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Read it, comment, and share it with your friendsMy dream job
I’m glad I’ve had my 3 internship experiences, since they have shown me the things I don’t want to do in life. The first summer at Lockheed Martin showed me I don’t ever want to work in the defense industry. The second summer at General Electric showed me I don’t ever want to work in business-to-business production, or deal with unions, or climb over large diesel engines. This summer at Mainova has shown me that I don’t want to work in public industry, or wear overalls.
Fastforward to now
Today might have been the worst day of my current internship. If I never mentioned it before, I hate construction. There has been ongoing construction throughout Miami ever since I was a kid and I’m sick of it. They’ve had it at Cornell since I started studying there too, and it will still be there when I graduate. I hate the terrible mess, the noise, the dust in the air, and the shirtless guys standing around doing nothing most of the time.
Today, I worked at a construction site.
Don’t ask me how an engineering student who focuses on computer-based digital hardware design found himself carrying heavy equipment at a construction site… in Germany, speaking German, wearing a cheesy pair of blue overalls. I really can’t explain that one. Today was just lame, and now that I have 3 internships under my belt, not a single one related to anything that I actually want to do with my life, I can’t help but reflect on what my dream job really is.
Sometimes, when I’m adjusting my helmet and ignoring the mumblings of my coworkers in a language I still struggle to understand, I think about what I want to be when I grow up. Now it actually matters too, since I’m a moment away from getting there.
Things I would be more than happy with
In typical save-the-best-for-last pro-blogger fashion, these are the things I wouldn’t mind doing for the rest of my life. I wouldn’t even have much to complain about:
- Digital Designer
- Doing what I’ve actually been studying all this time would obviously be rather nice, since I haven’t done it in a work setting yet. Digital design is easy and fun, since the math boils down to a very straightforward set:
- 0+0 = 0
- 0+1 = 1
- 1+1 = 1
- 0*0 = 0
- 0*1 = 0
- 1*1 = 1
- Web Developer
- If you don’t already know that I like web development, you are probably visiting for the first time. This is, however, a bit of wishful thinking, since I’m still just an amateur. Unless I can find someone who will pay me a lot of money to hack up little worthless PHP scripts, this isn’t happening.
- CSS Celebrity
- Does this job pay at all? Do these even exist? If you are looking to hire one of these, contact me. Please.
- Consultant
I want to do some consulting for fresh web 2.0 startups. There would be lots of giggling, and I would end all project reviews with the same line: “Your product needs more tagging.”
Ok let me be serious on this one. I would love to do consulting. I could consult a lot of businesses too, since I have such broad experience with technology. I even blog about technology. How many consultants do that?
- Professor
- Oh yes. Yes yes yes. Wait until I start raving about my teaching assistant position next semester.
Do any of these have to do with construction? I didn’t think so. There’s no shirtless guys either.
But enough with the runner-ups.
My dream job
My dream job, and I kid you not here, would be professional blogger. Professional as in, making enough money to act all high-and-mighty around amateurs. I could travel the world and share useless information like kottke. Or I could turn my failure into success and write about being a mom/wife like dooce. Or I could just talk nonsense all day long like scobleizer. Actually I can’t do any of that because it’s already taken. I would have to come up with other lame ideas that catch on. I just know that I would like to sit around all day and run my yap, kind of like I do now but with a greater frequency, and no interruptions from working at construction sites (bitter still? kinda). Besides, no one can accuse you of doing it for the money when it’s your job.
Can you imagine? Can you just imagine? “My name is Christian Montoya. I’m a blogger. You can purchase an advertising spot on my blog for $20,000 a month. There are 32 spots, but 51 have already been filled. I can sell you the spot and not show your ad at all, which would still be worth your money. Interested?”
I might have to do a master’s degree in blogging, at the Cornell School of Wishful Thinking. (My apologies to anyone who is miffed by my persistent sarcasm in this entry.)
For all my college buddies out there: what’s your dream job? What’s the likelihood you’ll ever attain it?
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Responses to my articleHey Christian,
I figured since you actually post your URL in your facebook that I’d come pay a visit.
Oddly enough, my dream job would be a professional blogger. It’s perfect really, I love writing, I love web design and the Internet in general, and I love business and entrepreneurship. What better combines the three?? But alas, it’s but a dream because in the 4 years that I’ve had my website, my readership has fluctuated like crazy, and has never been enough to create enough cash outflow to sustain me.
So in reality, when I grow up I’d like to try to combine those afformentioned loves into an actual career of some sort. What it is exactly remains to be seen.
Anyway - great site. As a new-found Super Mario Bros. addict, I especially like the little elements of that grossly famous plumber scattered around. Talk to you later!
Being a professional blogger definitely has it’s perks - your own times, no boss and just writing from home. It’s pretty much what I do now when I’m not in school or at work. But I think a job like that but a little better would be working for a huge tech publication where you get to be hands-on with the latest stuff before it comes out, and put it through its paces for an article.
miffed by the persistent sarcasm?
more like
in love with the persistent sarcasm.
I’d worry if you started writing about being a mum.. last time I checked, that’s not something men are quite capable of.
I couldn’t be a professional blogger because I refuse to put adverts on my weblog. I couldn’t earn much without ‘em. I think I’ll stick to developing, although I’m not even doing that professionally at the moment. sigh My work life sucks :p
Good looking site you got here and I agree with you that WordPress needs a blogring feature.
You sound a lot like me. I want to work on hardware programming (microcontroller programming, VHDL, digital design/logic), however I do none of that as my job as a Software Engineer.
I would love to just blog as my full time job, because the real word of 9-5 (9-6 at some places) really blows.
I understand your needs about dream job but reallity is quite different :-/
I had the same problem like you…And now I do net advisor in many firms for little pay. In my country (Czech Republic) people don’t want to pay for PC services, software etc. So the best I can do is think, think and think…and invent smthg very good and knew which makes me very rich.
*not “knew” but “new”
sorry error
You and the rest of the online community have this dream.
Thanks to Kottke, every man and his pet rock think deep-linkage is the answer to a career in blogging.
Just remember this: Most self-made billionaires spent some time working as lackeys in the pits of hell when they were young. It gave them time to think about how to improve their conditions - and then make wheelbarrows of money out of it.
I wouldn’t even consider Kottke a success though… last I heard, his attempt at surviving off blogging alone only lasted a year.
And about the self-made billionaires, that was common about 100 years ago. Nowadays it just doesn’t work that way
There are some good downstream side-effects for design-oriented people suffering through completely inappropriate jobs.
(Believe me, as someone whose work experience includes standing in the bottom of a drydocked tanker, chest deep in fermenting molosses at 3AM at the end of a double shift, holding a toolbox over my head for the nasty redneck bastid fixing the broken molasses sump pump, you WILL eventually find useful bits in every one of your really bad jobs.)
The primary good side effect is that you get a really clear idea of what kind of boss you won’t work for. The really bad job experiences will tend to cluster around managers who help create the bad experience.
Another good effect is that you’ll be acutely aware that the number of design-conscious people in the general population is quite small. Once you get past the indignation brought on by that revelation, you’ll have a better chance of designing products that will work for both pros and amateurs.
Finally (but far from last), you’ll develop a healthy skepticism for the ‘academic’ solution to a design problem. It’s imperative to look for the elegant solution, but knowing how to do ugly-but-bulletproof is often a requirement when working on real-world projects. (The only caveat there is that if your corporate masters prefer ugly-but-bulletproof, you’re probably in the wrong company.)
My dream job? Reviewing and selling technical books via my soon-to-be blog, preferably from the lawn chair on my patio. That’s the long-term plan, and I’m sticking to it until somebody waves more money in my face. (No molasses suppliers need apply.)
Internships are good. As is your sarcasm.
Sarcasm… Why didn’t I see that last time I read this post?
On that note, my dream job would be a beach sand tester. Like a game-tester, but on a small Jamican or Hawaii Island, a dozen palm-trees, a weekly plane-drop of food and water and a volleyball.
And an ISDN link to upload the reports every few minutes:
“Yep. Still sand here. Still water out there. Still eighteen palm trees. So no sign of life. Send more toilet paper. And a new pen.“
Whoa, I was 100% serious about the pro-blogger thing!
yeah. sarcasm (flesh ripping, if i know my latin and greek) is great. so are internships. they’re like school: going isn’t necessarily fun, but you gain experience and something to stick on the transcript.
dream job: although i like the beach testing idea, i’d have to go with something like playing with all the new toys groups like mit media labs come up with. or how about pro web surfer? but really, to get paid to sit back and come up with krazy ideas for new techie advances and uses for current tech uses would be my fav: i want to be the bridge connecting, tech, web, sci-fi, and the population in general. that would kick a$$.
Ahh but if this isn’t EXACTLY what I’ve been thinking about ALL day… I think my dream job would be doing exactly what I’m doing now and have been doing for about five years now-reporting. I would love to live the rest of my life writing about real people and real situations and learning about a different aspect of the world with every article. Only in my dream, journalists get paid more… I don’t need an extravagant amount of money, but I think my biggest fear is working extremely hard only to end up living pay check to pay check.
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