Jobs that let you globe trot?

indy34

New member
Recently I have been reconsidering my future education. As somebody who loves history and travel I have wanted to study to be an archaeologist ever since I was little but recently after starting at college (completely different from college in the US and even I think most states of Australia) I have really started to think about my future education. I have always known that studying archeology at university would involve a lot of reading and essay writing which I absolutely despise and hate with a passion, but I never really thought about it in depth until now. After a few weeks thinking about it and having it working away in the back of my mind I have come to the conclusion the main part of wanting to become an archaeologist was the travel. Being an archaeologist doesn't pay that well and only occasionally would you travel. Recently I have started photography and I quite enjoy it especially when I'm out only my bush walking trips.
So I ask you what would be a good job that would let me see the world?
 

Mickiana

Well-known member
I'd say Barman or any of the hospitality jobs, but I've never done it so I don't know the ups and downs of it. I'm a Boilermaker/First Class Welder and I know that can go anywhere in the world. In the light of that, have you considered a Trade qualification? The Engineering trades are especially portable and usually pay very well.
 

Goodeknight

New member
I'm pushing 40, and have a Master's in anthropology and sociology from the American University in Cairo. I was going to become an archaeologist myself, but faced some of the same issues. I didn't want to live in a library, teach college, study half a dozen dead languages, etc. If you don't like researching and writing papers, you'd hate being an archaeologist. The vast majority are professors first, and diggers second. They prefer the digging, but have to fund it somehow, and having that connection to a university is how they do it. And to be a working professor, you have to do a lot of research, write articles for academic journals, and crank out a book every few years. That wasn't for me.

So, now I'm a reporter. I have been for the past 10 years, and I've loved it. I've been to Nicaragua, South Africa (twice), Zambia, Ethiopia, Haiti (right after the earthquake), Ukraine, Alaska, and all over the US for work. Most of that was in the past few years.

But even when I was a reporter at a small town paper, I flew in a number of cool airplanes (WWII trainer, WWII bomber, etc.), interviewed Dan Aykroyd, played with tigers, learned high speed anti-terrorist driving and car ramming, went on a dinosaur dig in the Badlands of Montana, and had a blast. I was always doing something different.

If you're into photography, that could take you anywhere in the world. Now, that said, as a general rule most photographers have the goal of shooting for National Geographic or Rolling Stone or Time. There's a lot of competition. If you want to go that route, reporting or shooting or both, I'd suggest doing some freelance work to build a resume. Start small and go up from there. And also start with your school paper or other publications.

If you're still into archaeology, you could also learn a skill like surveying, restoration/preservation, or something like that. One friend in Egypt was working on the tomb where we were digging that summer, having worked on the Spanish steps in Rome the previous summer. He had a skill that made him useful.

While you are in school, I would also suggest finding out if your college has a study abroad program. I first went to Cairo in my junior year for a semester. My credits transferred back to my home university.

You might also consider teaching English abroad. I hear the pay is okay. Often you have a housing allowance, so okay pay can actually go a long way if you don't have rent to worry about. I would also suggest doing this kind of thing while you're young. It will be harder the longer you wait. You might get married, buy a house, buy a bunch of furniture, have kids, get a dog, etc. Those things make it a lot more difficult to pick up and head overseas.

I don't think becoming an archaeologist is for you. But there are a lot of careers that will fit.
 

indy34

New member
Thanks for the response Mickiana but I've never really been very good with the trades thats more my brother, I probably should have said jobs that pay me to travel.
goodeknight thanks for the response as well. Exactly what my dad said to me and many others it's really more for the love of the job and it wont really pay the bills.

I was considering photography because I love taking pictures when I'm off bush walking and I enjoy my photography class. Plus my other brother is in media and he has a friend who went to the same education institute as him. And basically this guy is halfway around the world on a cruise ship with his accommodation and food being payed for just so he can take pictures of the trip for the cruise company an he's getting payed for it! But I have no intentions to work for Nat Geo or rolling stones I'd probably aim more for a travel company.

The English teaching is a good idea but you'd have to be quite fluent in another language to pursue that, and I only know a bit of Japanese and I'm learning German.
I plan to see the world before I even consider marriage or kids.
 

Goodeknight

New member
indy34 said:
The English teaching is a good idea but you'd have to be quite fluent in another language to pursue that...
That's not true at all, though it's a common misconception. Check out this web site if you think it's an interesting idea.

http://www.teachabroad.com/teach-article.cfm

Sounds like that friend of a friend has a good gig on the cruise ship. One of the best pieces of advice my dad ever gave me was, "If you make a career out of doing what you love, you'll never have to work a day in your life."

So find something you love and figure out how to make money doing it. Do keep in mind, though, that at some point you will probably want to settle down. Maybe you won't, but chances are you will.
 

indy34

New member
Oh ok I just assumed to teach a language you'd have to have a knowledge of the other language. Thanks for that but I think I'll look into photography(y)
 

Mickiana

Well-known member
Goodeknight, your suggestion is very good. Often faced with this issue of what to choose to do for a job, career or whatever, I think the hardest thing to do is to realise what you like doing and then navigate a path towards doing something that centres upon that. I'm 41 and next month I'm making a move from my current job of Boilermaking and going into food. I'm looking forward to the sights, sounds and smells of dough making after 10 years of dust, fumes, noise and filthy workplaces. With some occupations, the skills are great to have, but then turning them into a job is where the problem begins. Boilermaking has been interesting, but it is a hard-nosed and tiring job. One thing I don't like is the idea of specialising. If you can manage to do so, I think it is better to be versed in several different areas, even if they are not professional. This allows for a type of 'fluidity' between different types of jobs.
 

Le Saboteur

Active member
indy34 said:
I probably should have said jobs that pay me to travel.

It should be pointed out that there are no jobs that will pay you to travel. There are jobs that involve travel, but they're just that, jobs. You're beholden to others, and their schedules. For example, flight attendants typically arrive late, and depart early the next day. Downtime in foreign countries is few and far between. The flight benefits, however, are quite nice.

Sailors also don't get as much time in port as they used to. There were times in the merchant marine, where we never docked. We'd drop anchor off shore, offload cargo onto barges, and take on new cargo in a span of hours. Time off was more forthcoming, though.

If you're looking for a growth industry, there's plenty of opportunity in the field of global logistics and transportation. Get on board with a company, and you can go just about everywhere. Ditto for the oil business. They also offer exceptional vacation allowances.

Good luck with the travel photography pursuits!
 

AlivePoet

New member
While teaching ESL in Korea does not mandate globe trotting, obviously if you are from the west your opportunities will be much more abundant to travel throughout Asia as well as live in a foreign culture. I've been in Korea for just shy of seven months and so far I've been to China, Japan, Hong Kong, Thailand, and Cambodia. I'm thinking about going next to Nepal and/or India and/or Mongolia. There's so much to see, it's overwhelming, really...
 

Joosse

New member
I'm a teacher, and while I don't really get to travel for my job, I do get a lot of holidays. Those holidays I use to travel as much as I can, together with my wife. It's our passion.

But I do use those experiences in my teaching. It is a known fact that children respond better to personal stories than they do to generic ones. They pay more attention and as a result of that they learn more.

At the moment I am a substitute teacher, filling in for teachers that fall ill, hopping from school to school. So it helps to be an 'interesting' person in the eyes of the children. That way, in stead of trying to pull a fast one on you, they usually want to know more about you.

Like the other day, I had to teach about hieroglyphics. And the teacher that I was replacing had left some notes on what he wanted me to teach. Pretty dry stuff, really.

But what I did was gather them all around and then started telling them:

"When I was in Egypt...."

Weaving all the facts that they needed to know into my story. They were captivated and soaked up all the information.

During the intermission the kids always get to play outside. One of the boys walked up to me and said:

"You know, you're pretty cool. Your kind of like...Indiana Jones."

I just nodded, and went: "Oh, you think so. Thank you." while inside my mind I'm going "YES!!!!" :D

So I ask him: "Do you like Indiana Jones then?"

Turns out he does, very much. So I tell them that there was also a television series made about Indiana Jones as a young boy. His eyes open wide in amazement at this, so I give him te advice of looking it up on the internet. Who knows, he might happen upon this forum one day.

But I'm drifting off topic. The point I wanted to make was that as a teacher you do get to do a lot of traveling if you want, but on your own time and your own money. So in a way it is a job that lets you globe trot, because it gives you sufficient free time to travel.

One of the other main advanteges of this is also that you can decide for yourself where you want to go.
 

Goodeknight

New member
Mickiana said:
next month I'm making a move from my current job of Boilermaking and going into food. I'm looking forward to the sights, sounds and smells of dough making after 10 years of dust, fumes, noise and filthy workplaces.
Good luck, Mickiana! Sounds like you're excited. Dough beats dust any day, unless it's dust an an ancient tomb somewhere. (y)

Mickiana said:
If you can manage to do so, I think it is better to be versed in several different areas, even if they are not professional. This allows for a type of 'fluidity' between different types of jobs.
Great suggestion. Also allows for a lot of fallback options.
 

indy34

New member
I see photography as a great job option because there are heaps and heaps of places you can work.

Anyway that ESL is actually a pretty good idea you just use the city you working in as a home base and just go out and explore from there.
 

Webley

New member
Dishwashing

Being a dishwasher can let you go all over the globe.

Dish Dog Pete Jordan chronicles his attempt to wash dishes professionally in all 50 states in this engaging and much-better-than-it-sounds biography.


Pete Jordan, otherwise known as ?Dishwasher Pete? may be the only writer alive who can make the profession of dishwashing sound not only intriguing but, well?like a profession at all. Jordan?s 2007 biography Dishwasher does both, as he details his quest to ?bust suds? in all 50 of the United States.

Dishwasher is already the acknowledged masterpiece of the traveling dishwasher sub-genre. The exploits Jordan encounters as he clean plates across the country and the style with which he describes them has led to comparisons with On the Road, for one. And while Jordan?s prose may not quite be on a par with Kerouac's, there are similarities between the two books.

Author Pete Jordan Didn't Want An Adult Occupation
Pete Jordan grew up poor in the Haight-Ashbury section of San Francisco in the 70's, after the hippie heyday of the area but before it became yuppified. The family of seven lived in a one bedroom apartment, and Pete watched as his Scottish immigrant father worked hard all his life, only to remain poor. Pondering his fifth grade essay about "what I want to be when I grow up," he realized he had no aspirations for an adult occupation.

It wasn't that Jordan didn't want to work?indeed, he's been working steadily since age 8?just that he saw no sense in striving for a higher level. Then Pete Jordan fell into dishwashing and he realized there were several aspects to the job that he enjoyed: working mostly alone, free meals and the fact that "dishwasher wanted" signs hung in the windows of a majority of restaurants in America. He could work wherever and whenever he wanted.

Author Sets Goal of Washing Dishes Across America
After working a handful of dishwashing jobs the notion struck Pete Jordan that his childhood dream of getting out of San Fran and seeing the country was doable as a professional dishwasher. He could quit a job as soon as he had enough dough to move on with little worry about getting another in the next town. Setting his goal of "busting suds" in all 50 states gave him more incentive to keep moving.



Read more at Suite101: Book Review?Dishwasher by Pete Jordan: One Man's Quest to Wash Dishes in All 50 States http://biographiesmemoirs.suite101....reviewdishwasher_by_pete_jordan#ixzz0jBm8OKWP
 

wickedwing

New member
Travel Job

to chime in with some details on my job...

I'm in the computer security field. I currently work as a government contractor that travels to U.S. Navy hospitals to evaluate their computer network security. In addition to Navy hospitals in the U.S. we have sites in Spain, Italy, Japan, Guam, Peru, Hawaii and Cuba. In fact I head to Guam next week, and Rota, Spain at the beginning of May.

I think you'd be surprised which jobs could require travel. Although I have to work while in these countries, I still have plenty of time to explore see the sights.
 
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