FROM FIONA: Your reply cordially requested

[pegkerr]

Tomorrow, as part of Take Our Daughters and Sons to Work, Fiona is going to be visiting Rob's store and spending the day with him, learning about his job. The last two years, she has spent this day with me at my office, learning about my job.

I'd like her to give her the chance to learn about a lot of jobs. Specifically, your job.

Won't you tell Fiona about your job, so she can get an idea of the vast possibilities in the World of Work out there?

If you can, please leave Fiona a comment by tomorrow night, telling her about your career. Something like:

What your job title is, and what that means

A description of a typical day

What you need in the way of training/education/experience to do this job

Why you like it and (if you dare)

Why you dislike it

What sorts of things can go wrong at your job?

What kind of person thrives in your job

Anything else you can think of that would give her an idea of what it might be like to choose your career?

I'd like her to get as many replies as possible. Thanks ever so much!

Cheers,
Peg (and Fiona)

Comments

[jbru.livejournal.com]

What your job title is, and what that means
I'm a typesetter. This means that I use a computer to prepare text and other things to be be printed.

A description of a typical day
I get to work at 11:00 pm (I work third shift), clock in, check for work from my supervisor. Then I check out materials to work on from the computer system, do my tasks for them and turn them into proofreading. The proofreaders correct any mistakes and give them back. I fix the mistakes. When all the parts of a job are done, I, or one of my co-workers, pulls all the pieces together and prepares the job to send to the client for final approval.

What you need in the way of training/education/experience to do this job
Some basic computer and typing skills are handy. Apart from that, however, not a lot. One of my co-workers used to be short-order cook before taking this job. I administered a large company's web sites before taking this job.

Why you like it and (if you dare)
It has very well-defined goals. Jobs have due times, so you know which things are more important than others (they are due earlier). You want to prepare your files with no errors, so having fewer errors come back from proofreading feels good.

Why you dislike it
It doesn't require me to think or to interact with other people. Also working third shift isn't the greatest, though it does pay more.

What sorts of things can go wrong at your job?
We can get incorrect instructions from customer service. We can get corrupted data from the client. We can get data that's very difficult to work with. It can take us more time to do things than we might think, causing things to go late. We can miss mistakes, causing wrong work to go to the client or be filed with the government.

What kind of person thrives in your job
One that works well on their own but also takes direction well. Someone that doesn't need to have a lot of interaction with others to be productive.

Anything else you can think of that would give her an idea of what it might be like to choose your career?
The only thing I can think of that would be useful would be the general advice to think a lot about what you like to do and to find a career that lets you do that as often as possible. Many times people feel "stuck" in a job because it doesn't bring them any joy. Find your joy and the job will work itself out.

Does require thinking, but not actually a "career"

[(Anonymous)]

I'm a typesetter, too. Looks like we both work for a financial printing company (Peter mentioned "filing with the government," I assume it's SEC he is talking about).

Here are my two cents to Peter's description:

First of all, there are ups and downs all the time in this job. Few weeks during the "proxy" season (mid-February through mid-April), you work your ass off, 12 or more hours a day in average, no weekends (company does pay overtime and double time--yet). And there are times when you have almost nothing to do, if stock market is down (financial printing depends very much on it).

The company I work for uses a typesetting system which needs to be learned. My typesetting is actually a programming: I insert commands and formats in an ASCII text (HTML programmer does almost the same). This typesetting system is the most powerful I've ever worked with before; you can do with text virtually anything you can imagine (except for graphic effects, which are not typesetting per se). Unfortunately, the company has not upgraded this system for about eight years, and is planning to switch to MS Word-based tool--precisely because the latter does not need thinking and same level of learning and skills as the current system.

If you understand "career" as "a field for or pursuit of consecutive progressive achievement," typesetting is not for you. There is comparatively low ceiling of maximum salary, and no room for growth. But you can learn the system (could be pretty interesting by itself) with a couple of other SGML-like languages, and move into development or IT.

S:)