If you want to eat, you've got to earn a bob

[sovay]

Dear internet, talk to me about jobs.

Please note that this post is not a request for money or offers of employment. The situation which I'm reviewing is the fact that my Nokia job is not sufficient income for half a household. I could afford last year's six-month apartment with adrian_turtle partly because it was a smaller place and partly because I had built up savings. It is in the nature of savings to be finite. As things stand now, we are secure only if derspatchel remains responsible for two-thirds of the rent and similar expenses, which is really not a long-term option. I had been meaning to ask for advice on this front at the beginning of the year, but the beginning of the year was rather more medical than planned—it took until this past week to feel that we were starting to stabilize again after the whole exciting bone-break experience—and now some developments have made the question particularly acute.

I have pretty much no fucking idea how to find a more than part-time job with my scattershot qualifications and physical limitations. I am aware that I am almost certainly overestimating the degree to which I am unemployable: I have two master's degrees and I'm very good with the written word, even if my resume displays almost as impressive a break after 2006 as Rob's ankle in January. I also have several chronic health issues: I fail to sleep on a regular basis: I have real reservations about any kind of work that requires me to be on my feet a lot of the time or holding down a fixed schedule. The Nokia job is great because it's work-from-home and doesn't care what hours I work so long as it's the same number every week, but it does not suffice. I have been recommended teaching and I worry about my stamina. I have been recommended editing and I don't know that my previous experience is professional enough. I'm sure there must be other options that are not retail, but I don't know where to start looking. I mean that almost literally.

And I know the economy is garbage right now, as it pretty much has been ever since I needed a job rather than a graduate student's stipend, but there must be something I haven't thought of. Hence leaving this post unlocked. I am trying to cast as wide a net of other people's opinions as possible. I will try not to bristle if you suggest things I have already thought of, or know for one reason or another will not actually work. Telling me that you would set me up for life as a writer if only you had the resources, however, is probably not very helpful to me.

(We will return to your regularly scheduled reportage of New York City sometime after I have slept and this migraine-like headache has stopped flickering at me. I am very pleased with how my portion of the reading went. It was cool to hear rinue perform and meet marlowe1 in person again now that his hair has changed color. Someone asked me to sign their copy of King David and the Spiders from Mars afterward and I had not been expecting that. There was currywurst. Definitely worth the trip.)

Comments

[strange-selkie.livejournal.com]

JewishJobs.org (hey, rattle the bubble), idealist.org, asae.net, and good ol' scary-ass Craigslist have all gotten us jobs. There is also indeed.com. You might consider applying as a night secretary for a lawfirm in Boston that does significant work overseas in the UAE or AUS.

*hugs*

[laura47.livejournal.com]

Tragically my response to people asking for work is to offer to hire them for Nokia. :-( Good luck, my attempts at finding work like that did not work well except nokia.

[pameladean]

Research? All sorts of writers, fiction and non-, need research done, and some of them can pay for it. Two Master's degrees should look really impressive for something like that.

P.

[leahbobet.livejournal.com]

If you're of the disposition to hustle for it a little, my official income supplement is Elance.com.

[klwilliams.livejournal.com]

How about writing manuals for software? These are almost always contract positions, which can mean you can work from home.

How to get one where you are? See if any of the Silicon Valley companies are doing this? Try Erickson and Cisco.

Since that's really a long shot, there's Elance (http://www.elance.com), which connects freelancers with jobs. Their physical presence is about a mile from my house, and was downstairs from my previous job, plus I know people who work there and people who use them, so it's not a fly-by-night place. You might have luck there. In fact, you might be able to get work from there while maintaining your current Nokia job.

[jinian.livejournal.com]

I have always had excellent luck taking on temp work through agencies. About 90% of the people I worked for eventually tried to hire me, but when I hadn't liked the job it was quite easy to use the defined end date as an excuse to get out of there. Temping definitely helps ends meet, though it's not great for getting jobs that best use one's particular skills. And the other thing it does is pad the resume -- getting something current on there with skills similar to another thing you might want to pursue can be very helpful.

[thistleingrey.livejournal.com]

One thing that doesn't compete with the libschool folks: cataloguing in a locally uncommon language. Near me, not only grad students but the occasional undergrad who is competent reading a language for which current staff support fails to suffice have been hired to do part-time copy cataloguing. If they could find non-students (i.e., individuals with the knowledge and without the habit of leaving once their degrees are finished), they'd hire them as part-time contractors.

In sovay's neighborhood the scarcity issues may be less dire (more colleges, and colleges draw a wide variety of individuals), but then, there are also more libraries around....

[weirdquark]

Yeah, this is where a knowledge of Greek would come in handy more than Latin, because Latin is more commonly known and uses the same alphabet that English does, so it's easier for catalogers to deal with even if they don't know the language.

Though for copy cataloging transliteration charts for Greek work reasonably well, unlike, say, with Hebrew, which often lacks vowels. I've successfully copy cataloged books in Greek. With Hebrew, I can only match consonants. (I can copy catalog Hebrew, albeit painfully slowly, if it has vowels (which kids books do and not much else) and doesn't require me to create subject headings.) Arabic would be a super useful language to know and most of the people who study it aren't doing library work; I worked on a project that had a bunch of Arabic language material and no one knew Arabic (I assume I got the job because I knew how to catalog and no Arabic-proficient person applied.) and I utterly failed to match up anything on the transliteration charts with what was on the page in a way that let me find records so yeah, we didn't finish the Arabic materials.

[kenjari.livejournal.com]

For this kind of work, you might talk to special collections libraries in Boston, as researchers sometimes hire people to look at archival things for them when they can't travel to the library themselves.

[sovay]

Tutoring? It has the advantage of flexible hours and high pay for the time involved.

I tutored both Latin and Greek in college; I hadn't thought of picking it back up again because I assumed the market would already be saturated with under-employed, overqualified students of the humanities. I realize as I type it out that even if this is true, I should still see whether people want to employ this particular under-employed, overqualified etc. I have no idea how to go about making myself visible. (This is part of the problem.) I should find out what the high schools around here even teach.

[marlowe1.livejournal.com]

Great seeing you too. Definitely let me know when you come back. I will try very hard to make Arisia.

Oh and the guy that asked you to sign the book was Alex - aka the first reviewer on Amazon. He has been very supportive which does compensate for other personality quirks.

And aren't you a freelance writer already? You definitely should get on that train. You know enough authors to interview for articles and review books which is usually the lower tier of freelancing. I can send you some more if you'd like (I usually suggest that people interview me, but it would be odd in this case since the main thing I'm plugging is the book).

I didn't last long as a freelancer. I had wanted to get back on it. The last thing I sold was that Cracked article - which has a very different pitch format than usual non-fiction markets. They pay fifty bucks per article, but it can be very time consuming getting a pitch together.

As far as freelancing went, I sold a couple of reviews and an interview and then my friend told me about someone that needed her law school statement written, so I began my current writing career.

If you don't mind the ethics of that kind of freelancing, it is quite fun.

[sovay]

Back when I last was looking, I used idealist.org to look for possible jobs, as they had interesting nonprofit, do-good sorts of places.

Cool. I didn't know that site existed. Thank you!

I know you don't have a library science degree or any museum-related degree, but maybe your knowledge of latin and greek would help you in either of those sorts of jobs? Help cataloguing or indexing things, or something?

I am fairly certain that I do not have the training or experience for a museum to want me as anything other than customer service, but based on the conversation above I am no longer writing off library work without consideration (I had assumed it would require a library science degree).

What about substitute teaching in the public school system?

I worry a lot about teaching based on my stamina. I can have days when I walk all over a city and I'm fine and days when being on my feet for more than a few hours wipes me out completely. I don't want this job search to be a process of committing to things I have to renege on. (If nothing else, that will look really dumb on my resume.) There's also the fact that I haven't taught a class since 2006 and I don't want to add to the number of bad teachers in the world. Tutoring, I feel less like I'd screw up.

Does the Harvard film archive need anyone? … I'm not sure what you would do for them, but maybe something? Or at Coolidge Corner?

I wish! I've never seen them post job listings. I would love to be paid to program a film series, but I don't know how anyone makes that happen.

There are bunches of think-tanky type places and interesting NGOs in the area--would the Union of Concerned Scientists need anyone to manage a newsletter, say, or Cultural Survival? You can go to these places' websites and see what things they have available.

And that's something else I hadn't thought of. Thank you again!

[edit] It is extraordinarily difficult to respond to these comments without seeing Tiny Wittgenstein everywhere.

[sovay]

so yeah, we didn't finish the Arabic materials.

Unfortunately, I don't know Arabic, and I read Yiddish better than Hebrew. I can offer rock-solid Greek, though. (And Akkadian, although cuneiform in the stacks would really surprise me.) Do you have any idea where I would start looking, if I were to throw my hat into the ring for a library?

[sovay]

In sovay's neighborhood the scarcity issues may be less dire (more colleges, and colleges draw a wide variety of individuals), but then, there are also more libraries around....

I had assumed libraries were off limits without a degree, so this is actually useful to hear. Thank you.

[weirdquark]

I would usually look here, when I didn't have a particular place in mind, and actually, a quick search (limiting to part-time) turns up a part time job at the rare books library at Harvard wanting someone to update Wikipedia pages on topics relevant to Houghton collections, which could be right up your alley. It's a three month term position, but it would get you library experience, and it looks like you can work any schedule while they're open. At Houghton!

[sairaali.livejournal.com]

I would bet good money you could learn Arabic, at least well enough to recognize characters and pattern-match words against a database.

[ethelmay.livejournal.com]

http://www.massclass.org/index.php/tutoring might be useful.

[sovay]

a part time job at the rare books library at Harvard wanting someone to update Wikipedia pages on topics relevant to Houghton collections, which could be right up your alley.

Dammit, that job wants a fusion of derspatchel and me—I am not a registered Wikipedian in good standing or otherwise, but I'd love to work with early modern books and manuscripts! I wonder if it would be legitimate for the both of us to apply.

[sovay]

As long as you do not mind talking to strangers it is one solution.

I don't mind talking to strangers, but I would prefer to avoid being one of the things I dislike in my daily life—I don't know that anyone likes being cold-called—unless I've misunderstood you?

Or have you thought about being a tourist guide or curatorial position?

I have thought about being a tour guide enough to know I don't want to try it: I'm trying to avoid jobs that keep me on my feet for extended periods of time.

I have no prior museum experience, so I've never seen a curatorial position I could apply for. I appreciate your faith, though!

[sovay]

Advertising in student rags may be a start, or if you live near a university flyers on departmental notice boards, hopefully leading on to word of mouth recommendations.

Thank you for this suggestion. I have worked as a proofreader before, mostly of fiction, although sometimes of academic material; it had not occurred to me to offer the same services for students. I appreciate it.

[sovay]

You spend your job time on your feet and have to have your game-face on all the time. If that's not enough to put you off, it usually pays like $8/hour and the hours aren't flexible.

I had already ruled out both museum docent on the grounds of stamina and tour guide on the grounds of stamina and everything you've said about the profession for years. Ominous rattling of future appreciated and applauded, though.

Sometimes interesting stuff pops up on hireculture.org that I'm not qualified for, recruiting for research-based positions, archaeological digs, stuff like that. Could be worth watching.

Thanks! I hadn't heard of the site.

[dormouse-in-tea.livejournal.com]

Tutoring was my first thought as well. Another, related tangental thought I had...okay, I wouldn't call it a thought because I am having trouble articulating it, but...one thing that /I/ would pay you for?

I took 3 years of Latin in high school and learned very little (I'm unbelievably incompetent at learning languages) but I would like to try again. I know about Wheelock's, of course, but after that everything appears to be just...'now go read Latin!'. And I can't help feeling there's /got/ to be more /information/ out there on Latin and the tricks and quirks of using it, and I'd pay you to tell me what I need to do to figure out where it is.

I should probably not try to talk in public when I'm this tired, but I do hope you get helpful ideas from people here.

[sovay]

JewishJobs.org (hey, rattle the bubble), idealist.org, asae.net, and good ol' scary-ass Craigslist have all gotten us jobs. There is also indeed.com.

Thank you. Links are good! And nobody else had mentioned two of those.

You might consider applying as a night secretary for a lawfirm in Boston that does significant work overseas in the UAE or AUS.

Hm. On the theory that nocturnal is a selling point under those circumstances?

[sovay]

Research? All sorts of writers, fiction and non-, need research done, and some of them can pay for it.

I had not even considered that. I am currently consulting on Latin for someone, but it's not paid—I'll get a mention in the credits and free books (which is cool, I like books). Thank you for the suggestion!

[sovay]

For this kind of work, you might talk to special collections libraries in Boston, as researchers sometimes hire people to look at archival things for them when they can't travel to the library themselves.

And I didn't know that, either. Neat!