Hey ,
When I moved to Germany, my whole life changed - everything from transportation (I don't own a car here) to housing (my flat is in a building with a lot of others). And it's all fine. I was looking forward to the adventure of the changes.
One of the bigger changes was my job.
When I left school, I didn't go to university. I stayed at home on the farm and started looking for a job. I wasn't sure what I wanted to do.
In the end, a job found me. I started work as a laboratory technician (1) at the school I had left a few months before.
When you start a new job, there're always those first few weeks or months when everything is new. It took me a while to learn the details (2) of the job and the workplace, but it all went well.
The science area of the school became my private kingdom. (Later I moved to another school.). From the chemicals and glassware (3) to the equipment and even some potplants, I had to care for, order, clean, and repair everything.
I really enjoyed it!
Which made moving away a hard choice. But I wanted to try.
So I planned.
I studied to become a science teacher (as a backup plan). But my goal was to teach English to non-native speakers.
That's what I've been doing since I moved here more than a decade (4) ago.
It's very different to work in the science laboratory. I don't have my little kingdom full of all kinds of strange pieces of equipment. There are no test tubes to order or chemicals to mix.
These days I don't talk about science things.
Well, I seldom talk about them.
Sometimes I have English students who have scientific jobs (Hello P.P. 😀). Then I can talk about manganese, titrations and Erlenmeyer flasks (5), about things that wouldn't be interesting (or helpful!) to other students.
And for a few moments I think about my old job and how much I enjoyed it.
How about you, ? Have you ever changed job, not just to a new employer, but to a whole new industry? How did it go? Do you ever miss your old job/industry?
Enjoy the sunshine 😀,
Andrea
P.S. Sorry if you received a message asking to confirm this newsletter last week. I'm not sure if I pressed a button accidentally, or if the system did it automatically 🫣.
(1) laboratory technician - a 'worker' in a science laboratory. NOT the scientist!
(2) details - small things. Small pieces of information.
(3) glassware . things made of glass that are used in a laboratory. Things like test tubes.
(4) decade - a time block of ten years
(5) manganese, titrations and Erlenmeyer flasks - manganese is a metal, titrations are a type of chemical analysis and Erlenmeyer flasks are a type of glassware. They're things that most people don't need to know about 😉.
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