That was my thought as well. But expand it to tutoring in general. There is no shortage of wealthy folks who will pay almost anything to make sure their precious snowflakes have every academic advantage possible. You should already have a network of parents to work from. It’s a skill you already have, and unless you are crying out for physical labor (even painting can be damn hard work), it’ll be easier on the old bod as none of us is getting any younger!
If that’s the attitude you have about it, you’re going to have a hard time making money. People can smell contempt and flimflam from a mile away, and even a slight whiff of either will get you canned instantly. IME, people who are used to being wealthy are often especially good at sussing that stuff out, because they have people trying to get them to buy overpriced goods and services all the time.
Definitely!
Maybe so, but maybe not. Tutoring can be very different from classroom teaching. That’s especially true if you’re an elementary school teacher who wants to help high school kids with their SATs.
I was simply stating a fact, not suggesting “an attitude”. Do you think I’m wrong? Do you think there are not folks who will "spare no expense’ so that little Johnny and Suzzie will get into the best schools around? Do you think the number of those folks is not increasing (especially in CA, where the OP lives)?
The OP wants a lucrative job, which means going where the money is.
It may take more selling than the OP is looking for, but if they have an artistic bent they could try to get a start in wedding photography-- summer is prime wedding season. It’d probably take a few years to get your skills to the point where you can take on paying clients, but it could be a fun challenge to get to get there.
There are jobs, but you do have to have experience/medical knowledge.
Do you have writing/editing/desktop skills?
Oh, I know that there’s a market for high-end tutoring. And I know that market is in major cities, especially in the New York, DC, and LA/Silicon Valley/San Francisco metro areas. That’s not the part I was addressing in my reply.
In your first post about tutoring, you said:
The term “precious snowflakes” is usually used sarcastically and contemptuously to refer to kids whose parents think of them as far more special than the kids actually are. If you think of the kids you work with as “precious snowflakes,” people are going to see that eventually. You’ll then have a hard time getting people to work with you.
I also thought your sentence implied that you could get parents to pay extortionate amounts of money for tutoring services. I’m not sure that’s true. Yes, you can charge high fees, but, believe me, you’ll earn every penny of that cash. Besides–parents are pretty savvy comparison shoppers, and they’ll figure it out quickly if you’re asking for more than you’re worth. (They’ll also tell all their friends that you did that, and your business will take a real hit the next year.)
My best friend is an extremely intelligent and competent woman with a teaching degree (imun-used) who got her medical transcription certification or whatever recently. She got a job right away. But it was hardly any money at all and a lot more work than she had time for. Now, she may be TOO detail oriented and made the job too hard for herself, and trying to be a stay-at-home mom at the same time took more time than the thought…but I feel like if she couldn’t swing it, not just anyone can.
Granted you will have more time to devote to it than she did but it still didn’t pay much for her effort.
Oh also, as far as I can tell it’s a “real” job not a seasonal one. You can just hop in and out of it.
Sorry to sound dumb, but what is medical transcription?
When I was in grad school I taught in a program for adult international students. It was a blast, a fun mix of ESL instruction and culture learning activities.
So, check local colleges’ job boards for stuff like this.
I’m not “shitting on your thread”. I, as someone who makes hiring decisions, am simply explaining to you that it is a hard sell to get someone like me to hire someone who is looking to “dabble” in a particular professional field and who has no skills or experience beyond what they picked up in their spare time.
Certainly “mutual fund manager” isn’t one of those jobs and it is not “all guesswork”. Far be it from me to crush your dreams, but I think if that’s something you wanted to do in your spare time you kind of need to do the prep work (i.e. go get an MBA, get a CFA, work as a mutual fund analyst for a few years, possibly take a bunch of FINRA exams (Series 7, 63 etc) ). Of course you can always day trade your own money in your spare time.
Even if you teach yourself programming, there is the question of how you demonstrate aptitude to a potential employer. The traditional route is to either get a degree in computer science or similar field, then get an entry level programming job at a tech company (many of which now offshore their development) or to build your own web site or apps and use those as a sort of “resume”.
My advice is you look for something that somehow relates to what your actual education and experience is in. If you decide “programming” is what you want to do, look to relate that to education somehow so that you don’t appear to be coming out of left field (i.e. “mutual funds” or “doctor”).
Doctors dictate and/or hand write patient notes and diagnoses, and transcriptionists type them up.
Except that Dragon speech-to-text software has gotten very good, so that you may not need human transcriptionists much any longer.
If you honestly can’t tell the difference between the very reasonable and helpful advice you’ve given and “Seriously. I don’t know why people think there are just high paying jobs lying around waiting for someone with no skills and no experience to just come along and ‘dabble,’” then I suppose there is probably something diagnosable going on, and I shouldn’t take it personally, but I still hope I never end up working for you. You also seem to have some difficulty with the concept of humor. Mine tends to be rather dry, so I can highlight the parts of my OP that were intended to be funny if you’d like. Just ask.
You can score standardized test essays and open response items. I’ve done that off and on for 15 years and I’m not a teacher. It is usually done online from home these days, but there may still be some scoring centers open.
Screenplay writing seems like a great fit for you.
Other than that, programming/web design/graphic design seem like they could be interesting. You may have to spend the first summer just learning it and keep refreshing your skills throughout the year. Once you know your stuff well enough, you might teach it during summer too.
Contract writing and editing - ad agencies and PR agencies often need people who can do short topics / white papers, etc. Teacher = someone who can make my writing coherent.
What about signing up with a temp agency for the first summer. You should be able to dabble in all sorts of things for the first summer and then figure out what you do and don’t want to do, and might make some connections that will help for the following summer.
One, you may find by May that you really, really need summer – it’s when you go to the doctor and the dentist, get your car inspected, work on your home, etc. etc. As you know, that stuff is incredibly difficult to do during the year. It is also, and I mean this sincerely, an important opportunity to develop your professional network and to maintain your friendships. Teachers are shitty friends/family during the school year–too busy and too tired. It is really important, I think, to spend some time in the summer reestablishing those friendships you’ve let wither, and extending friendships with people you’ve met as a teacher. That’s your network. It matters. If you’re married, be a good spouse–build up that marital capital so you can spend it later. Have lots of sex–because nothing kills libido like working with needy kids all day. Finally, get yourself in shape. When teaching, it’s so hard to eat well, to exercise daily. Use summer to get your body as strong as you can, because it also gets neglected once the grind begins. First year teachers are often really gung-ho to “use” that time, but more experienced teachers tend to find that what they can make in the summer often isn’t worth the opportunity cost.
Second, check and see how much time you actually have. If you work a couple days after the kids leave, and come back a week or so earlier, and have to do any sort of professional development during the summer (we have two days), then suddenly you really have about 7-8 weeks, and one of them is 4th of July. If you plan on taking any sort of vacation/go see family, then that’s cut by another week or two. There is still a lot of time in there, but it’s really hard to do anything scheduled–especially when you are working in all those daytime appointments.
That said, I’ve always made some sort of extra money in the summer. You might check to see if your district offers opportunities to write curriculum or tests for the district. I did that for years, it taught me a ton, and it was very flexible, reasonably well-paid work.
In really practical terms, if you don’t have a masters, your highest ROI might be signing up for WGU or some other on-line go-at-your-own-pace program and just powering through as much of a master’s as you can, assuming your district pays teachers with a master’s degree more than those with a BA.
It’s worth noting that money you make from the district-like for an advanced degree-will have retirement implications that idd job money doesn’t.
I place consultants. I have never seen a programmer/project manager/business analyst type job come over my desk which is “start right after the school year, end right before the school year.”
When my clients want someone, they want them on their schedule, and they want someone experienced. Even with a short term gig, they want the option to extend them. Most of our contracts start as three or six months, and then are extended for another year if mutually acceptable. I wouldn’t accept a resume to forward onto a client where the consultant wasn’t going to be available for extension. Disappoints the client and is far less profitable for me than someone who stays for a year or two.