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Job that takes one down an unpredictable path


shootingstar

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5 hours ago, shootingstar said:

Cool for this guy who's company custom makes shoes for film, tv industry and some Hollywood stars.    HIs staff didn't have any cobbling experience, but they are from design world.

Did any of your jobs transform in ways you never dreamt of or take you down a path in unknown territory?

When I was 12, I hold my father I wanted to be a chemist.

When I finished grad school at IIT at age 25, I was a master chemist.

At age 29, I was named Chief Chemist of Process Development for Minerec, a subsidiary of Dow Chemical.

Around age 30, around 1980, I realized that more and more of the chemicals I worked with were being identified as carcinogens - something rarely studied before the 60's - and learned that the shortest avg. lifespan of college graduates belonged to bench chemists.  I decided to get into better shape and start running again.  As I ran, I could literally taste some of the chemicals with which I had worked the previous week.

So I decided to leave industry.  At the time, I was playing softball in a men's slow-pitch league and the brother of a player was a teacher I had known when we were in high school.  He suggested trying out teaching if I wanted to stay with chemistry.  So I took a long-term sub, liked it, and completed the course requirements for an Advanced Teaching Certificate and for teaching AP Chemistry and Physics (college credit courses) while teaching, and spent the major part of my working life as Lead Teacher for Gifted and Talented Chemistry and Physics at Maryland's Largest High School.  I also coached, at various times, Cross Country, Indoor and Outdoor Track, Fast-Pitch Softball, the Chess Team, and the competition Chemistry Team.

The final 20+ years were rewarding and mostly-enjoyable. The pay cut was big but so was the pension I otherwise wouldn't have had.

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2 minutes ago, MickinMD said:

Around age 30, around 1980, I realized that more and more of the chemicals I worked with were being identified as carcinogens - something rarely studied before the 60's - and learned that the shortest avg. lifespan of college graduates belonged to bench chemists.  I decided to get into better shape and start running again.  As I ran, I could literally taste some of the chemicals with which I had worked the previous week.

So I decided to leave industry.  

You know you were lucky to leave industry for teaching (and teaching became a good fit for you.).

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I've been the following: car wash attendant; drive-in theater employee; cook; aircraft mechanic (USAF); gas station pump jockey; college instructor; and database administrator.

How I started and ended still amazes me.  I didn't know what a database was when I was wiping bugs off of bumpers.

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My buddy Kenny  was working for a plumber, not quite an apprenticeship, call him almost a plumber, any way he gets sent out to fix a leak.

So the leak is in the basement and the people lead him to the basement steps.

Kenny is looking down the stairs thinking that this a very funky basement and a very low ceiling. And it occurs to him that the leak may be on the sanitary side rather than the supply side....

He guessed there was at least 2 feet of poop in the basement

Those basement stairs were a career path untaken....

 

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