Stuff and Nonsense & mid-life crisis
Jun. 12th, 2003 10:32 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
inulroWork's been really boring this week, so I've been rather missing LJ access. (There really is no correlation between no LJ at work and increased productivity. I keep forgetting that when I go in regularly, I go through the work faster than it piles up). I do now have a completely OTT Amazon wish list. Things are so quiet that I've lent out the temp to other departments and still not been terribly stretched. In view of the fact that I have more to do at home than I do there, and I've been feeling a bit iffy the last couple days, I'm having a day off tomorrow.
One good thing about my job - I can decide at 3 pm that I want to take the next day off. I had meant not to be squandering my annual leave like that, but oh well. My health is never improved by sitting at work being bored.
Oh, Entropy is re-starting in Bath on Saturday night. At the Porter Butt (location of Exile). I have Nice Boots and should be rested, so I am probably going. I just have to embezzle the car tax fund for admission money.
Once I get my loan paid off, I'm seriously considering training to be a nurse. This idea isn't as silly as it sounds. For a start, to get any of the good NHS management jobs (i.e. sorting out peoples' needs and problems rather than moving money), you need to be a nurse. There's lots of interesting things you can do that don't involve traditional working on wards roles these days.
Plus, it's like this. I've spent my whole life in pursuit of careers that have at least 10 outrageously overqualified applicants for every position - media, publishing, the PhD and university teaching. I got nowhere with that. I want a skill that's really in demand, that I can use anywhere at any time. What I do now is pretty damn close to that, but - well, I really want something that's a little bit more like a career. I don't have a burning desire to be a nurse, but having worked in hospitals for so many years, I have a hell of a lot better idea about what it involves than 99% of the people who start the course do.
And, they pay you to train. Yeah, it's a pittance (though as a mature student and long term NHS employee I should be eligible for extra money), but it makes a great big change from having to come up with several thousand for tuition and then attempting to survive on no money for a year. Academically I'm not afraid of it - I know lots of nurses and even in my current dumbed-down state I'm way ahead of the vast majority. My people skills aren't as piss-poor as they used to be, and I can always be an OR nurse and never deal with awake patients anyway.
Did I mention the article on Thursday last week in the Guardian about how all the high-tech jobs are going to India?
For the record, I'm turning 35 in a couple of months, which is probably what has prompted this thinking about ways for me to improve my livelihood without bankrupting myself to do another qualification which will probably just leave me fighting to get into another over-subscribed line of work.
One good thing about my job - I can decide at 3 pm that I want to take the next day off. I had meant not to be squandering my annual leave like that, but oh well. My health is never improved by sitting at work being bored.
Oh, Entropy is re-starting in Bath on Saturday night. At the Porter Butt (location of Exile). I have Nice Boots and should be rested, so I am probably going. I just have to embezzle the car tax fund for admission money.
Once I get my loan paid off, I'm seriously considering training to be a nurse. This idea isn't as silly as it sounds. For a start, to get any of the good NHS management jobs (i.e. sorting out peoples' needs and problems rather than moving money), you need to be a nurse. There's lots of interesting things you can do that don't involve traditional working on wards roles these days.
Plus, it's like this. I've spent my whole life in pursuit of careers that have at least 10 outrageously overqualified applicants for every position - media, publishing, the PhD and university teaching. I got nowhere with that. I want a skill that's really in demand, that I can use anywhere at any time. What I do now is pretty damn close to that, but - well, I really want something that's a little bit more like a career. I don't have a burning desire to be a nurse, but having worked in hospitals for so many years, I have a hell of a lot better idea about what it involves than 99% of the people who start the course do.
And, they pay you to train. Yeah, it's a pittance (though as a mature student and long term NHS employee I should be eligible for extra money), but it makes a great big change from having to come up with several thousand for tuition and then attempting to survive on no money for a year. Academically I'm not afraid of it - I know lots of nurses and even in my current dumbed-down state I'm way ahead of the vast majority. My people skills aren't as piss-poor as they used to be, and I can always be an OR nurse and never deal with awake patients anyway.
Did I mention the article on Thursday last week in the Guardian about how all the high-tech jobs are going to India?
For the record, I'm turning 35 in a couple of months, which is probably what has prompted this thinking about ways for me to improve my livelihood without bankrupting myself to do another qualification which will probably just leave me fighting to get into another over-subscribed line of work.
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no subject
Date: 2003-06-12 03:34 pm (UTC)Mmmm yes.
Jodi as a nurse.
Mmmm.
Latex gloves...
I need to go away now.
no subject
Date: 2003-06-13 04:01 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-06-13 04:38 am (UTC)And yes, I've seen articles about IT work being outsourced to India. They're doing that in the states too and it's something that, nationally speaking, both the US *and* the UK are likely to be regretting highly in the next ten years or so. But then, capitalism as it's practiced has never been particularly big on foresight.
no subject
Date: 2003-06-18 09:49 am (UTC)Also if TV shows are anything to go by (and they probably aren't), nurses get a whole hell of a lot more respect on this side of the pond.
no subject
Date: 2003-06-18 04:29 am (UTC)Entropy? What's that? Have I been to that one before?
You need to be a nurse to be a manager in the NHS? I wasn't aware of that. Interesting. The NHS is often slated for poor management, and not enough nurses. Could there be a connection I wonder? I'm a great engineer, but I know I'd make a very poor manager.
What's an OR nurse?
Anyway, check that you are eligible for the extra funding, and go for it. Isn't it said that NHS training is the best in the world? Isn't that one reason why so many NHS nurses complete their training and then go abroad? And you'd like, eventually, to return to Canada. So, though I shouldn't be encouraging you to join the brain drain, why the Hell not?
Yeah, a lot of programming jobs have been moving to India (and Eastern Europe) for a few years now. Call centres too.
Bloody nation of shopkeepers.
no subject
Date: 2003-06-18 09:52 am (UTC)The management thing is that if you want a management job where you're doing anything that I'd consider *useful*, like sorting out bed situations, you need to be a nurse. If I wanted to push paper I could sign up for the NHS management training course tomorrow. I'm not sure whether my UK nursing training would be accepted in Canada or whether I'd have to do further training. When I'm in more of a position to consider starting the course I'll look into it.