Currently, I work as a substitute daycare assistant and as an SES tutor (stands for supplemental education services - schools pay for the tutoring for low income families). The daycare assistant job pays minimum wage, and the hourly wage for the tutoring job is good enough to compensate for this to make ends meet. The tutoring job, because it is during the school year, is only for half the year though. And while I enjoy what I do, my working hours have been varying from one extreme to the other. During a part of the year, I've worked 7 days a week, and during the summer I've had much less work because I'm an on call daycare assistant. I didn't get any work at all on July, and relied almost completely on parental support and the money I have saved up. Right now, for the on call job I'm getting 20-30 hours a week, which isn't enough money to make it on my own still.
Tutoring pays a better hourly wage than being a lead teacher at a preschool, and there's less documentation compared to being a lead teacher (although there still is a lot of documentation for being an SES tutor). I've thought of being a grade school teacher, but I realistically think it might be too stressful to handle the high teacher - student ratios, among other things with that kind of job. However, the source of income of tutoring isn't steady. At this point, I've been thinking of only continuing in the private sector of education. I've tried going to http://www.care.com to look into tutoring, but a lot of parents want to have their kids tutored on weekdays between 2-5. I can't live on that kind of work schedule, and I'm unsure if I'll be called for any assignments if I only indicate morning hours for the substitute day care assistant job during the summer. I've also considered being a camp counselor for the summer to compensate for the lost hours, but I also want to explore the possibility of being involved with 1 full time job that offers reasonable hours and reasonable pay.
Because of my fascination with animals, entomology, and nature I almost majored in biology instead of psychology when I was in college. (Being 19 at the time when I was in college, I chickened out of the biology major. However, that's another story.) I have been debating with myself about whether to work for Terminix or Vector control. (At least these jobs only involve killing some destructive bugs but not all bugs.) Though, I'm wondering whether there would be room for growth in these jobs. Also, I've been debating about whether to get a job as a lab assistant to see if I would like it enough to want to go back to college. I have some target companies in mind. Does anyone know how to use LinkedIn to contact target companies, and how to go about finding out about different job positions and openings within the companies? Also, does anyone know about the different kind of laboratory assistant work that could be done by someone without a biology degree? I don't want to work with lab rats or any other kind of lab animal though.
I just moved to Sacramento and am wondering if they have any LinkedIn networking groups or any other kind of networking group here.
Thanks for your feedback.
30 Aug 2016, 1:33 pm
