Hey guys,

I was just wondering, does your real-life job match what you always wanted to do? Do you like your job or is there something else you'd rather be doing?

I work for a small company in Ontario called Ventax ( ventax.com ), we build industrial robots for the injection moulded plastics industry.


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Me with one of our high-speed ViperSE robots in our shop.


...But my dream has always been to drive trains for the STM in Montreal. It's such a beautiful system, it's so relaxing down there, there's no stress. On the Green line the trains are still manually driven (MR-63 series, all the other lines are MR-73 series trains that are automatic, the driver doesn't do anything) so I'd want to drive that line. The stations are all huge gigantic concrete open volumes, very very modern. The trains run on rubber tyres and the MR-73 trains have a modernised electronic control for the drive motors, and make these amazing tones when the trains start moving.


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Station Vendôme, on the Orange line. Image by Benoît Clairoux.

A big problem is that in Montreal, you can't just go and say "I want to drive trains now" - you start on buses, and have to do that for a really long time before they'll consider leting you drive trains. I'm also in love with the Walt Disney World monorail system, but since I'm not a student, Disney won't hire me as such, and since I'd be coming as a normal citizen fo Canada I won't be able to get a work permit since the US Government would prefer to have Americans fill American jobs before permiting those from outside of the country to do those tasks. I have basically given up on that dream.


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Walt Disney World Monorail System. Image by Disney.

So I don't know what to do. I enjoy my job at Ventax and I'm working on a lot of really interesting projects, but at the same time it's not where my heart is, I dont' think. My co-workers tell me I'm insane for wanting to "drive a stupid train in a dark tunnel all day, you'll get bored, blah blah blah". But I'm always scared of making mistakes and when you do make a mistake it makes it pretty difficult to keep people happy. If I was driving trains I know I'd be able to do that.

So my question is, is your career that you're in, what you always wanted to be doing? Or is your heart somewhere else?

-Iain

Hi Iain,

an easy question difficult to answer.

I studied until last October at the local university to become a Publizist and Kommunikationswissenschaftler. That would translate to studying communication in most countries, you learn how to deal with different types of media and information. Last October I finished and now have a university degree called Magister Artium, which is a Masters-title. I did some kind of "Labour of Love" with writing a final study about the public relations of selected german theme parks.

Throughout most of the time of my studies I worked as a call center agent for Citibank. Since the year 2000 I work for a local telecommunications company tekomedia.de . The company was founded together with several other employees from ex-employer Citibank. Thus I consider it in part as "my firm" even though technically spoken I am just an employee with Tekomedia. I like the people with whom I work together.
We are dealing with Call Center solutions and currently have some local energy suplliers and disposal enterprises as clients.
We also engage in training people in communication and voice skills.
Most part of the job is done "on the phone" which becomes boring routine after a while, thus I wouldn't consider this a lifetime job.
New to me is the experience of being a trainer so this part comes close to my "once ago" wish of becoming a teacher.

My dream job?
When I was a kid at school (4th grade) we had to paint a picture of what we would like to be in the future and I remember - as a kid almost ten years old - that I wanted to become a rollercoaster-owner. Well, something that didn't quite come true, but might have poured the foundations of my todays hobby. Thus, I guess in part I would love to be a showman travelling with some kind of attraction from place to place in some kind of romantic thought.

With the age of 20 I wanted to become a teacher. I think there is still a lot of energy pushing me into this direction.

With the age of 25 I started a life as radio reporter and had a small career as disc-jockey, thus I would love to be a radio-reporter on a beautiful island (like Gran Canaria) talking to people, playing my favourite songs and relaxing in the evening sunshine.

With the age of 30 I became more and more fasinated by the thought of becoming a collector or someone who is taking care of of a collection.

So maybe I'll end up doing something like that one day?

My brother always wanted to become a bus- and streetcar driver (a little bit like you). He now is an emergency car driver and teacher for medical first aid skills. Kind of realised.