I've decided to give career counseling a go. I've been utterly dissatisfied with my museum work lately,
and wonder what else I can do for work. I worry that I'm over-niched
and underqualified. I got a graduate degree specifically for museum
work, and I've found almost no satisfaction from my work in collections
management, which is what I always thought I wanted to do since
undergrad. And those years that I've dedicated to museum collections
management work have also been an opportunity cost - what other more
general, marketable skills and expertise could I have been developing
that aren't as specialized as database admin for museum collections
management databases? The things that I think I might be interested in
doing I feel I don't qualify for because I lack experience. Experience I
could have been gaining all along if I had taken another path. And yet
the experience I do have isn't adding up to personal, financial, or
career satisfaction for me. I think that the things that I enjoy doing
(like writing) I don't know how to transform into something that
provides me with an income. And I don't know how to reshape the career
path I'm in. Not to mention I'm pretty certain I'm not interested in
figuring it out. I worry that I've made poor decisions in taking my last
two jobs, but I also know that since I'm limited to the Phoenix area,
if I had instead taken available jobs at Starbucks, I would resent that
My Better Half got to pursue his career path through graduate school
while I toiled away at jobs that required nothing more than a high
school diploma. And yet sometimes I think I'd be happier doing that kind
of work anyway. (And I'd probably have a 401(k), too).
Sometimes I think it's too late to correct course and pursue
something else, but then I think I'm too young not to try something
different. I think I went to graduate school because it was "the next
logical step" and failed to explore the options available to me, so I'm
taking this as my chance to do that.
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