Stereotypes and misconceptions associated with your job/career

[Anonymous]

I'm a writer. People assume I know how to spell.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Well, I'm a SAHM...where should I start ?

Okay, I'll say it because I believe it - You don't have a job/career.

[Anonymous]

I'm an engineer but not mechanically inclined. So I won't always know how to put something together correctly on the first try.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I'm an ES teacher. If I earned a dollar for every time someone said, "You're sooooo lucky to have summers off!"... If I spread out my paycheck over 12 months, I barely scrape by each month. I once counted how many hours I worked unpaid in a week and it was about 13 hours. I am not a babysitter.

I have that as a salaried employee at an association and I don't have summers off.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Well, I'm a SAHM...where should I start ?

Okay, I'll say it because I believe it - You don't have a job/career.

I sort of think I shouldn't take the bait here, but.....I'm not even a SAHM and I find this so stupid. Perhaps staying at home isn't a career, but not a job? WTF - do you not have children?! If you do and you don't think that staying at home with your kids is tough, challenging, and incredibly important, than I really feel sorry for your kids. It is THE most important job.

[Anonymous]

Development director for a nonprofit.

People think nonprofit = crap pay. I generally let people believe that but you can do quite well in the nonprofit sector.

[Anonymous]

I work in the arts. People assume that I am very creative and 'artsy' and that I must be an artist myself and that I would LOVE to see their kids/neighbors/niece's artwork. Actually, I am much more of a nerdy(phd) academic who spends a lot of time doing administrative things and teaches college/grad classes on top of my 40 plus hour week at the office.

[Anonymous]

I'm a teacher. Where to begin?

I don't have summers off and I don't work "9 months a year" - I have from around late June-mid August "off" from school but typically I'm working summer programs at school and/or another job. Last summer I had 1 week off.

I don't get paid summers off, though in most school districts I can choose to spread out my yearly salary over 12 months instead of 10 that way there is not a 2 month "void".

I don't get "too much vacation time". I get Christmas, Thanksgiving, Spring break. Fixed dates. When your kids are off for teacher inservice days that does not mean I am "off" - I'm working.

I don't work 6 hours a day - I'm at work by 7:15 and I leave by 4 if I'm lucky. I often spend an additional few hours getting work done at home, and spend quite a bit of time on the weekends planning lessons, planning for meetings, or buying supplies.

I don't get a salary of 60K+ a year.

I'm not perfect. I may forget the spelling or definition of a word, I may make a mistake in a math problem, and I may make typos or errors. That doesn't mean I'm not qualified as a teacher. When I make a mistake I admit it and work through it - it's good to model that for the kids.

I'm not uneducated. I have a BA and an MA and I'm required to complete a certain number of credits yearly to maintain my certification. I also had to take 7 standardized tests for licensing. Some teachers go on to get their Ph.D - I have not.

Teaching is not easy. If you are doing it right and doing your job it should be very difficult and challenging.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm an ES teacher. If I earned a dollar for every time someone said, "You're sooooo lucky to have summers off!"... If I spread out my paycheck over 12 months, I barely scrape by each month. I once counted how many hours I worked unpaid in a week and it was about 13 hours. I am not a babysitter.

I have that as a salaried employee at an association and I don't have summers off.

And what is your salary? My DD qualified for reduced lunches at school for years b/c I made so little money teaching. I am just over the threshold now.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Nanny - uneducated and unambitious

I was going to say the same thing, plus doesn't speak English, is greedy and yaps on the phone all day. None of those things are true for me.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:College professor. People think that I teach 6 hours a week, spend a couple of hours prepping, and hand off student work to TAs for grading, and that I earn a decently high salary. I work 40 hours a week, spend much of that time prepping (although a lot less now that I've been doing this for a decade), and I have no TAs. Most of my work hours are not not spent on teaching, but on research and writing (that's how tenure is determined, not by my teaching). My starting salary at a research university when I was first hired as an Assistant Professor was $45K in 2003. Sadly, this was very much the norm back then in the humanities.

You only work 40 hours a week?? Must be nice. Already tenured?

And here we go . . .

Thanks for showing how ignorant you are on thread about stereotypes.

I agree. I'm a professor and I work way more than 40 hours a week and I'm still constantly behin.

[Anonymous]

I work in a psych ward...people think a lot of things!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I'm an engineer but not mechanically inclined. So I won't always know how to put something together correctly on the first try.

Can you load a dishwasher properly? My husband is an engineer and can't figure out how to do this at all.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Elementary School Teacher: So many misconceptions...
Work from 9 - 3 (I may spend 10 hours in my building some days and ALWAYS have work to bring home)
Have summers "off" (Must take classes to keep teaching certification & usually have some type of training to attend)

Interesting. I have 4 elem/middle school teachers in my family and your facts don't jibe with their lifestyle at all.

Then as a high school teacher, I'd have to say that your relatives are probably not in the exemplary category. And I'm fairly certain, PP, that as a non-educator, you clearly can't recognize what makes a good teacher.

[Anonymous]

Ummm....I do know lots of good teachers who don't put in those hours, and yes they are good teachers......