My wife wants to get a job when we return to America(we are currently in China). She isn’t certified to be a teacher, except in TESL. To teach this in the States, she’d have to work 10 hour days to make a decent living.
She’d like to work mostly in the day and doesn’t want a mind-numbing job. Just a decent job that pays enough to be a second income.
Any advice? It’s something we’re both worried about.
Considering 8-5 is called banker’s hours, the obvious answer is as a bank teller.
Schedules are generally independent of profession in the US. If you look hard enough, you should be able to find a position in pretty much any field that works the hours you want. In my experience, anyway.
Just as an example, in my lab, we have just about every schedule you could imagine. We have 5 8-hour days. We have 4 10-hour days. Mornings, afternoons, evenings, even graveyard. Covering every day of the week in just about every combination you could imagine. We even have people, like me, that work 7 10-hour days, then get 7 days off.
There’s a lot of variety, and a lot of places will be flexible enough to work with you to find a schedule you can both live with.
Bank Teller is one of the first jobs I thought of as well. Does being a bank teller require any experience or can you get an entry level job without having done bank work before?
She does have a college degree, but it isn’t directly appicable to banking.
Any other suggestions for jobs?
Look around for community-based social services agencies and mental health agencies and ask if they need case managers (or caseworkers). College degree required, any field (at least, at my agency).
I work 8:30 to 5:00, although maybe three days per month I may work as late as 5:30 or 5:45. I may have to be at work as early as 6:30 or 7:00 maybe twice per year.
I’d tell you my salary, but the raw number is irrelevant, because the exact same amount of money in L.A. would be a pittance, whereas in rural Missouri it would be a king’s ransom. Here in central Illinois I make what a first-year public school teacher would make. YMMV.
Don’t be too quick to write off teaching: there is a desperate teacher shortage in the States. Depending on where you are moving to, you may be able to find an alternative certification program that will allow your wife to earn her certificate while she is actually in the classroom. I don’t know what she teaches now, but they are pretty flexible about evaluating forign transcripts if you have the skills. I know many people who have had degrees in all sorts of odd things, from Sociology to Engineering, who have become teachers through Alt Cert programs. After a yeat you have a full fledged certificate-same as you’d get after a 4-year program and student teaching.
It is NOT an 8-5 job, of course, and if that is what she wants, she should look elsewhere, but if teaching is her passion, there are fairly painless ways to persue it. (As far as money goes, it really depends on where you are moving. First year teachers here in Dallas make 37K, which is comfortable in Texas. If she has teaching experience in China, they may also be willing to count her years of service there, which would boost that income)
Ironicly, “bankers hours” does not apply to investment bankers.