I am currently an unhappily unemployed administrative assistant for the past 3 months, after the company that I worked for downsized. Being unemployed has me asking myself a lot of questions about what I want to do with the rest of my career.

So here's the question. What type of work do you do? Is it your dream job and if not, what is your dream job?

My dream job is photography. I am not currently pursuing it as a career, as I have no formal training. I have photographed a few family weddings, but wouldn't know the first thing about how to pursue it full time.

Cross your fingers that I'll find a job soon. I am about to pull out my hair living on the small amount provided my unemployment.

Have you tried finding employment with a photography studio to start out? Now is the best time, since you aren't doing anything you like anyway? I'm a medical transcriptionist and stay at home with my kids but I am looking forward to going back to work when my little one goes to school. But I worked in politics and that is just too time consuming, so I'll need a new career too. Good luck.

I am currently a stay-at-home mom and housewife. This is a very rewarding job and I love it! My dream job is also Photography!!! I've done some childrens portraits and weddings as well. I am in Photography school. It's a photography school that you can do via correspondance (from home). I LOVE it!! They send you audio cassettes, books and DVD's and with the cassettes they guide you through each book. You have tests and photo projects. You send in your photo project and they send you back a cassette with your advisors critiques. I've only completed the first Unit and I already feel like I know SO much more about Photography. They also have a Unit devoted to the business aspect. There are 6 units total. People can complete it in less than 6 months, but most take from 1-3 years!! (I've been working on it since September...so 4 months and I've just started Unit 2).

Anyway - I have a passion for Photography and I know I could be happy doing that for the rest of my life.

Hi losingme, I love photography too. I did digital for sometime and now I am mainly into Medium format film...(cant beat those grains in the film). I do it as a hobby and my main job is clinical research.
My husband is also into medicine and also loves photography. We do plan to have a gallery presentation of our work soon and working on scanning and printing our stuff currently. We do mainly seascapes (long exposures) and highspeed drop as well as plenty of travel and portraits...I would love to know more abt your photography interests.

Once I get into a residency, he plans to take a short break from work and do some professional photography. I am trying to convince him to sell his stuff to get atleast some tax rebate on the expensive gear
Our dream is to own a hassy with a digi back one day

As far as my work goes, I love what I am doing...but would like to get into a residency program here in southern california by next year and I am working hard for it!

I am a truck driver, and no it was never my dream job. Life circumstances sort of put me here!

BUT - I love it!
I am not stuck in an office all day, I don't have a boss down my back all the time, I am very much in control of how my day goes - even to the point of what time I want to start & be done (so long as my drops or pick-ups are taken care of)

I am not an OTR driver, I am home every day before my elementary school age daughter gets off the bus & off on weekends 95% of the time (but I start the day REALLY early!) & the pay is pretty darn good for my area, and includes health insurance, sick days, as well as paid vacation & holidays.

I have no desire to leave or do anything else for now.

im a nurse... and i split my time between working in a Burn ICU and doing Pediatric Hospice case management....

i love what im doing now, but its def. not a career for the rest of my life. im just still trying to see what i want to go back to school for!

I'm the assistant to the vice president of a medium size corporation....he's a great boss--out more than he's in, and basically he leaves me alone to do my job.

My DREAM job, however....is to be a singer/actress.....guess I'll have to stick to community theatre to get those urges fulfilled.

I guess I'm the oddball in that photography does nothing for me

As for me, I went to school and graduated with a BA in Business Administration, Marketing concentration, but my true love was my minor, which was Music Industry. I would love to work in the music field in a scouting- or marketing-related position, but I'm realizing I don't have quite the personality for it--I'm just too shy when dealing with people I don't know well.

So anyway, I've had an interesting career path so far (I'm only 24, though, so it's been short but twisty). Like I said, I finished school with a marketing concentration (plus only 1 class shy of an Advertising minor), so my first job was as a Marketing Assistant. I worked directly with our national sales team (about 20 reps across the country) and worked our booth at trade shows and stuff--it was really fun. Then I met a boy (isn't that always the case?). I moved about 200 miles from where I was to be closer to said boy, so I got a new job (after holding the Marketing Assistant position for about a year).

The new job began as a technical editing position (and had a slight increase in pay since I was moving to a more expensive area). Quite the change from my marketing job, but it paid a little more and was with a huge corporation in the area, so I figured there would be some room for growth and whatnot. Well, as it turned out, I was quite good at the editing thing, and I quickly transitioned to technical writing and researching in addition to the editing (and got a raise--cha-ching!). I was doing absolutely nothing marketing-related, though, and while I was good at my job, I wasn't happy with that, so I moved on after a little over a year and a half.

And so, on to job #3 (with another increase in pay). I started working for another government contractor (that's pretty much all there is here in the DC area), but this time as a proposal writer. At least writing proposals was a little more marketing-related in that you're writing to sell your services to a client. That job, however, quickly became a disaster as someone unqualified got promoted above me and made my life a living ****. And so, I moved on again (after only 3 months this time ).

I'm much happier now. I joke with my boss that it's the first full-time job I've had that I worked at for 6 months without putting my resume back up on Monster I am now a Proposal Coordinator for yet another government contractor. I do a little wordsmithing and a lot of document formatting as well as creating some charts/graphs for proposals. Despite my title, I also do a lot of non-proposal work. I track our financial standing with current clients to ensure we have enough funding, I estimate contractor end dates based on funding available, and I do a lot of flow charting for business processes. On the marketing end, I also create some marketing materials (capabilities statements, business presentations, etc.), and I coordinate our exhibit participation in conferences.

When I was in college and asked where I would be in 5 years, my current situation would have been waaaaaaay down on my list of possibilities. And yet, I am doing pretty well. I'm most proud of the fact that from my first job out of college almost exactly 3 years ago(started working January 2004) to my current position, I have well more than doubled my annual salary. Not that money is the most important factor in a job, but it sure doesn't hurt!

I would love to think I could afford to stay at home when I have children, but it just ain't in the cards. I make more than my boyfriend (assuming he will become husband and father to my children), and there is not even the slightest chance we could ever survive on just one of our salaries in this area (we're trying to buy a townhouse next fall--yeah, you know, a place where you still share walls with your neighbors--and we're having difficulty finding one with 2+ bedrooms and 1.5+ baths for less than $300k in an area where we won't need steel bars on the windows). Maybe things will be different in 4-5 years when we have kids, though...

I used to be an engineer (photolithography - so I used to print pictures of itty bitty microscopic things over and over using a 5 million dollar "camera" and a 2 million dollar "developer".)

Quit and got my MBA, worked in venture capital for about 6 months when I realized they were treating me as a secretary.

Started going back to school again, got pg with #1 and have been a SAHM since. Although dh is starting his own company soon, so I will be a part time work-at-home mom as I'll be doing AR/AP/HR/books, etc.

Have no idea what my dream job would be...

I currently work as a Medical Transcriptionist for a Paramedic Company. I sit at the computer in an office for 8 hours.

My dream job is photography! I am now taking classes to be able to do this in college.

I have a degree in organizational communication (the study of how information travels within an organization). I got the degree before email became the standard. Obviously it's not working for me!!! LOL
I worked for 14.5 years in a hospital business office. Stress filled days. I quit a little over 1.5 years ago and now I work with my husband in our construction business (I do the bookkeeping).

I oversee a membership association that provides education and networking opportunities for people that work in an HR/benefits-related area. I oversee all aspects of our organization, including sales and marketing, website and newsletter content, our annual conference and other educational events, data collection and research, industry involvement, 30 local chapters, member inquiries, and probably lots of other stuff that I'm forgetting at the moment. I also do a lot of writing and public speaking on technical issues related to the industry. I wear a lot of hats but I work from home and have a very flexible schedule.

My dream job would be to be independently wealthy, but this is a pretty close second. I was an English major in college and just fell into this profession completely by accident. I never would have dreamed this is what I would end up doing (or that I would end up enjoying it).

I'm currently an SAHM, but I too am an administrative assistant with some background in network admin. I don't know that I have a dream job as in "type" of work, but there are dream jobs out there, even in the field you may currently be in. I found it...once. And I actually gave it up (kicked myself for years) to be with my hubby. LOL I was an admin. asst. there as well, for 5 years, but it was the best danged admin. asst. position I ever had. NEVER boring. I enjoyed working for that company, and enjoyed my co-workers immensely.

Oh well yeah...there's THAT. Ok, so that's my dream job too. LOL

I realize I didn't really say what job it was I did in that company. I was admin. asst. for a CPA society. I set up meetings that I was in charge of, spent days at the Civic Center setting up recruiting fairs and legislative receptions, traveled once or twice a year for training and overseeing new program implementation, ran the network, asst. editor of the newsletter, in charge of typesetting, financials, etc. Everyday was something new so there was no boredom in doing the same things over and over again. Plus I was pretty much on my own, which I love. Can't stand having a nosey supervisor who hires you because they trust you to do your job, but stands over you constantly because they're afraid you can't do it right....my last boss. LOL

I am a veterinarian...it was pretty much my dream job growing up since i was always doing stuff with horses, dogs, cats etc. I love my jobs MOST days. Some days it gets hard to be a vet. Hard to appease the owner without having them feeling like you're "taking all their money" but also hard to deal with giving proper medical care and is you don't offer the best there is being liable for lawsuit. Don't get me wrong...wouldn't change fields. Very rewarding. but trust me...none of my work clothes are expensive or dry clean only since you never know what you might get on them LOL