Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion Do Gifted Love Their Job?

I like the type of work I do but I absolutely HATE the rat race (early mornings and commuting, etc.) and don't love working a job. Ideally, I wouldn't have to work at all and just get to indulge in all my hobbies all day and spend more time with my kids. The next choice would be to work from home so I can be flexible but I have yet to run across anything to do from home that pays nearly what I make now. I'm not sure I am disciplined enough to work from home, honestly.

Both my husband and I feel like working full time is just a soul-sucking endeavor. We don't see each other enough, we don't travel enough - it's just one Groundhog Day after another. Neither one of us is an ego-driven, climbing the ladder kind of person (both of us are in the public sector without much ladder climbing anyway). We sludge through because we have to.

We are also both introverts as well

"We sludge through because we have to".

My sentiment to a T yesterday from cubicle land! There was a while there I thought I would simply redundancy-away and become part of the floor. And office chit chat.. don't get me started. My job entails a good balance of crisis and boring; there's hardly a meaningful middle. Job satisfaction is riding distant caboose at this point in life. My small family is worth it, every dreary minute - or most.

Now, I *love* my commute and the coworkers are generally enjoyable. Plus, I can often leave the office for whatever reason and come back later, given that we are a self-managing office about half the time.

Commute is about 10 minutes in rush hour (normally meaning mornings when people are going to school or university).

I noticed significant improvement in my career when I no longer had to bill hours, since that drove me absolutely nuts.

I can't say I "love" my job... but I do honestly enjoy what I do. My biggest problem is I spend probably 90% of my "job" not actually doing anything much. That 10% where I actually get to "do what I do" is amazing and the reason I come to work each day.

My current plan is to go to a class next week and get a particular certification that's pretty valuable for my line of work, and then, next year (we are buying a new house this year) look for a new job.

I think that answer necessarily changes throughout the course of each career in our lifetime. I have changed careers a couple of times and my feelings have fluctuated over time. I recently resigned for several different reasons. However, I have to admit that I disliked my employer far more than I dislike my job although the two are necessarily tied somewhat. With more time to comtemplate, I am also realizing that I don't know whether I want to continue on this career path, but one of the obvious issues is the ability to earn a reasonable income doing something else.

DH and I love our jobs. DH is an owner of a creative agency and apart from being too danged busy, if he could just get a minute, he loves it. I'm a journalist and writer and apart from the flashing cursor on an empty screen and my procrastination issues, I love it too. We both get paid to do the things we'd probably be doing for fun anyway, collaborate with like minds, and relate to each other without being competitive. Win!

I like being a public defender. The pay isn't great but it is reasonable. I have a lot of control over my schedule and it is never boring. I often wish I could do more for my clients. Their criminal cases are usually the byproducts of something bigger like addiction, mental illness or a combination of those two.

I love my "job". I'm a SAHM. I have managed to find friends who I would categorize as gifted as well, with whom I have deep enlightening conversations that, I will admit, usually start with how to educate our kids, but often end up with how we are going to solve world problems, ha. A lot of the moms of kids in our GT program are, surprise, gifted themselves.

I worked in banking before kids. I worked for one of the biggest banking operations in the world, and although I didn't much enjoy my personal career (I'm an introvert and it was a high pressure environment with lots of interpersonal interaction), I worked with people on a high intellectual level who were also motivated. It was a stimulating environment and a lot of fun. I loved having an excuse to immerse myself in all the latest political and business news.

Now that I'm home with the kids, though, I wouldn't go back. I do struggle with dealing with the PTA moms, Cub Scouts, and etc. The competition and politics are much worse and more annoying than in the corporate world.

I'm an introvert. I both loved and hated my job as a college professor.

I loved the curriculum development, the research, the grantsmanship, presentations at conferences, writing papers and the behind-the-scenes nuts and bolts of teaching. I liked doing my own lab prep, and I LOVED mentoring research students.

I felt rather neutral about committee work and travel. About mountains of grading. Neutral about lab instruction.

I did NOT like lecturing or being inside a classroom. I didn't really like 'face-time' with students even during office hours, but the part that I did NOT like was that cult-of-personality rock show of lecture settings. I do NOT like being in the spotlight like that day after day.


Oddly, I don't mind when it is a one-off presentation. I'm an excellent speaker, and I think well on my feet. I enjoy using those skills, actually. I just don't like the attention focused on ME, and not on my message, if that makes sense. Students are completely fixated on their teachers sometimes. One-on-one wasn't so bad, but I'm not terribly patient with people either too slow or too stubborn to help themselves... and among college students, that's a fair number of them, sadly.

I probably would not go back because of the classroom time. If I could do only curriculum development and grantsmanship, though, I'd do it in a heartbeat.

ha - that's funny - we are the same, only flipped, AvoCado. i run my creative agency (it's just me, though) and my husband's a writer.

i had a VERY hard time picking a field since i'm a) interested in everything and b) learn quickly.

so coming out of high school/going to university was a pretty dark time for me (ALL THE OPTIONS and ALL THE FEELINGS!) but once i aged out of that uh, quarter-life crisis, i realized i'd always have the freedom to change my mind... and i've been happy ever since.