Laid-off workers find fulfillment in new careers
By Debra AlbanCNN
(CNN) -- Alicia Azzopardi was laid off just before Christmas. It couldn't have happened at a better time.
Trent Vondrasek, who went from the auto industry to an unpaid internship, poses with his children.
"I was so upset when I left my job," said Azzopardi. "I was crying, and I just didn't know what to do."
The same week that she got laid off, Michigan State University accepted her into its accelerated nursing program. Even better, she learned she qualified for a grant from the Michigan Nursing Corps. The state-funded initiative, which provides her with a $25,000 stipend, is addressing Michigan's nursing shortage in part by rewarding workers who have been laid off.
"My tuition is pretty much 100 percent paid for, and I don't take that lightly," said Azzopardi, 28, who has a background in business and sales.
While trying to survive in the state with the highest unemployment rate in the nation, Azzopardi and others are taking advantage of their job losses by pursuing careers they've always wanted.
Michigan's 14.1 percent unemployment in May towers above the national average of 9.5 percent, according to U.S. Department of Labor statistics for June.
"It's a really hard thing to change careers when you didn't want to," said Martha Mangelsdorf, author of "Strategies for Successful Career Change." But starting over at an older age carries less of a stigma than it once did.
"It's not like the 1950s where people started with one company and stayed there for the rest of their working career," Mangelsdorf said.
The oldest intern
For Trent Vondrasek, 42, chasing the dream translated to becoming the oldest intern at the Lansing, Michigan, mayor's office, after he lost his job in October as a consultant for General Motors .
But the father of three had found himself hobbled by a major career decision in his 20s that continues to plague him. He quit college to take a sales job for an auto supplier.
"One of the mitigating factors [potential employers] are looking for is, do you have a college degree? And I don't have one. Even though I've got 18 years' experience, I'm not even considered," said Vondrasek.
Now, Vondrasek is trying to break into politics, but has found that he has to make his way up the ladder. As an unpaid intern, his peers were about half his age. He also was older than some of his superiors.
"I learned a lot from them, and I think they learned some things from me also," Vondrasek said of the other interns. "Because of my sales experience, I'm used to dealing with people."
Vondrasek highlighted one episode of his new career that he said brought him exceptional job satisfaction. He helped protect a woman from losing her electricity and from a mortgage company that was threatening to foreclose on her home.
The woman had complained that agencies would not return her calls. Vondrasek used his influence and links to the mayor's office to talk with the agencies.
Vondrasek also studies political science at Lansing Community College. He's paying tuition out of his own pocket, which is a challenge as his family tightens its belt.
"I fully realize that by going into public service, I'm not going to be financially as sound as I was in the automotive industry, because I got paid extremely well for what I did," he said. "But if I can get more self-satisfaction out of it and be prouder of what I'm doing on a day-to-day basis, then for me, that's a win."
Still, Vondrasek said, he probably would not have taken this route if he had not been laid off.
Volunteering and pursuing avenues where you excel, like Vondrasek did, can help career-changers make the best of the situation, said Mary Beth Sammons, author of "Second Acts that Change Lives: Making a Difference in the World."
"This is an opportunity to look where your heart is and to follow your passions," she said.
Sammons has her own story to tell. Based in Chicago, Illinois, with a journalism background, she began writing her book last fall after losing her job as vice president of a Web site for people facing health crises.
"I had already done the second act, taking my journalism skills and putting them in a place I thought was meaningful -- helping people that were sick and dying," said Sammons, 52. "I suddenly realized I had to create another act for myself."
Her next personal chapter became writing about people who reinvented themselves.
How to manage a successful career change
For those looking for a change in direction, here are several resources that might ease the transition:
Federalstudentaid.ed.gov: Does your career change require you to go back to school? This government Web site will help you explore your financial aid options.
Safeborrowing.com: This Web site from the American Bar Association will help you decipher how student loans work.
CareerOneStop.com: Sponsored by the Department of Labor, this Web site will direct you to local One-Stop Career Centers. The centers offer job postings, training and information on the government funds available for you.
Not all jobs require complete re-education, Mangelsdorf said. Talk to people already in the industry, hook up with a professional association and find out how others navigated their way through, she advised. Still, ongoing education can give you an edge by showing potential employers that you have a "zeal for knowledge" and the most current information out there, said Eric Winegardner, vice president of client adoption at Monster.com.
Transitions don't have to start from scratch. If you're still employed, you can also switch careers within your company, Winegardner said. "They already know your work product, they trust you, you've got strong relationships there. Start talking to them about your career path and your development," he said.
A change in direction can take a toll on relationships. If you have a partner or spouse, discuss logistics and time management with him or her before diving in head-first, Mangelsdorf said.
If you go back to school, get your feet wet first. It can be challenging to get back in the swing of higher education if you haven't been a student in a while, Mangelsdorf said.
CNN Article on changing careers
Summer
So it's been about a month after classes ended, and it's going by so fast! I haven't really been doing much other than working full time at Company. I did however get a chance to register for my classes, and it looks like everyday except for Friday I have classes from 8:00 AM to 2:00 PM if I decide to drop the Statics class. So far I'm signed up for Physics II with horrible teacher, Chemistry, and Calculus III. I was hoping to take Statics or an intro to computer programming but it completely fills up my schedule and I will be unable to work. I had originally planned on taking a leave of absence or quitting for this upcoming semester, but I recently changed positions and now am working on an SAP operations job which launches mid semester. I just feel bad leaving before the project 'completes', especially since the people here have been great and are so much more professional and nice than the previous program I supported.
I am worried though because I was hoping to study up on some physics II topics and chemistry refreshers so that I'm more 'prepared' for the semester. So far, I have done zilch preparations for either. And also, for some reason before school ended I responded to an email from ASME asking if anyone would be interested in being a webmaster for their website. I have no website design/programming experience other than an AJAX class I took over a year ago through UCLA's extension program....which means I completely forgot what I learned and didn't learn. I just logged into the system today and looked at the files already developed by the school administrator and am completely lost, and clueless. I have much to learn, and so little time. On top of that I need to get my butt moving on updating this blog's About section, and About Us. Keeping busy is good :)
Grades are in!
After much anticipation, I've just learned that I can now wash my brain of all things trigonometry(har...har) because I passed! Well, I did better than passing but less than an A; you figure it out.
And thanks to astrophoenix for passing on this excellent read: A Mathematician's Lament.
According to this awesome write-up about the current state of math in the US, I just finished this segment of training:
TRIGONOMETRY. Two weeks of content are stretched to semester length by masturbatory definitional runarounds. Truly interesting and beautiful phenomena, such as the way the sides of a triangle depend on its angles, will be given the same emphasis as irrelevant abbreviations and obsolete notational conventions, in order to prevent students from forming any clear idea as to what the subject is about. Students will learn such mnemonic devices as “SohCahToa” and “AllStudents Take Calculus” in lieu of developing a natural intuitive feeling for orientation and symmetry. The measurement of triangles will be discussed without mention of the transcendental nature of the trigonometric functions, or the consequent linguistic andphilosophical problems inherent in making such measurements. Calculator required, so as to further blur these issues.
Robots!
By JOHN MARKOFF
Published: June 8, 2009
Consider it one small step — or a roll, actually — for a robot, one not giant, but significant step for robotics.
Willow Garage, a Silicon Valley robotics research group, said that its experimental PR2 robot, which has wheels and can travel at speeds up to a mile and a quarter per hour, was able to open and pass through 10 doors and plug itself into 10 standard wall sockets in less than an hour. In a different test, the same robot completed a marathon in the company’s office, traveling 26.2 miles. PR2 will not compete with humans yet; it took more than four days.
For the person who wants to buy a fully functioning robot butler, this may not seem so impressive. But for roboticists and a new generation of technologists in Silicon Valley, this is a significant achievement, a step along the way to the personal robot industry.
Willow Garage was founded by Scott Hassan, one of the designers of the original Google search engine. The company’s name is a reference to a small garage on Willow Road in Menlo Park, Calif., which was Google’s first office. The company is trying to develop a new generation of robotic personal assistants. Roboticists here and at other companies envision creating something on the scale of the personal computer industry, with mechanical personal assistants taking over a lot of drudgery, from cleaning up to fetching a beer from the refrigerator.
This is not a new hope, nor is it the first time that robots have tried to open doors, navigate rooms and recharge themselves. The Beast, a robot built at Johns Hopkins University in the mid-1960s, was able to locate standard wall sockets to refuel. And devices like the inexpensive iRobot Roomba vacuum cleaner can locate and dock with a specially designed charging station.
But roboticists said that the Willow Garage robot was the first to integrate the ability to do a number of operations in a real-world environment.
“There are other groups that have opened doors before,” said Andrew Ng, a Stanford roboticist with several students who have gone to work for the company. But, Mr. Ng said, this seemed to be the first robot able to repeatedly and reliably open doors and plug itself in.
William L. Whittaker, a Carnegie Mellon University roboticist and the winner of a Defense Department urban challenge robot driving contest last year, said it was “unprecedented” for a robot to navigate in a building reliably and repeatedly recharge itself. “These guys are the real deal,” he said.
The Willow Garage laboratory is less than a mile from another pioneering mobile robot project that was developed at SRI International in the late 1960s. The robot, known as Shakey, had little onboard computing capability and was remotely controlled by a combination of a mainframe and a minicomputer.
“In 40 years there has been a lot of progress, but not progress you notice,” said Nils Nilsson, a pioneering artificial intelligence researcher who was one of Shakey’s designers. “A lot of the progress has been made in removing the cheats we used.”
To help Shakey navigate, he said, the baseboards in the room were painted black to help identify walls, and objects were painted red so they could be identified by the vision system.
The ultimate goal of the Willow Garage researchers is to build a Robot Operating System, or R.O.S., that would greatly facilitate the work of a generation of software developers.
Microsoft is developing a similar system based on a version of the Windows operating system, but the Willow Garage effort is an open-source project intended to leverage the contributions of a number of robotics experts around the world.
Toward that end, a team of roboticists from the University of Tokyo recently modified the Willow Garage R.O.S. to run on a robot they were developing, said Steve Cousins, Willow Garage’s president and chief executive.
“The eventual goal is to provide a set of capabilities that are so generic and so universal that they can be used as building blocks in more complicated applications,” said Sebastian Thrun, director of the Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory and a Willow Garage board member.
The current PR2 robot is powered by several Intel microprocessor chips and “sees” with a combination of sensors including scanning lasers and video cameras. It is able to locate electrical outlets and navigate in a building that is designed to accessibility guidelines in the Americans With Disabilities act. Such buildings do not have doors with round door knobs, which simplifies the task of opening a door for a robot. The PR2 carries its plug on a magnet at its base.
In the recent test, one of the plugs was behind a locked door, so the robot needed to be intelligent enough to abort its effort and move on to the next plug. The doors it needed to navigate were alternately closed, open and partially open.
One of the scientists summed up his feelings about the milestone in a succinct e-mail message:
“Now they can escape and fend for themselves.”
Design It: Shelter Competition
To all you geeks out there! There's a design competition done through the Guggenheim Musuem and Google Sketch Up to create a shelter in a specific location for sleeping and working. Apparently it's Frank Lloyd Wright's 142nd birthday today. The entries are due 8/24 in case you're interested! Here's the links to the competition and more information:
http://sketchupdate.blogspot.com/2009/06/announcing-design-it-shelter.html
http://www.guggenheim.org/new-york/education/sackler-center/design-it-shelter
I tried using Google Sketch Up about two years ago but for some reason I couldn't get it working. I sure hope after my SolidWorks class I'd have better luck with it, but you never know...
The winner of the design gets airfare/accommodation to NYC, so that's enough to get me to participate!
No More Trig!
Like Jennifer, my spring semester has also drawn to a close. As I walked out of class Wednesday night after my two-hour final, my lips burst into a radiant grin. My immediate thought was, "I did it! No more trig!"
As soon as I thought those words, I had to laugh a little. After all, if I keep pursuing this educational path, I'll continue to use and build upon the principles learned in trigonometry. I'm sure there will come a day when I'll look back and say, "Psshh. Trig. That was easy in comparison to (fill in the blank)."
While June is already starting to fly by, I'm still unsure of many things for this upcoming fall semester. I still don't know if I'll be part time or full time at this point, especially since so many engineering classes are dependent on completion of calculus.
I am excited at the possibility that I'll be attending a 4-year college(even if it is a cheap state-run commuter school) instead of floating around in community college purgatory. For now, it's summertime. Time to bust ass working full-time and save up for the future.
Check
I can completely close the book now on my spring 2009 semester. All grades are in, and I am pleased to say I have passed all my whopping 3 classes. In my defense, it's my first semester and I was working part time =). The hardest part after finals was definitely waiting for my grades to come in, especially my physics class. I had an expectation for what the outcome of my grade would be based on how I felt about the final and how I performed previously on tests, labs, etc. I passed, and still do not understand why I got the grade that I did, but despite my curiousity and at my husband's urging, I am going to accept it and try to not investigate it further. The bad news is that since I passed the class, I am now going to suffer this mental rollarcoaster for the fall semester with the same ding dong professor.
I have vamped up my work hours to full time now, and that took some time to get used to. I realized I was in a huge bubble the 3 months I was in school and it feels nice being able to connect with people and to work on hobbies, read, watch tv, etc. I suppose it really is a sacrifice to go back to school, not only financially but also socially as well. I didn't really fully comprehend it until it was all over. But, I guess this is all done in the sheer hopes of forging a positive future opportunity, and hopefully (fingers crossed), a rewarding career.
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