"Countin' flowers on the wall
That don't bother me at all
Playin' solitaire till dawn with a deck of fifty-one
Smokin' cigarettes and watchin' Captain Kangaroo
Now don't tell me I've nothin' to do" Statler Brothers
This will probably be my theme song this summer. I am officially discouraged by the job search today. 18 apps with UGA and NO calls. No promising Athens or Atlanta jobs either. I'm either WAY overqualified (ie secretary jobs) or WAY underqualified (no business/sales/pr experience). What's a bilingual teacher supposed to do? Besides work in public schools...
I always made fun of the kids in Terry College of Business...now I'm starting to understand why they were so rabid to take STAT2000 and CALC1001. Can I help it that math scares me to death?
For years people have been telling me, "You'll always have a job knowing Spanish"
Yeah, a job in the bowels of social work paying minimal wages. I'm a shoe in for:
bilingual bank teller, secretarial, teaching or hospital registration positions. All of which would probably bore me to death.
I'm calling Bulls#$% on the whole "Spanish is a ticket to the stars" and I'm deciding that one more year of a not so exciting job may be worth the future PhD program somewhere else. I do love teaching literature and I love graduate school.
Now about that thesis I need to write...
5 comments:
Hey dude, I just thought of a good job. Check out translator positions @ Gwinnett Medical Center or other local health care facilities. Even if they don't have actual translator positions available, I know GMC is hiring for patient access specialists, and speaking Spanish would be a BIG bonus. Pay is decent, full time work with holidays, and good benefits. Check 'em out.
Interpreter positions pay redonkulously low wages... but yeah, I was going to suggest checking that out. Talk to P about it. He knows his business.
Interpreter positions at Gwinnett MC probably pay more than here in Athens, but, yeah, Holly is right. It can't hurt to look for a job, but I can definitely say from experience that here in Athens, at least at the hospitals, interpreter pay is not what it should be. It's not bad, really either. However, I would suspect (and suspect very strongly) that teachers make more.
In the Atlanta area, from what I found out when I investigated the topic, hospital interpreters tend to earn more.
Court interpreters earn more, in general. To really get into that one would have to invest some money and time into training oneself, partly via the state's certification program. But the thing is, most court interpreters work freelance, and while they may earn a really respectable hourly fee, there's no guarantee that they can get enough hours on any given week to make a decent living at it.
People all the time tell me, "Wow, you are fluent in Spanish, you should be able to make lots of money." It's not that it's a myth that Spanish speakers are in demand. There is a need for Spanish speakers (and in some cases translators and interpreters) but there is not always much of an economic demand for them. In many cases, where there is economic demand, it far exceeds most expectations.
Thanks for your advice, guys. I remember when you worked at the ARMC, Patrick. It seemed a bit stressful...
I really do appreciate the comments!
Holly and Patrick: hope you are doing well and having a great semester.
Bryan: wassup massah nastee.
What I meant to say was actually, the expectations far exceeds the actual demand...
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