there's something about being in an office that makes me wanna end it. it wouldn't be so bad if me and all my uni friends worked together but we won't so it's disorienting, I've become used to the sense of community and can't cope with the lack of it the way other people do. also I've never had a good boss. I'm still applying to office jobs and not even getting interviews. hilarious why not blue collar? another 4 year commitment (apprenticeship) + I like not having back pain or lung damage from fumes + I don't have enough of tough skin to deal with misogyny on a daily basis I'm convinced that there's a perfect job for me out there but how would I know what it is unless I have it and how would I have it unless I know about it
I'm not meant for white collar or blue collar, there has got to be another collar, right? :
Anonymous :
5 days ago :
No.8699
>>8709
>>8699 (OP)
the "green collar" (outdoor recreation, agriculture, environmental sciences, and so on) work world may interest you. personally i think it's the best of both worlds, but it comes with its own host of problems.
there is the service industry but that has its own problems and not a very reliable ticket to the middle classes
I'm in a laptop jockey position now and I dearly miss my blue collar job.
Have you actually worked blue collar before or are you predicting the misogyny beforehand? "Blue collar" is a very wide, nebulous term and it depends what field you want to go into, even varies team by team.
Anonymous :
5 days ago :
No.8703
>>8705
>>8703
Well, it's kind of tautological; if you feel like you're not going to make it in blue collar, you aren't going to make it, because your heart isn't into it. I could write a book but I will do my best to distill my thoughts here:
- Men by nature are misogynist. I think you got shielded from this in large part in academia, where the biases that men DO have (because they do have them, never fool yourself) are well-hidden for professional and intellectual reasons
- White collar jobs are NOT absent from misogyny in the least and again, academia is an outlier in that regard. Tech jobs are just the start, anything in finance or law can be arguably more poisonous than tech.
- Even if you find a "white collar" job that is not a sausagefest or even female-dominated, it does not mean you won't receive attrition for your gender, it'll just come from some other women and their incessant, inevitable need to bully one another into a pecking order. That, and female-oriented office jobs are both lower-paying, lower prestige, less intellectual (which you will miss from academia) and by far the most at risk by automation, something that has been true for 100 years of technological improvement and will not stop accelerating any time soon.
- Blue collar men are more likely than white collar ones to "give credit where credit is due"; that is, if you can stick it out and prove objectively that you are doing the job, they will eventually relent to some extent, and may even accept you into their fold. There is a greater degree of meritocracy - yes that means a lot of the RSP flavor of blue collar noble savaging is true in many ways.
- I hate discouraging you, but you will burn out because you start because you aren't interested in the job for anything else other than having a job for the sake of it. I took up a blue collar job because I wanted something simple and I love to work with my hands. You definitely have to be a certain kind of woman to want to go into it, and unless you feel like you can mold your personality into that (and I'm not getting that impression from you, I mean that with all sincerity), you should look elsewhere. Worse than going into this field and failing are going into it and half-assing it and confirming the latent bias of all your male coworkers that women never want to work hard and push themselves.
- There are niches of employment that aren't, you know, lugging steel frames around or working with power tools. For example, if you are artistically inclined, you can work in theater arts such as stage scenery, costumes, or props. If you like gardening, you can go into horticulture or something farming-related (and farmers/ranchers undoubtedly respect their female compatriots who walk the walk). And so on and so forth.
Okay, that was longer than I wanted. tl;dr no you're not probably going to be an HVAC warrior unless you really desire it and probably should look into one of the many jobs out there that exist somewhere between academic paper-scanner and hard manual labor.
I didn't do enough research about the field I got my degree in so I decided I'm not gonna make that mistake while contemplating blue collar. I read about women's experiences (in different fields, yes. working in a garage, HVAC etc) and while there are way more women working in blue collar than I thought it is true that they do deal with misogyny a lot (and sexual harrasment when they're more unlucky). it also happens that a lot of the times the misogyny isn't even aimed at them, it's their male coworkers talking shit about their wives which can become unbearable. there are fields where male coworkers are not a problem but the customers always are.
Anonymous :
5 days ago :
No.8705
>>8718
>>8709
i would say:
1) a great deal of employment in the field is based upon seasonal positions. this means you basically can only work in the spring/summer/fall. some people have historically taken advantage of this by applying for unemployment in the off season and living a kind of bum lifestyle, but many states and the fed are cracking down on whether seasonal work is applicable for unemployment benefits. and, if you're someone who doesn't want to be on the dole, there is a serious looming question of where you might live and work for a large chunk of the year.
the seasonal lifestyle can also be advantageous because you have the flexibility to go wherever and aren't really tied to one employer or location forever. i would say that's how most people utilize it, but that means it only attracts the kind of person who finds this conducive to their being, which aren't always the responsible type.
on a more practically note, seasonal employment isn't governed by many of the "protections" that are attached to normal full time employment. health insurance is a bonus. many pay well, but a great deal know that the applicants really want to do this kind of thing do they don't have an incentive to increase wages very much. i think one simply has to do some research before jumping in.
2) it's definitely a male dominated field. there's a lot of people who think themselves to be Jack London or yeomen or whatever. i cannot readily speak to misogyny, being a man, but there's definitely some grating personalities, who respect only themselves. on the other hand, people from all walks decide to do a season of field work, so you'll find a lot of interesting stories and people.
i agree with >>8705, i had a job once working on ranches, messing with their water wells, and my boss was a woman, and she definitely commanded the respect of the ranchers, even though she was an outsider (and this was in a very insular community with strong ethnic divisions) and a scientist foremost. i think it was mostly because she wasn't afraid to make a bailing wire fence or rassle up some cows if necessary in the call of duty.
3) somewhat a combination of the two, i think it's easy to not see where the end is or how you'll survive beyond your 20s and 30s. i can't speak to the more specialized areas of the "green" world, where i imagine there's better regimented hierarchy, (in say, a scientific lab for soil analysis), but you can find it to be a world of arrested development in a way. just people mostly winging it. the trust fund kids are ergo very annoying, and naturally there's a good amount of rich kids who get into the outdoors and can survive off their background without worrying about the consequences of the above points (or float to an office job with their field work as Linked In posts later in life). it's not a world conducive to a set path or natural progression. and the older people i met who work in the outdoors or adjacent fields mostly just moved into the office and constantly lamented that fact.
with all this said, i wish i had stayed in the field, but a combination of frustration, desire for novelty, and the jobs drying up due to the US fed problems, i am now simply a wagie at a shift job. always searching for open positions, but i'm probably moving across the country soon and can't commit to a season.
>>8703
I didn't do enough research about the field I got my degree in so I decided I'm not gonna make that mistake while contemplating blue collar. I read about women's experiences (in different fields, yes. working in a garage, HVAC etc) and while there are way more women working in blue collar than I thought it is true that they do deal with misogyny a lot (and sexual harrasment when they're more unlucky). it also happens that a lot of the times the misogyny isn't even aimed at them, it's their male coworkers talking shit about their wives which can become unbearable. there are fields where male coworkers are not a problem but the customers always are.
Well, it's kind of tautological; if you feel like you're not going to make it in blue collar, you aren't going to make it, because your heart isn't into it. I could write a book but I will do my best to distill my thoughts here:
- Men by nature are misogynist. I think you got shielded from this in large part in academia, where the biases that men DO have (because they do have them, never fool yourself) are well-hidden for professional and intellectual reasons
- White collar jobs are NOT absent from misogyny in the least and again, academia is an outlier in that regard. Tech jobs are just the start, anything in finance or law can be arguably more poisonous than tech.
- Even if you find a "white collar" job that is not a sausagefest or even female-dominated, it does not mean you won't receive attrition for your gender, it'll just come from some other women and their incessant, inevitable need to bully one another into a pecking order. That, and female-oriented office jobs are both lower-paying, lower prestige, less intellectual (which you will miss from academia) and by far the most at risk by automation, something that has been true for 100 years of technological improvement and will not stop accelerating any time soon.
- Blue collar men are more likely than white collar ones to "give credit where credit is due"; that is, if you can stick it out and prove objectively that you are doing the job, they will eventually relent to some extent, and may even accept you into their fold. There is a greater degree of meritocracy - yes that means a lot of the RSP flavor of blue collar noble savaging is true in many ways.
- I hate discouraging you, but you will burn out because you start because you aren't interested in the job for anything else other than having a job for the sake of it. I took up a blue collar job because I wanted something simple and I love to work with my hands. You definitely have to be a certain kind of woman to want to go into it, and unless you feel like you can mold your personality into that (and I'm not getting that impression from you, I mean that with all sincerity), you should look elsewhere. Worse than going into this field and failing are going into it and half-assing it and confirming the latent bias of all your male coworkers that women never want to work hard and push themselves.
- There are niches of employment that aren't, you know, lugging steel frames around or working with power tools. For example, if you are artistically inclined, you can work in theater arts such as stage scenery, costumes, or props. If you like gardening, you can go into horticulture or something farming-related (and farmers/ranchers undoubtedly respect their female compatriots who walk the walk). And so on and so forth.
Okay, that was longer than I wanted. tl;dr no you're not probably going to be an HVAC warrior unless you really desire it and probably should look into one of the many jobs out there that exist somewhere between academic paper-scanner and hard manual labor.
In my experience (as a guy) there really isn't any place you will get any more shielded from misogyny than regulated corporate office job, save for a job that's utterly and totally dominated by women. This sort of white collar environment has these amazingly bloated HR departments, whistleblowing programs and few people smart enough to get there will risk saying anything as much as slightly out-there in a group, let alone pull something like that. That's not to say it's 100% absent, but nor will it ever be. Frankly, I have some trouble believing claim that academia is more free from it, but maybe that's because where I live academia is more like a feudal system and I lack comparison with it out in the west.
I would like to selfishly hijack this thread, for no reason other than OP being posted at extremely convenient moment, as this topic has been close to my heart past weeks and months. Last year after prolonged period of being employment-deprived I hit it big: I scored reasonably well paid entry level job in my field, at the big institution. Terms and conditions are pretty good, I barely work more than 40 a week, and it is exactly the "foot in the door" I needed. It is not glamorous job, it's corporate back office although by all means it is sufficient, and at times fairly chill. And yet I can't escape a nagging desire to ruin first good thing to have happened to me in a long while, I kind of hit it big considering my situation. That it is not for me, that I do not fit in there with these people, that I haven't really even liked my field of study in many years now and have wasted better part of the last decade of my life by not applying myself and taking this path of "respectable" least resistance that will lead me into death of mediocority. Now, this is all delusional. If for no other reason that there is no brilliant opportunity for better life looming on the horizon, it is all imagined and had I have any latent talent or predisposition for anything else I wouldn't be in this position, for one does not simply wake up in their late twenties to realisation taht every single turn and corner taken just so happen to be wrong. So while what I have is objectively ok and enviable even in these trying times, and it seems stable enough (until they move the job to southeast asia, or ai does not inf act pop) I can't help but feel delusions of grandeour doing this boring superflous corporate job (that's not to say I'm very competent or anything lol) that produces little of any value, sitting there and not vibing with people as they unironcially debate burgers at different vendors or whatever. There is no rational basis for this anxiety, how do I not burn all this down at first opportunity, how to defeat this nagging feeling I've been running out of runway?
>how do I not burn all this down at first opportunity, how to defeat this nagging feeling I've been running out of runway?
My theory is that you have to do this at least once in your life, lest you spend your whole life being tempted by the greener grass, never knowing the price of these choices. Hopefully, you do it in your twenties, but you have to do it at some point. The lesson that comes from betting and losing big in life is priceless (because even if the grass is actually greener, you always lose something in exchange, and you never know what it is until it's too late).
Anonymous :
4 days ago :
No.8709
>>8711
>>8709
>it comes with its own host of problems.
What are they?
>>8718>>8709
i would say:
1) a great deal of employment in the field is based upon seasonal positions. this means you basically can only work in the spring/summer/fall. some people have historically taken advantage of this by applying for unemployment in the off season and living a kind of bum lifestyle, but many states and the fed are cracking down on whether seasonal work is applicable for unemployment benefits. and, if you're someone who doesn't want to be on the dole, there is a serious looming question of where you might live and work for a large chunk of the year.
the seasonal lifestyle can also be advantageous because you have the flexibility to go wherever and aren't really tied to one employer or location forever. i would say that's how most people utilize it, but that means it only attracts the kind of person who finds this conducive to their being, which aren't always the responsible type.
on a more practically note, seasonal employment isn't governed by many of the "protections" that are attached to normal full time employment. health insurance is a bonus. many pay well, but a great deal know that the applicants really want to do this kind of thing do they don't have an incentive to increase wages very much. i think one simply has to do some research before jumping in.
2) it's definitely a male dominated field. there's a lot of people who think themselves to be Jack London or yeomen or whatever. i cannot readily speak to misogyny, being a man, but there's definitely some grating personalities, who respect only themselves. on the other hand, people from all walks decide to do a season of field work, so you'll find a lot of interesting stories and people.
i agree with >>8705, i had a job once working on ranches, messing with their water wells, and my boss was a woman, and she definitely commanded the respect of the ranchers, even though she was an outsider (and this was in a very insular community with strong ethnic divisions) and a scientist foremost. i think it was mostly because she wasn't afraid to make a bailing wire fence or rassle up some cows if necessary in the call of duty.
3) somewhat a combination of the two, i think it's easy to not see where the end is or how you'll survive beyond your 20s and 30s. i can't speak to the more specialized areas of the "green" world, where i imagine there's better regimented hierarchy, (in say, a scientific lab for soil analysis), but you can find it to be a world of arrested development in a way. just people mostly winging it. the trust fund kids are ergo very annoying, and naturally there's a good amount of rich kids who get into the outdoors and can survive off their background without worrying about the consequences of the above points (or float to an office job with their field work as Linked In posts later in life). it's not a world conducive to a set path or natural progression. and the older people i met who work in the outdoors or adjacent fields mostly just moved into the office and constantly lamented that fact.
with all this said, i wish i had stayed in the field, but a combination of frustration, desire for novelty, and the jobs drying up due to the US fed problems, i am now simply a wagie at a shift job. always searching for open positions, but i'm probably moving across the country soon and can't commit to a season.
>>8699 (OP)
the "green collar" (outdoor recreation, agriculture, environmental sciences, and so on) work world may interest you. personally i think it's the best of both worlds, but it comes with its own host of problems.
>>8709
>>8699 (OP)
the "green collar" (outdoor recreation, agriculture, environmental sciences, and so on) work world may interest you. personally i think it's the best of both worlds, but it comes with its own host of problems.
>it comes with its own host of problems.
What are they?
>>8709
>>8699 (OP)
the "green collar" (outdoor recreation, agriculture, environmental sciences, and so on) work world may interest you. personally i think it's the best of both worlds, but it comes with its own host of problems.
i would say:
1) a great deal of employment in the field is based upon seasonal positions. this means you basically can only work in the spring/summer/fall. some people have historically taken advantage of this by applying for unemployment in the off season and living a kind of bum lifestyle, but many states and the fed are cracking down on whether seasonal work is applicable for unemployment benefits. and, if you're someone who doesn't want to be on the dole, there is a serious looming question of where you might live and work for a large chunk of the year.
the seasonal lifestyle can also be advantageous because you have the flexibility to go wherever and aren't really tied to one employer or location forever. i would say that's how most people utilize it, but that means it only attracts the kind of person who finds this conducive to their being, which aren't always the responsible type.
on a more practically note, seasonal employment isn't governed by many of the "protections" that are attached to normal full time employment. health insurance is a bonus. many pay well, but a great deal know that the applicants really want to do this kind of thing do they don't have an incentive to increase wages very much. i think one simply has to do some research before jumping in.
2) it's definitely a male dominated field. there's a lot of people who think themselves to be Jack London or yeomen or whatever. i cannot readily speak to misogyny, being a man, but there's definitely some grating personalities, who respect only themselves. on the other hand, people from all walks decide to do a season of field work, so you'll find a lot of interesting stories and people.
i agree with >>8705>>8703
Well, it's kind of tautological; if you feel like you're not going to make it in blue collar, you aren't going to make it, because your heart isn't into it. I could write a book but I will do my best to distill my thoughts here:
- Men by nature are misogynist. I think you got shielded from this in large part in academia, where the biases that men DO have (because they do have them, never fool yourself) are well-hidden for professional and intellectual reasons
- White collar jobs are NOT absent from misogyny in the least and again, academia is an outlier in that regard. Tech jobs are just the start, anything in finance or law can be arguably more poisonous than tech.
- Even if you find a "white collar" job that is not a sausagefest or even female-dominated, it does not mean you won't receive attrition for your gender, it'll just come from some other women and their incessant, inevitable need to bully one another into a pecking order. That, and female-oriented office jobs are both lower-paying, lower prestige, less intellectual (which you will miss from academia) and by far the most at risk by automation, something that has been true for 100 years of technological improvement and will not stop accelerating any time soon.
- Blue collar men are more likely than white collar ones to "give credit where credit is due"; that is, if you can stick it out and prove objectively that you are doing the job, they will eventually relent to some extent, and may even accept you into their fold. There is a greater degree of meritocracy - yes that means a lot of the RSP flavor of blue collar noble savaging is true in many ways.
- I hate discouraging you, but you will burn out because you start because you aren't interested in the job for anything else other than having a job for the sake of it. I took up a blue collar job because I wanted something simple and I love to work with my hands. You definitely have to be a certain kind of woman to want to go into it, and unless you feel like you can mold your personality into that (and I'm not getting that impression from you, I mean that with all sincerity), you should look elsewhere. Worse than going into this field and failing are going into it and half-assing it and confirming the latent bias of all your male coworkers that women never want to work hard and push themselves.
- There are niches of employment that aren't, you know, lugging steel frames around or working with power tools. For example, if you are artistically inclined, you can work in theater arts such as stage scenery, costumes, or props. If you like gardening, you can go into horticulture or something farming-related (and farmers/ranchers undoubtedly respect their female compatriots who walk the walk). And so on and so forth.
Okay, that was longer than I wanted. tl;dr no you're not probably going to be an HVAC warrior unless you really desire it and probably should look into one of the many jobs out there that exist somewhere between academic paper-scanner and hard manual labor.
, i had a job once working on ranches, messing with their water wells, and my boss was a woman, and she definitely commanded the respect of the ranchers, even though she was an outsider (and this was in a very insular community with strong ethnic divisions) and a scientist foremost. i think it was mostly because she wasn't afraid to make a bailing wire fence or rassle up some cows if necessary in the call of duty.
3) somewhat a combination of the two, i think it's easy to not see where the end is or how you'll survive beyond your 20s and 30s. i can't speak to the more specialized areas of the "green" world, where i imagine there's better regimented hierarchy, (in say, a scientific lab for soil analysis), but you can find it to be a world of arrested development in a way. just people mostly winging it. the trust fund kids are ergo very annoying, and naturally there's a good amount of rich kids who get into the outdoors and can survive off their background without worrying about the consequences of the above points (or float to an office job with their field work as Linked In posts later in life). it's not a world conducive to a set path or natural progression. and the older people i met who work in the outdoors or adjacent fields mostly just moved into the office and constantly lamented that fact.
with all this said, i wish i had stayed in the field, but a combination of frustration, desire for novelty, and the jobs drying up due to the US fed problems, i am now simply a wagie at a shift job. always searching for open positions, but i'm probably moving across the country soon and can't commit to a season.
>>8718
>>8709
i would say:
1) a great deal of employment in the field is based upon seasonal positions. this means you basically can only work in the spring/summer/fall. some people have historically taken advantage of this by applying for unemployment in the off season and living a kind of bum lifestyle, but many states and the fed are cracking down on whether seasonal work is applicable for unemployment benefits. and, if you're someone who doesn't want to be on the dole, there is a serious looming question of where you might live and work for a large chunk of the year.
the seasonal lifestyle can also be advantageous because you have the flexibility to go wherever and aren't really tied to one employer or location forever. i would say that's how most people utilize it, but that means it only attracts the kind of person who finds this conducive to their being, which aren't always the responsible type.
on a more practically note, seasonal employment isn't governed by many of the "protections" that are attached to normal full time employment. health insurance is a bonus. many pay well, but a great deal know that the applicants really want to do this kind of thing do they don't have an incentive to increase wages very much. i think one simply has to do some research before jumping in.
2) it's definitely a male dominated field. there's a lot of people who think themselves to be Jack London or yeomen or whatever. i cannot readily speak to misogyny, being a man, but there's definitely some grating personalities, who respect only themselves. on the other hand, people from all walks decide to do a season of field work, so you'll find a lot of interesting stories and people.
i agree with >>8705, i had a job once working on ranches, messing with their water wells, and my boss was a woman, and she definitely commanded the respect of the ranchers, even though she was an outsider (and this was in a very insular community with strong ethnic divisions) and a scientist foremost. i think it was mostly because she wasn't afraid to make a bailing wire fence or rassle up some cows if necessary in the call of duty.
3) somewhat a combination of the two, i think it's easy to not see where the end is or how you'll survive beyond your 20s and 30s. i can't speak to the more specialized areas of the "green" world, where i imagine there's better regimented hierarchy, (in say, a scientific lab for soil analysis), but you can find it to be a world of arrested development in a way. just people mostly winging it. the trust fund kids are ergo very annoying, and naturally there's a good amount of rich kids who get into the outdoors and can survive off their background without worrying about the consequences of the above points (or float to an office job with their field work as Linked In posts later in life). it's not a world conducive to a set path or natural progression. and the older people i met who work in the outdoors or adjacent fields mostly just moved into the office and constantly lamented that fact.
with all this said, i wish i had stayed in the field, but a combination of frustration, desire for novelty, and the jobs drying up due to the US fed problems, i am now simply a wagie at a shift job. always searching for open positions, but i'm probably moving across the country soon and can't commit to a season.
meant to >>8711>>8709
>it comes with its own host of problems.
What are they?
Anonymous :
3 days ago :
No.8739
>>8740
>>8739
Is it an elephant shrew?
>>8741>>8739
Nice.
Steinbeck's character (and IRL friend) had his own lab where he did such things. There are some nice stories.
He reads one of Doc's stories here: archive(dot)org/details/csal_000048
I currently get a meager amount of money for preserving specimens to make microscope slides & for watching and labeling behaviours in video recordings of an obscure zoo animal.
Anonymous :
3 days ago :
No.8740
>>8742
>>8740
Yes. I participate in a research project aiming to describe its behavioral repertoire in captivity.
>>8739
I currently get a meager amount of money for preserving specimens to make microscope slides & for watching and labeling behaviours in video recordings of an obscure zoo animal.
Is it an elephant shrew?
>>8739
I currently get a meager amount of money for preserving specimens to make microscope slides & for watching and labeling behaviours in video recordings of an obscure zoo animal.
Nice.
Steinbeck's character (and IRL friend) had his own lab where he did such things. There are some nice stories.
He reads one of Doc's stories here: archive(dot)org/details/csal_000048