you? What whould be your preffered job/career? Or, if you already have it, tell us what it is. Feel free to use all the detail you want, or lack there of.

[canis216]

Well, my biggest dislike with teaching was simply that I was teaching subjects that weren't in specialty. I'm a good writer, and looking to break into it professionally to some degree, but it's not something I studied a lot--it's mostly something that I just DO. So teaching writing was sort of a hit-or-miss thing for me. Then last fall I was doing physics, chemistry, and astronomy--again, not in my specialty. I'm good at chem and physics, but astronomy was struggle for me to teach, because I was refreshing my knowledge as I went. If I were to teach again, I'd limit myself to stuff that I'm a genuine expert at. Not doing a good job--well, it rankles.

Another issue: I can be pretty disorganized, and I like to do things on the fly. Teaching forces you to be really organized. So I'd have to work on that. Preparation is critical. Once you get the hang of things it becomes easier to freelance, but again, I wasn't working in one of my specialities. (Sigh)

I hated grading. And explaining to a student why you graded a piece of writing a certain way (as opposed to say, a math problem) is sometimes a lose-lose. I was subject to some bias accusations in my end-of-semester evaluations, which was frustrating because I was killing myself to try to be as objective as possible. Grading sucks. I think me and my fellow TAs were in agreement with that.

Good stuff: Helping people is nice. I think I was able to help some students really express themselves and discover their talent.

I was able to do some cool things with my curriculum, like choose some of the stuff my students read, make cool assignments. Some of my colleagues did amazing stuff. My friend Nathaniel Miller (who, if there is justice in the world, will become a famous or at least very successful writer--he is amazing) had his students doing some wonderful black humor type stuff. Me, I exposed my students to a wonderfully descriptive piece by Ed Abbey about experimenting with LSD in Death Valley. That got some great/amusing/cool responses. I tried to expand their minds, and I did enjoy it. (Quick note: I imagine that it is considerably easier to get away with blowing people's minds in a college environment than elsewhere--just a thought.)

My colleagues were great. A lot of them were fiction writers, or creative writers of some ilk. Interesting people with great ideas. Talking shop with them was great. (Caveat: We were all TAs--young grad students. A middle school environment would likely be a lot different.)

This post has been edited by canis216: Oct 29 2008, 02:07 AM

[redsrock]

Thanks for the info, man. This one part I liked in particular:

Good stuff: Helping people is nice. I think I was able to help some students really express themselves and discover their talent.

I love helping people with their writing right now at age 19, so that's why I want to be a writing teacher. Right now I don't think I'm a great writer, but I don't think I'm horrible either. I'm hoping to take some writing classes to further my abilities, so I'll be absolutely ready when it comes time to actual teaching.