<p>Save everything you possible can - don’t live at or above your means - so you can have the freedom to take a risk. If you want more flexible hours and more income, consider sales jobs- but you often need to be able to live on a draw and then get commission checks. That’s why you need to save - for more entrepreneurial situations that you might find more challenging and interesting.</p>
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<p>WashDad–you are a hoot!</p>
<p>My advice: Do something you love. I work far more than 40 hours a week and each day feels like it is about 15 minutes long. I can’t imagine having a job where I look at the clock and think about how much more time must pass before I can go home.</p>
<p>^ So what do you do?</p>
<p>My advice: squeeze the nectar out of every experience! Learn all you can. Study yourself, the people around you, even if you are flipping burgers. It is all one big school house. We only live one life. It goes fast.</p>
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<p>Yep, having to get up and go to work every day can certainly be constraining, but when you have responsibilities such as a family depending on you to provide for them you don’t have that much choice. Responsibilities are, by definition, constraining. The trick is to have job that you like well enough that you aren’t miserable and resentful about having to work.</p>
<p>I work 80-90 hours every week and you’re complaining about 40 hours? Please.</p>
<p>“you can always be your own boss, but then you’ll be working 80 hr/week”</p>
<p>LOL @ Bunsen Burner (&, it seems true…) :-)</p>
<p>I like my job, but I wouldn’t do it for free. There’s a million things I’d do wtih the time I’m at work. I actually do two jobs–my “real” 40 hour a week job which I like but do not love, and adjunct teaching, which I love, but it adds onto the length of my day, and pays little. If I could just do that, and write, I would. (and I may make that break one of these days, if we keep living very frugally.)</p>
<p>The biggest problem is health insurance. I think H and I would both work part time (and we could make it work) if it weren’t for that.</p>
<p>I posted this in the “Say it here because you can’t say it directly…” thread, but it seems relevant to this one as well:
I’m an intern at a D.C. think tank, and while I absolutely respect the work my organization is doing, sitting still in front of a computer all day without going anywhere or interacting with anyone seems like a miserable way to spend the next five decades. I just can’t think of a career that’ll allow me to be creative, social, flexible and not-overly-stationary (perhaps involving some travel) that would also give me a decent salary and allow me to have (and spend time with!) a family, ideally by my late twenties or early thirties.</p>
<p>And I’ve found that the number of hours doesn’t matter much all, I just can’t see myself doing the nine-to-five office thing for much longer.</p>
<p>I sometimes wish my jobs had been 9 to 5. Most days I leave the house before 7 for a 1 hour commute. I usually leave well after 6pm and am usually home by 7:30. Years ago my schedules were even worse now after years of paying my dues I cut back and also spend some time on the internet. I have had some pretty good jobs but they have all been “work.” I envy those people who really enjoy their jobs.</p>
<p>If you don’t want to be caught in a conventional lifestyle, don’t get married, and don’t raise kids…</p>
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That’s the problem, isn’t it? :(</p>
<p>Again, I don’t really mind the fixed hours, and I probably wouldn’t mind having an office as my “base” if it were possible to get out of it sometimes for meetings and events, or if I had more interactions with people during the day, or if there were some flexibility in where I did assignments that don’t require anyone’s assistance, or if the job itself were more fast-paced, or…</p>
<p>My hours are long - 10-11 hours a day, plus 3 hours of commute. But I do like my job. There are some bad days (like really bad), but there are some very good days too. I am in Geneva now, but I don’t really have to travel that much if I don’t want to. There are days that I wish I didn’t have to work, but if I had a choice of work or never work again, I would choose work.</p>
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<p>I know what you mean, edad! I once worked in a hospital lab with a fellow–we had 8-4:30 pm jobs. You rarely stayed late, because someone came and took over your spot at 4:30. He went on to own and work in a restaurant. I went on to become an attorney.</p>
<p>One night, I was working late and decided to go out for a late dinner. I went to his restaurant and he was working. We both opined that we didn’t know what we had when we had those 8-4:30 jobs!</p>
<p>“If you don’t want to be caught in a conventional lifestyle, don’t get married, and don’t raise kids…”</p>
<p>There’s some truth to that, but then again, a number of dads I know in my (decently upscale) neighborhood work from home (consultants, IT guys, etc.) Or, they work a few days from home. From what I’ve heard things are becoming more flexible re: location of work (if not total hrs required).</p>
<p>This actually concerns me a bit, too.</p>
<p>I love what I do. I sincerely believe that there’s no more noble and truly honest calling than designing state-of-the-art buildings. It’s just breathtakingly amazing to discover that I know how to put all these bits and pieces of concrete and steel together and create something that will last fifty or even a hundred years, using some computer programs, but more often than not, just my brain, calculator, and some pieces of paper. There’s something particularly special about the fact that this one is going to be a huge, towering maternity center for high-risk pregnancies. It’s a good calling, and I earn good money. It’s not amazing money, but it’s far better than the majority of the alternatives.</p>
<p>The hours are long. I just hit my first very major deadline, and I came into the office every day for 19 days straight. Twelve in a row were 9+ hour days, and most were more like 11 or 12. I go to work, I work very hard and very quietly all day, and I come home tired and a little incoherent while my brain recongeals. Some days, it’s envigorating. Other days, I get very, very frustrated.</p>
<p>When I was in high school, in order to get into college, “well-rounded” was the name of the game. So, well-rounded was what I set out to be. I was a competitive pianist, I was in the orchestra, I did ceramics, I was a Girl Scout, I was on student council, I was on the speech and debate team, I played softball, I was president of the engineering club, and I absolutely loved my classes. In college, it was the same deal. I had a million courses and a million extracurriculars.</p>
<p>The transition to grad school was abrupt, and then to a highly competitive career was even more so. I’ve had to give up ceramics. My opportunities for public speaking are few and far between, though I love them when I get to do them. I’ve sat in front of a piano probably five times in the past year, and when I do, the muscular atrophy that I’ve experienced is so frustrating that playing is just not the comforting, satisfying experience that it once was.</p>
<p>I love what I do, but I don’t like becoming the person that this job demands me to be. If I chose a less challenging job, I’d be bored out of my mind. At my top-tier job here, I have to spend my evenings and weekends either doing more of the work that this job demands of me, or recharging my batteries.</p>
<p>It makes me a little bit mad, and I feel a little like I’ve been tricked. In order to get an incredible job, you have to have an incredible educational background. In order to be admitted to a college that will provide you with that kind of a background, you have to just thrive in a hundred different subjects and exude an infectious passion about all of them. The incredible job will be incredibly demanding. Ergo, the best young people for the job are going to have to give up many of their passions and focus on that one small path for the rest of their lives. What a rip!</p>
<p>I am inordinately thankful for what I have, but… yikes. Is this really what I have, now?</p>
<p>I know there’s more to life than work, but I wish my bosses understood that a little better. I don’t even know what I’m going to do when I have kids. Is this just a phase I have to go through? Am I going to ever get used to this? Or am I one of a new generation of fiercely well-rounded top-tier college graduates who’s crashing headlong into a world that just keeps getting faster and more complex?</p>
<p>Anybody have any words of wisdom?</p>
<p>Life is a series of trade offs. The key to being happy is to figure out what you are willing to give up in order to get what you want. For example, I had a challenging job that I really enjoyed. When I had my daughter, I decided to take a leave (from which I never returned). My personality is such that I give 100% to everything I do. I realized that I could not give both my job and my child what I felt each deserved. Because I could not — I, meaning me, not anyone else, just me … do justice to both at the same time, I did not return to work. True to form, of course, I found plenty of challenging things to which I could devote my time. I chose things that I could do on my terms. Flash forward 19 + years, and I am trying to return to a fulltime professional job. It’s much harder than I anticipated (especially since I live in MI). This is the only time in my life I have ever been disappointed in how my hand is playing out … but I know that I will figure it all out eventually.</p>
<p>What did I give up in all this? Money, that’s for sure!! Professional success. Respect. Lots more. BUT … I have never regretted the choices I have made. There is an opportunity cost to many choices in life. If you are true to yourself, though, the positives will far outweigh the negatives when all is said and done.</p>
<p>Actually, never mind.</p>
<p>I did get to see it. I didn’t see it as argumentative. However, just remember as you go through life … your way is perfect for you, and my way is perfect for me. That’s what I mean about making choices that work for you! :)</p>
<p>I’ve gotten a little more used to this than when I made the original post. I’m pretty slow at learning/adjusting, so I’m sorry if this came off as simply complaining. I was also partly bitter because I’d been hoping to revive some of my more creative pursuits over the summer. </p>
<p>Thinking about it now, I think I could easily manage 40 hours a week if I really really liked my job. In Science Olympiad during high school, I remember for the first time I found myself really engaged in something. I pretty much skipped school to work on my building events. So it’s probably possible. </p>
<p>As for the current job, I like it, even though I’m not completely in love with it like I am with school work. I think this is something I could potentially like a lot, but I probably don’t right now partly because I’m still uncomfortable and inexperienced. The things I’m doing are well-aligned with my interests, but I don’t always exactly know what I’m doing, yet. My project is fairly open-ended, but I think I might benefit from a little bit more structure/guidance until I grow a little more and learn more about how things generally work. This isn’t to say that I don’t get help, because I do. I’m just used to collaborating freely with my friends, and now I’m trying not to bother my grad students too much, since they have a lot to do. So I’ve been reading wikipedia a lot and playing around with things to try to get them to work… it’ll still be a while before I’ll be good at what I do. </p>
<p>Also, being a little slow/unconfident and lacking common sense, I sort of developed a fear of responsibility in high school. After spending a year at college with confident, competent individuals I finally decided I should at least try to fix this. (I’ve had jobs before, but they were sort of mindless.) So this is really just me vocalizing growing pains. Thanks for your responses.</p>