How is everyone dealing with their finances in this economy?

[Jason14h]

Cs get Degree’s

[bizaro86]

Originally Posted by Jason14h

Cs get Degree’s

I had a lecturer in university who always yelled at us. One of his favourites was "you want a D for Done"?

Until some yelled from the back - "sounds good if it means I'm done with you"

[Fuzz]

Originally Posted by Jason14h

Cs get Degree’s*

C's get Degrees.

[bizaro86]

Originally Posted by Fuzz

C's get Degrees.

It's so awesome to me that when removing his unnecessary apostrophe from the plural "degrees" you added an unnecessary apostrophe to the plural "Cs".

[WinnipegFan]

Originally Posted by Sliver

Math 30-2 will close no doors, but keep banging that drum. Once you're in university you can do anything you want within that university following a quick meeting with a dean, a prof or anyone else who can make an exception with the stroke of a pen. lol at thinking Math 30-2 will close doors. That's ridiculous.



I need two things to accept this as anything other than union propaganda designed to make teachers think they have it so hard and require the union to protect them from the big bad world.
1. A citation.
2. A comparison against all other university graduates.

I bet $25 dollars (if you want to accept) that teachers stay at their jobs at higher rates than those who graduate from other university programs. That is, if you're saying they have a higher attrition rate within the first five years, I need to know what jobs it is higher than.

I don't believe the statistic on an intuitive level, but I think since you're the one who brought it up you can be the one to defend it.

This one says 30%, https://www.cbc.ca/amp/1.7156002, how’s that? I also don’t need to prove it to you since you apparently have influence over Deans and Profs. If you think 30-2 math doesn’t close doors in uni you are dreaming and I won’t take the 25 dollar bet I don’t need to prove anything to you. However, what do I know after a decade of helping kids get into university in multiple countries throughout the world. So you do you but don’t cry or blame the teachers when that choice rears its head.

[bizaro86]

Originally Posted by WinnipegFan

This one says 30%, https://www.cbc.ca/amp/1.7156002, how’s that? I also don’t need to prove it to you since you apparently have influence over Deans and Profs. If you think 30-2 math doesn’t close doors in uni you are dreaming and I won’t take the 25 dollar bet I don’t need to prove anything to you. However, what do I know after a decade of helping kids get into university in multiple countries throughout the world. So you do you but don’t cry or blame the teachers when that choice rears its head.

I mean, I disagree with Sliver on most things teacher related, but that article doesn't address his point. 30% of teachers leaving their jobs in 5 years doesn't seem way higher compared to other professions to me. You'd need a comparable number for nurses/accountants/engineers etc to determine whether attrition in teaching is unusually high.

Of course, I cheerfully acknowledge my experience isn't data either, and he could be completely wrong and teachers leave teaching more than other professions. My personal sample isn't great here (non-practicing engineer married to non-practicing teacher) - I know tons of people who do something totally unrelated to their degree.

I've also known a number of people who are congenitally unsuited to teaching (don't like kids, low patience, poor people skills) who entered the profession because they wanted the perks/time off and/or couldn't find a job with their first (usually non-economic) undergrad degree. They've tended to not last but (imo) that's their fault not the fault of the profession.

[Sliver]

Out of thanks, but thanks Bizaro.

Winnipeg: exactly what Bizaro said...your stat is only meaningful as a comparison against the larger work world. That that isn't obvious to you is odd.

[GGG]

Originally Posted by nfotiu

If I think back to the popular kids in high school who didn't care much about grades, they were about 50/50 to be successful or were Al Bundy types that peaked in high school and didn't amount to much.

I did read an interesting thing the other day that 95% of fortune 500 CEOs played college sports. I'm not really sure what to read into that, but I think that putting enough effort into getting good enough grades while spending enough time on a sport to play at a collegiate level is putting in some pretty solid effort during HS/College years.

I think that just suggests that most CEOs had wealthy parents and paid into the youth sports industrial complex. If you want to play college athletics pick an obscure expensive sport to help with college admissions.

[Russic]

I can't offer anything other than anecdotal evidence because I am lazy and don't want to do any digging. What I can tell you is most of my social circle is teachers, they're all in Alberta (which means they make good $), and off the top of my head they all hate it. And I don't mean sit-around-shoot-the-sh*t-man-getting-me-down dissatisfaction... I mean going-back-to-school-at-45 hate it. I can say there's maybe 1 who half-enjoys it, but she's fierce with her free time, has no kids, and maintains a work-life balance with military precision.

Now a few things could be going on here. Maybe I attract dissatisfied people? Maybe there's a mob mentality and what they say to me isn't full truth and they play things up for sympathy? I'm wrong about enough stuff to know nothing is black and white.

And Sliver isn't wrong. Tons of vacation. The union keeps you very secure. Raises happen with time. The pension is great (although my wife's maximizes at 63, so it's not necessarily an early one).

The thing is, there's something about the job. Life satisfaction cannot be boiled down to a formula of good money + chunks of vacation + security = happiness.

I used to think it was the workload, as the workload is deceptively high. But wanna know who's just as miserable as everyone else? Gym teachers. They don't lesson plan or mark, which seems to be 40% of the job right there. Miserable. All of them.

Again, there's something else. Maybe it's feeling like you have no control? Or being outnumbered 30-1 by people with half a frontal lobe?

I'm not sure just looking at people who leave the profession is going to give you the whole picture, as many just suffer through it. The pay is reasonable (used to be amazing, I'd argue it's now reasonable), the pension is tight, and the security is high. That's enough to keep most people angrily showing up every day. You can't move to another province or you drop $40,000/year and start back at the bottom. It's an interesting conundrum in that the benefits are juuuust enough to keep you on the teet.

[Sliver]

"The thing is, there's something about the job. Life satisfaction cannot be boiled down to a formula of good money + chunks of vacation + security = happiness."

That's interesting af. Like, you would think that formula would be reality, but I accept it isn't.

So what is it, I wonder?

I imagine a part of it as you get to be our age (I assume we're at least similar in age...maybe you're a few years younger?) is people just get sick of the grind regardless of what you do. A difference for teachers, though, is they have a huge contingent of colleagues doing the EXACT same thing as them, which is unusual for adults in our society. This allows them to belly ache to each other and amplify their gripes. Basically a little sewing circle of complaining about their unique problems, but I don't think they generally have a very good perspective about the work world outside of education.

I would say basically every other professional works harder, works longer hours, has fewer vacation and less job security.

I think the intangible thing that is leading to the dissatisfaction is just teachers working themselves up.

To concede some challenges unique to teaching, I think it would weigh on me somewhat feeling trapped in the job. It's basically golden handcuffs, though, so I will temper my sympathy. They're trapped because if they stay they have a bottomless bucket of money that refills automatically every month until the day they die. Like, there's no such thing as a retired teacher living in poverty. They have nothing to worry about for their entire lives if they can just stick out a career.

But not loving their job and feeling like work is, well, work? Idk, I feel like that's everyone except most people don't have a crazy pension and three months off a year.

Having said that, life isn't easy for anyone. Do I think it's generally an easier career than anything else? Yes, I do. Do I also think it's hard and has stressful challenges? Yes, I do.

[Sliver]

Originally Posted by WinnipegFan

This one says 30%, https://www.cbc.ca/amp/1.7156002, how’s that? I also don’t need to prove it to you since you apparently have influence over Deans and Profs. If you think 30-2 math doesn’t close doors in uni you are dreaming and I won’t take the 25 dollar bet I don’t need to prove anything to you. However, what do I know after a decade of helping kids get into university in multiple countries throughout the world. So you do you but don’t cry or blame the teachers when that choice rears its head.

This made me laugh out loud. You're out of your mind. First of all, it won't close any doors. Second of all, if it did she could just open them by taking it over 3.5 weeks in a random July if saying 'c'mon' to her prof didn't work (which it would). It's so funny to me you think this would impact her future at all lol. Like, guy. Of course it won't. That's preposterous.

[undercoverbrother]

I have a good buddy that is a teacher and while he loves the job he hates the environment and organization but loves his time with students in the classroom.

He is frustrated that the "school system" isn't student focused and has very little flexibility to facilitate student learning.

[undercoverbrother]

Originally Posted by Sliver

This made me laugh out loud. You're out of your mind. First of all, it won't close any doors. Second of all, if it did she could just open them by taking it over 3.5 weeks in a random July if saying 'c'mon' to her prof didn't work (which it would). It's so funny to me you think this would impact her future at all lol. Like, guy. Of course it won't. That's preposterous.

I'm not sure the bolded part would work.

I have been in similar situations and the Uni didn't give a flying #### about my circumstances.

But maybe my experiences with University Bureaucracy is different.

[you&me]

Originally Posted by Sliver

"The thing is, there's something about the job. Life satisfaction cannot be boiled down to a formula of good money + chunks of vacation + security = happiness."

That's interesting af. Like, you would think that formula would be reality, but I accept it isn't.

So what is it, I wonder?

I imagine a part of it as you get to be our age (I assume we're at least similar in age...maybe you're a few years younger?) is people just get sick of the grind regardless of what you do. A difference for teachers, though, is they have a huge contingent of colleagues doing the EXACT same thing as them, which is unusual for adults in our society. This allows them to belly ache to each other and amplify their gripes. Basically a little sewing circle of complaining about their unique problems, but I don't think they generally have a very good perspective about the work world outside of education.

I would say basically every other professional works harder, works longer hours, has fewer vacation and less job security.

I think the intangible thing that is leading to the dissatisfaction is just teachers working themselves up.

To concede some challenges unique to teaching, I think it would weigh on me somewhat feeling trapped in the job. It's basically golden handcuffs, though, so I will temper my sympathy. They're trapped because if they stay they have a bottomless bucket of money that refills automatically every month until the day they die. Like, there's no such thing as a retired teacher living in poverty. They have nothing to worry about for their entire lives if they can just stick out a career.

But not loving their job and feeling like work is, well, work? Idk, I feel like that's everyone except most people don't have a crazy pension and three months off a year.

Having said that, life isn't easy for anyone. Do I think it's generally an easier career than anything else? Yes, I do. Do I also think it's hard and has stressful challenges? Yes, I do.

Re: the bolded... You really don't see what single factor teachers deal with that differentiates them and their level of job satisfaction?

Other. People's. Kids.

I've got a bunch of my own, and they're all young and they're all busy, so I think I'm probably exposed to more 'other people's kids' than average. And in general, to varying degrees, they suck. And that's just from the perspective of brief, casual interactions... I don't have to be responsible for them for six hour stretches, every day of the week.

Don't get me wrong, the vacation time and pension sound great, but you literally could not pay me enough to be a teacher.

[MoneyGuy]

Originally Posted by undercoverbrother

I have a good buddy that is a teacher and while he loves the job he hates the environment and organization but loves his time with students in the classroom.

He is frustrated that the "school system" isn't student focused and has very little flexibility to facilitate student learning.

My wife is a retired teacher who feels this way. She loved the students and most of the job, but hated the politics including principals who would side with unreasonable parents and not teachers. She finally quit and joined me in my financial practice.

[Torture]

Originally Posted by Sliver

I would say basically every other professional works harder, impossible to prove but doubt it, have you seen how hard the average joe/jane works? I mean, all of us are here on CP are clearly working really hard.. works longer hours doubt it, has fewer vacation sure and less job security. agreed

^^

[Slava]

Originally Posted by undercoverbrother

I have a good buddy that is a teacher and while he loves the job he hates the environment and organization but loves his time with students in the classroom.

He is frustrated that the "school system" isn't student focused and has very little flexibility to facilitate student learning.

Yeah, it's the parents and administration that make it suck, not the actual teaching. That's the sentiment I've heard.

[bizaro86]

Originally Posted by you&me

Re: the bolded... You really don't see what single factor teachers deal with that differentiates them and their level of job satisfaction?

Other. People's. Kids.

I've got a bunch of my own, and they're all young and they're all busy, so I think I'm probably exposed to more 'other people's kids' than average. And in general, to varying degrees, they suck. And that's just from the perspective of brief, casual interactions... I don't have to be responsible for them for six hour stretches, every day of the week.

Don't get me wrong, the vacation time and pension sound great, but you literally could not pay me enough to be a teacher.

Totally disagree. I volunteer in a bunch of kid's programs, and so coach/lead/teach a lot of other people's kids. For the most part that's totally fine.

But my wife is a former-teacher (in her 30s, so not retirement age at all). She loved the actual teaching and the kids. She hated the bureaucracy, meetings, and absurd training requirements. Eg, she genuinely dreaded PD days because they were consistently way worse than actually teaching. One principal she worked for had mandatory meetings every Friday afternoon where she'd read aloud all the email she had sent them that week. Every other former-teacher aive met says the same thing - loved the kids, hated the bureaucracy.

[8sPOT]

The most successful, and happy friends I have are all in trades. And started their own Welding, Electrical or Carpentry company in their mid to late 20's. They have more freedom, money, and flexibility than I could dream of. Most dont even really have to work anymore as they have employees and management hired to take care of the day to day.

Degrees are highly overrated these days in my opinion, usually has you in a position working for the man, and that's no way to get ahead. I will be perfectly happy if my son elects to go into a trade. He also doesn't have the best marks, so trying to prepare him for what seems like the inevitable outcome anyways.

My sister has 2 degrees and struggles with the day-to-day cost of living, her husband who also has several degrees is right there with her.

A degree doesn't guarantee anything.

[Sliver]

Originally Posted by 8sPOT

The most successful, and happy friends I have are all in trades. And started their own Welding, Electrical or Carpentry company in their mid to late 20's. They have more freedom, money, and flexibility than I could dream of. Most dont even really have to work anymore as they have employees and management hired to take care of the day to day.

Degrees are highly overrated these days in my opinion, usually has you in a position working for the man, and that's no way to get ahead. I will be perfectly happy if my son elects to go into a trade. He also doesn't have the best marks, so trying to prepare him for what seems like the inevitable outcome anyways.

My sister has 2 degrees and struggles with the day-to-day cost of living, her husband who also has several degrees is right there with her.

A degree doesn't guarantee anything.

How old are those friends? Trades can be great, for sure, but an injury can wreck you.