What do you do for a living?

I am a registered nurse in the emergency department at a hospital.

How would you describe what you do?

I care for and treat the ill and injured patients and manage their care while they’re in the department and transfer them either home or they get admitted to the hospital.

What all does your work entail?

There’s the physical element of it as far as standing on your feet for twelve hours a day, whether that be walking, moving and rescuing patients, moving stretchers, equipment, things like that. There’s a mental or cognitive element where you have to apply your training and education as far as administering medications and making decisions for a patient’s care.

We do technical things as far as IV’s, blood draws, EKG’s. We hang intravenous drips and medications and manage and titrate those. We perform CPR and life saving measures. We communicate with our physicians in the department, letting them know and updating them on the patient’s condition and changes that occur while they’re there.

We transfer patients to the floors, we discharge them, we transport them around the hospital to where they need to go as far as having a CT scan or whatever.

when you have a good outcome with somebody, you really feel like your direct care of them has made them better in some way, and they tell you that they appreciate the care that you’ve given them. That’s very satisfying and rewarding.

We administer, medications and monitor pain levels and do dressings and all that stuff.

And then there’s kind of an emotional aspect of it too as far as you’re dealing with people that are very sick and sometimes it’s not a happy place to be, and you’ve got angry people so it’s kind of a roller coaster place to be.

What’s a typical work week look like for you?

Well for me, I’m not a full time right now. When I was full time I would work thirty-six hours a week.

Most hospitals now have 3 twelve hour shifts, three days a week, with thirty-six hours a week, and that’s considered full time. But I’m an as-needed employee so I can work thirty-six hours a week or I can work no hours a week, it just depends on what they need. Right now I’m working probably twelve to twenty-four hours a week. It just depends on when they need me and when I want to work.

How did you get started in this career?

Well, I was actually a senior in college getting my psychology degree and I thought I wanted to do that. I was looking into graduate school options because I was finding out that there’s not a lot of options in psychology without a graduate degree.

About that time my grandfather was really sick on my mom’s side and I was spending a lot of time in the ICU in the hospital with him. And something kind of spoke to me about it and I started looking into nursing programs, and found one. The good thing about it is that if you already have a degree in something else you can get a nursing degree in about 1 ½ to 2 years. So that’s what I did, and really, I guess it’s because my grandfather was sick that I was inspired.

What do you like about what you do?

I like the fact that I can make a difference in people’s lives immediately, and I can see the effects of what I do. I have skills that a lot of people don’t have and I feel like I can really make a difference in the outcome of my patient’s illnesses directly. I get a lot of reward from that.

What do you dislike about the job?

I guess in a nutshell I dislike the fact that hospitals are being owned more and more by big corporations and those corporations are being controlled by medicare insurance companies as to what they will and won’t pay for and all that trickles down to the nursing.

We are limited in how much input we can have over our practice, where pretty much they just tell you how things are going to be and you have to do that..

the most challenging thing is when you have something that you can’t fix…something tragic has happened and you can’t help, there’s nothing that you can do..it’s a challenge to figure out how to deal with it emotionally and not take that stuff home with you and let it affect your family life.

And it’s really just the policies and procedures like, charting, computer systems, etc. There are a lot of things that we have to use every day that slow us down and make things a lot less efficient. It’s not really anything to do with your clinical skills or your judgment, it’s just infrastructure and things like that we’d like to see improved, and with the larger companies owning the hospitals it’s seems to be harder to make changes or improve.

How do you make money or how are you compensated?

It’s hourly.

How much money do you make as an RN?

I make $27.05 an hour. And again, I don’t have guaranteed hours, so whenever I work I just get paid that much hourly.

How much money did you make starting out as an RN?

My first job, my base rate was $15.00 an hour. That was ten years ago.

Would you say there are any perks associated with what you do?

Yes, definitely. The biggest perk that I can say right now is that the three twelve-hour shifts give you a lot of free time during the week. You can have four days off and most places will allow self-scheduling, which means you can pretty much say I want to do my three days in a row and be off the rest of the week, or I want to work mostly weekends, or whatever works best for you.

There’s a lot of scheduling flexibility. That’s a big perk. You get pretty good benefits too, usually paid vacation and health insurance and all that.

What education or skills are needed to be an RN?

Well right now to be an RN like I am you can either have a two-year associate’s degree or a four-year bachelor’s degree, and you can function in the same capacity in the hospital or in any RN setting. There is a push nowadays for the bachelor’s to be the standard for all nurses. I have the bachelor’s degree but that’s just because the program I went to was accelerated, but you have to have either the associate’s degree or the bachelor’s degree and then you have to pass the national certification exam to get your nursing license.

As far as skills, I think that somebody should be very flexible. You have to be flexible as far as making decisions and changing things on the fly, you can’t be somebody who doesn’t deal with change well. You have to be able to be around people and deal with people and the public, have people skills, and physically be able to do the job, because it is somewhat physically demanding. I think people forget about that, you’ve got to lift patients around in beds and stuff like that, it can probably be pretty tiring.

What is most challenging about what you do?

Probably the most challenging thing is when you have something that you can’t fix, like you have somebody that’s dead or dying or something tragic has happened and you can’t help, there’s nothing that you can do.

So I think that when that does happen, that’s hard, and it’s a challenge to figure out how to deal with it emotionally and not take that stuff home with you and let it affect your family life.

What is most rewarding about what you do?

Well, I guess kind of the opposite of that is when you have a good outcome with somebody, you really feel like your direct care of them has made them better in some way, and they tell you that they appreciate the care that you’ve given them and that’s very satisfying and rewarding.

What advice would you offer someone considering this career?

I would say it’s a good career to choose right now because there’s been a nursing shortage for as long as I can remember and it’s just going to get worse because we have an aging population.

I think that people just need to really understand that it’s very important to talk to some nurses that they know and that they can find and ask them what it’s really like, because I think some people go into this job not really realizing how it’s really going to be.

How much time off do you get or take?

Well, when I’m working full time four days a week is the regular scheduled time off. And then usually you get about two or three weeks of paid vacation a year. Every pay period you might earn three+ hours of paid time off. And once you accrue enough of that, then you can use it. So if you’re a brand new person in the hospital it probably adds up to two weeks a year, and as you gain seniority in the hospital and are there for more and more years, you earn that time off faster.

The biggest perk…is that the three twelve-hour shifts give you a lot of free time during the week.

What is a common misconception that people have about what you do?

I don’t’ think people really have an understanding of how involved nurses are in the care of patients. You know, we’re definitely not doctors, I totally understand that, it’s very different than medicine but I think there’s kind of a lack of respect for nurses, at least in my experience.
Not always, but I think the misconception is that we’re kind of blue-collar, you know, we work shifts, we get paid by the hour, but it’s really not, it’s much more complex than that, but I don’t think the general public really knows that.

What are your goals and dreams for the future in this career?

Well, right now I’m pretty good where I am. I’ve gotten my bachelor’s degree already. I did go back to school for a semester and do a semester of the Master’s program because I thought I wanted to be a nurse practitioner, but I’ve changed my mind. I think I want to remain at the level where I am for now. I don’t want to go into management, I don’t want to go into higher practice, I just want to be a staff nurse in the ER.

What else would you like people to know about what you do?

I guess I would want people to know that nurses provide a critical element to any hospital stay. Patients spend most of their time with nurses when they’re in the hospital.

What do you do for a living?

Primarily I’m a cattle farmer. But as with most farming operations I end up being an investor in land almost as much as anything.

How would you describe what you do?

We run 8,000-9,000 head of cattle a year and they come in as small calves weighing 300 pounds and we grow them up to about 1300 pounds and then sell them to a packing plant.

What does your work entail?

Well, I’ve got about the equivalent of 8-9 full time employees and then some additional part time workers.  I manage them and then there’s a fair amount of routines that I do myself on a daily basis. We do a fair amount of our own construction work since it’s a large operation.  So sometimes I’ll lead crews on that, then also there is the routine stuff like caring for the cattle, doctoring them, feeding them, etc.

And I’d say that I probably used to probably put in a total of 80-90 hours a week and now as I have gotten older, I try to do it at about 60-70 hours.

How did you get started?

I went through college with a chemical engineering degree and then a law degree.  I worked out in the law industry for four years and my dad hit me up again to come back to the farm. Growing up I would have never thought I’d do this in my life but I did and it has turned out great.  I came back in 1979, in 1979, that date may not sound important to you, but in that year 1979-1980, that was end of the boom in agriculture in terms of livestock prices, grain prices, land prices, just rocketed upward and it looked like it would go on forever.

And then about 1980, boy we had a tremendous not only a recession, but a depression in agriculture and where our commodity prices collapsed and in our area.  Land prices from about 1980-85 reduced over by more than half and we barely made it through it. We made it through it and in hindsight, I still do not know how we did it. We were able to fight through the tough times and even acquire and buy more land as people went under during the hard times.

When I had come back we typically ran 2,000 head of cattle and over a number of years I doubled that from 2,000 to 4,000 and then I doubled again from 4,000 to 8,000.

What do you like about what you do?

I like not having any boss other than the marketplace.  There’s no one I report to other than the marketplace.  And that’s really the ‘hub’ of what I do, which is to combine land, capital, and resources to produce cattle for market at a significantly cheaper cost than the marketplace average.  And, so you have to use your business and economic skills to find ways to combine all those things to bring your product to the market in the most efficient way possible.  And I really enjoy that aspect of it and challenge.  If we do that right then we can set money back and expand our operations.

What do you dislike?

Until recently, there was a fair amount of risk since we were expanding and borrowing a lot of money.  So there were a few sleepless nights when you might have an economic reversal in the market.

Having employees is probably the greatest joy and the greatest headache in life and that can be somewhat difficult.  But I’ve been doing this for almost 30 years now and you learn mechanisms of how to deal with managing employees, so it becomes easier to deal with over time.  But I think in this business that labor issues in general are probably one of the biggest headaches that people will have.

How do you make money/or how are you compensated?

If we sell our cattle for more than what our expenses are we make money.   And the secondary way is just the long term appreciation of your real estate.  And so, those are probably the two, the realized profits and the unrealized profits.

How much money do you make as a cattle farmer?

Well, I hate to go there, but given that we’re a capital intensive operation we might net $200,000-$300,000 would probably be typical at this point after costs.

What education or skills are needed to do this?

One, they would need to spend quite a bit of time in an apprenticeship with an existing operation for a period of years to figure out what works and what does not and I was fortunate enough to have my dad for that.  There are so many nuances you have to pick up on; whats going to be the most cost effective way to do it this year, working around weather, economics, people, and the contractors. I’d say if somebody was going to do this that they would clearly need to spend a number of years with somebody on the inside to get a good understanding of what’s going on.

There have been many, many cases where a wealthy person that has made money, inherited money, or made money in another industry decided to step into agriculture and most of the time they literally get their head handed to them and and lose a lot of money.  They think farming is simpler and easier than it is and they can apply knowledge from another industry and do it better than a lot of the cattlemen already out there.  But the majority of the time they lose their shirts.  And it’s because they don’t know the nuances of the business.  So, I would say it’s very important to get an apprenticeship and work in this business for a while to really understand what all goes into it.

What is most challenging about what you do?
Managing employees where they can work together, be productive, and have a similar vision of what we’re trying to accomplish.  That’s probably the biggest challenge requires the most of my ‘higher level thinking’, if you will.

What is most rewarding?
Clearly the fact that everything is so visible. Your crops, you can see if things have gone well or gone poorly. With the livestock, you can both see in the animals and you can see in the financial returns if things are going well or going poorly.  Or if a piece of farm equipment breaks down and you can see it get repaired.  You’re dealing with physical, tangible things.

Also, being outside is rewarding.   I bet most of my employees, one of the reasons they’re here rather than a higher paying job in town is that they’d rather be outside even though it’s often too hot or too cold, or raining and the wind blowing, we’re just kind of the type of people that don’t like being cooped up I guess.

What advice would you offer someone considering this career?

To work with an existing operation to gain the experience.  That is first and foremost.  And then, if you’re wanting to get into the business, try looking for an existing operation that has shut down, or gone under financially etc.  Because the infrastructure, feed lots, facilities, etc. can be so expensive, you really need to get a good deal on those things to get started.  And so, your physical facilities would already be set up and ready to go instead of having to start with raw land from sratch.

But I can’t stress enough about having experience in the business.  Go work on a farm somewhere because boy, trying to jump in without the experience, you could have a Ph.D. in agronomy and livestock, and the chance of success would be about as strong as doing brain surgery on yourself, the chance of success is going to be pretty remote.

How much time off do you get/take?

Typically with family vacations, a week or ten days.  But also there will be some agricultural events or such that I will take off for and I really enjoy.

But I don’t really take that much vacation.  As they say ‘work is only work if there’s something else you would rather be doing’.

When things are going well if I was offered to have a limo pick me up and a leer jet take me to the Super Bowl and then bring me back, I’d say, “No, I want to stay out here with my Track-ho and keep digging.” Or whatever job I’m working on.

And so, vacation only works if there’s something else you would rather be doing and in many cases, I probably get more joy out of this than normal people would.  It’s one of those jobs, if you didn’t love it, you’d hate it.  Fortunately I love it.

What is a common misconception people have about what you do?

One, that agriculture today is mainly the family farm with the husband, the wife and the kid doing all the labor.  The most successful farming operations are much larger and would almost be considered businesses or industry.

Another one is that the economics are fairly easy, when in fact, the economics keep knocking people out of agriculture.  There is a relatively small number that go ahead and prosper.

What else would you like people to know about what you do?

I think in all of life, farming or whatever you do, what achieves and determines success is how well one is able to interact with other people.

Where you’re able to reach common goals, resolve conflicts, achieve win-win solutions, and have everybody on the same page.  Employers, suppliers, people I sell to, that is probably the most neglected item and it is clearly the most important.

You’ve got to foster relationships in this business, and in any business, and focus on how you and the people you do business with can grow together.  All too often I’ve seen people worry about how much the other guy is making, or how much some supplier of theirs is making, instead of looking at whether the relationship is mutually beneficial or not.

People who have done well in this business did not put together a big fortune by going out and screwing other people, or nickel and diming people, they did it by making others successful.

What do you do for a living?

Technically you would call it a stream restoration engineer. It falls under the broader category of environmental engineering.

How would you describe what you do to someone?

You could probably boil everything that I do down to the main concept that we want rivers to transport dirt correctly. Now that sounds pretty boring but it entails a river depositing too much sediment or eroding away too much sediment from the banks so what we do is we take the stream systems in urban or in rural settings and we rebuild them to reflect what they would have been had they been left natural.

What does your work entail?

We do all of the site analysis, the initial data collection. We do a lot of surveying with laser survey gear or aerial survey gear if we get flown. We do the request for proposals. We do the scope of work, all the paperwork associated with getting the project, then once we get the initial data we do the design. We do the contracting too and we use a lot of computer system design software. After the design is done we move into the construction that we oversee. And then afterwards, there’s usually some period of monitoring involved where we say OK how has the habitat improved or not improved since we did this restoration so we can learn a little bit more.

A lot of the misconception[about engineers] people get in school is that engineering is just strictly math, science, and formulas and is very boring and you’re always at a computer with a bunch of nerds. But a lot of what we do is outdoors. A lot of it is data collection. A lot of it is site visits. It’s not just the applying of the formulas. There’s a lot of creativity. To design a stream and make it flow wherever you want it is very fun and it’s usually with a lot of outdoorsy and outgoing people.

What is a typical work week like for you?

There is no typical work week. Some weeks in the summer, because we have or we do all our construction during the summer, we can be working straight for ten days. Obviously since we’re working in rivers it’s very dependent on weather so you can be working straight for ten days and then have seven days of rain where you have to get everything out of the river because you don’t want everything washed away so it’s heavily dependent on the weather in the summer. In the winter you’re doing all your extra work and getting things ready for the construction period. But I think it’s probably the same with most jobs these days you could expect to work a 40 or 50 hour week every week on average.

In the summertime it’s mainly outdoors during the day but I’ve done projects in the winter months where we’re in streams in November/December/January where you’re wearing a 5/8 inches or ¾ inch thick wetsuit just to keep yourself warm. There’s blocks of ice hitting you so it is kind of intense. So these projects can be done during the winter but it’s not ideal. Usually in the winter it’s a lot of computer work.

How did you get started in this career?

My dad is an engineer so I’ve been doing engineering since I was just about a knee high and so I’ve kind of had this engrained in my brain. I love being outside. I love getting my hands dirty. I like collecting my own data and then doing the analysis. I guess I just kind of defaulted into it by not wanting to do anything else.

What do you like about what you do?

I like that it improves habitat. I like that it’s good for the environment. I like that you get involved with communities. Plus most of people are usually really happy with the work that we are doing, that we have done, or that we will do for them. It’s also just fun managing people, time, and budgets and seeing your initial site go from something that you designed, to something you constructed, and then to something that people can enjoy.

What do you dislike about it?

The variability in the hours is sometimes very hard to handle. Like when you are trying to work the 60 or 70 hour weeks. Those get you exhausted, you’re tired and your back hurts, your knees hurt, and your hands hurt so it’s not as much fun. You miss out on Friday and Saturday nights sometimes. It’s definitely worth it but maybe not to you at the time.

Also a lot of times we are involved with many, many, many different groups, government and private agencies, and towns so there is a lot of communication that needs to be done.  A lot of people have their hands in these projects a lot of the time and so it’s annoying sometimes to have to report to 50 different people and agencies who aren’t always sure of what they’re talking about even though they’re the ones making the decision.

How do you make money or how are you compensated in this job?

We put out a whatever request for proposal and draft up a scope of work. Whatever we budget for our time for the project is usually what we have to get paid so sometimes you make a bunch, sometimes you lose your shirt but you usually have a good idea of how you’re going to come out so it’s not hourly it’s sort of project by project.

How much money do you make in this job or career?

Well it’s very variable depending on what projects we get and how much we think that we are going to need for each one which can obviously vary greatly from project to project but I would say on average right now I probably make around $50-55 a year.

How much money did you make starting out in this career?

My first job I was paid $42,500 and it was doing more civil engineering. I was doing parking lots designs and things like that. That was with my Bachelor’s straight out of college.

Are there any perks associated with this job?

The fast cars and women are great. Joking. It takes a certain person to want to be an engineer. Usually the first two years of engineering school you see about half the kids dropout and go somewhere else. So it definitely takes a certain type of person but you feel really good about the work that you’ve done and the work that you’ve done hopefully helping people and helping the environment . I think that that would probably be the biggest perk that we see.

Also, you do get to set your own hours. Yes, the work needs to get done but if it rains and you can’t get out there then you don’t have to work that day. Or if you are ahead of schedule you can take a few days off so setting your own schedule and working outside and being very physical in the work that you do is nice. It’s not monotonous, the site is always changing, the people are always changing, it’s very dynamic.

What education or skills are needed to do this?

Again the hardworking thing definitely comes into play and you really have to be a critical thinker. You’ve got to be able to think ahead and be willing to sort of work outside of any scope that people might normally expect to work in. As far as backgrounds it’s a lot of math, a lot of science and engineering classes. People do tend to have a lot of different backgrounds in this field; people can be biologists, zoologists, entomologists as well as engineers. There’s a bunch of different reasons to do stream restoration and so really you want to know a lot about flowers, plants, sediment transport, hydrology, hydraulics, all of that different stuff.

As far as schooling is concerned, as with any degree that you get these days you don’t learn much about the real world in school. You take a lot of engineering classes and they tell you a lot of math and formulas and science and then you get out in the real world and you sort of learn that there are programs to do that or you can’t just apply something. You have to go out and get your hands dirty and figure it out for yourself and how to apply it.

If you’re specifically interested in stream restoration or environmental engineering I would say definitely enroll in engineering your freshmen year of college because you can’t really transfer into it unless you’re coming from something with a heavy math and science background. I would say do internships, get out and volunteer, things like that. That all gives you incredibly valuable experience. But as far as college, just takes your chance in engineering. Who knows, you might like it and if not you can always switch out and you’re already ahead for whatever else you might want to do.

What is most challenging about what you do?

The interaction between project managers, town officials, the public, the outreach to the public—all of that. It’s a very, it can be a sensitive process. It can be time consuming. It can be frustrating. So dealing with the different branches of the people who are involved with the project, it’s a difficult task as well as just the sheer planning that is involved with a lot of these things. You don’t want to flood people. You don’t want to make anybody angry so there’s a lot of thinking ahead and really seeing your projects as a whole.  Those are probably two of the toughest things.

What would you say is most rewarding about it?

Like I mentioned earlier being outside is great. I think it’s really rewarding being able to go from breaking ground or standing on a site doing the survey, taking the existing data, coming up with a design, building it sort of with your own two hands, and then seeing the results afterwards. The entire process is just—it’s a lot of fun to be able to build something like that. That’s one of the more rewarding things and the community responses are usually pretty positive and that’s always fun to see.

What advice would you offer someone considering this career?

Stick with your classes and stick with engineering in school. They try and weed people out in engineering by making you take hard classes and boring and general classes your first two years before you start getting into the interesting stuff. A lot of people think that engineering of any sort, not just environmental engineering, is all just math and science and formulas and books and reading and that type of thing and it’s not. It’s very visible these days in the things that you do. It makes a difference and it’s a lot of fun once you are out of school.

Also with engineering there’s always going to be jobs. Engineers do everything to do in the city like transportation, water, communications, roads, anything like that and so there’s probably always going to be jobs as long as there are humans.

How much time off do you get or take?

Standard one week of sick, two weeks of vacation but really you can take off as much time as you want as long as you get your work done. If you are able to complete it in one day, great then you’ve got the rest of the time of the project off but that’s probably not going to happen. Overall though I would say that I get more than the average person at about four weeks a year.

What is a common misconception people have about what you do?

Well like I was saying earlier a lot of the misconception people get in school is that engineering is just strictly math, science, and formulas and is very boring and you’re always at a computer with a bunch of nerds. But a lot of what we do is outdoors. A lot of it is data collection. A lot of it is site visits. It’s not just the applying of the formulas. There’s a lot of creativity. To design a stream, make it flow wherever you want it is very fun and it’s usually with a lot of outdoorsy and outgoing people.

The next question is what are your goals and dreams for the future in this job?

Right now a buddy of mine and myself are working to develop a program. It’s a program that we will hopefully turn into a software program one of these days that will take your existing data and all your parameters that you can find into this spreadsheet program and it’ll output all the information that you need for your design. It will take a lot of the danger and human error out of the work.

It will make it so that everyone can do this because we want people to be doing it who are not only engineers but who are biologists or somebody who wants to make a river more healthy for the fish habitat, for butterflies, for anything, even worms. So we want to make it more available for the public to be able to do without having to know what the engineering and math and science is behind it.

What else would you like people to know about what you do?

Stream restoration is a growing field. It’s a dynamic field. There are practices that we did five years ago that we don’t use anymore because they’re debunked. They don’t work as well as other things and it’s fun working in a field that is growing. You get to come up with new stuff and new ways to do these things. It’s sort of a playground and it’s creative and you don’t always have a boss telling you what to do and how to do it because we’re always pushing the envelope to come up with a better way to do things.

What do you do for a living?

I am a Registered Nurse.

How would you describe what you do?

I take care of patients who are recovering from a wide range of illnesses or from recent surgery.

What does your work entail?

I’m responsible for making sure that the patient’s pain is under control, that they receive their prescribed medicine on time, that their vital signs are stable, that the doctor’s orders are being followed and I act as a liaison between the doctor and the patient’s family.

What is a typical workweek like for you?

I work three, twelve-hour shifts and I’m stuck on night shift right now.  The night shift is really hard.  The money is good but the rest of your family is scared to call during the day because they’re scared that I’ll be sleeping.  But you kind of get used to it and then eventually you get to work days.  So I work 3-twelve hour shifts that usually end up being about 13 or 14 hours because you have to stay late sometimes to finish charting.  It ends up almost being a 40 hour work week.

How did you get started?

I actually started by going to college and getting a psychology degree and with that degree I was only able to get a job as a receptionist.

I knew a psychology degree doesn’t really do anything unless you go for your PhD or Masters so I really wanted to help people but I didn’t feel like I was really getting that opportunity and my sister was in nursing school and loved it so I went too.

I went to a school that offered a one year accelerated Bachelor’s degree in nursing program.

It was twelve months because I had already had my Bachelor’s degree.  I didn’t have to take all the other classes and so I got a second Bachelor’s.

It was a crazy year. It was probably the most difficult year of my life but it was worth it.

What do you like about what you do?

The best part is seeing patients get better and knowing that I played a small role in that. We get a lot of patients who are in a lot of pain after their surgery which can be pretty stressful trying to get their pain under control.  But once they’re comfortable and smiling it does feel really good to know that I helped them out.

What do you dislike?

I wish I had a lot more time to spend with my patients. There are some busy nights where I’ll run into a room to see something and my patient wants to tell me a joke or a story about her grandkids and it absolutely breaks my heart to have to interrupt them and leave because the patient in the room down the hall is throwing up and another patient is crying in pain and another patient has to go to the bathroom.  So there’s sometimes that there is so much going on that I feel like I can’t give my patients the attention that they desire and that I want to.

How do you make money or how are you compensated?

Nurses are all hourly so they’re not a salary. It’s not a salary position unless you’re in management.

How much money do you make as a registered nurse?

In Kansas City it seems like most hospitals for new graduate nurses start around $21 or $22 an hour and then every year the salary goes up by a little bit less than a $1 a year. I’ve been a nurse for 5 years and I’m making $26 an hour.

Hospital nurses tend to make more than other types of nurses. At doctor’s offices they only make like $18 or $19 an hour even if you are a registered nurse. So you definitely get more in the hospital and then hospitals usually pay night shift workers a shift differential which for me is $3 an hour so I get my base pay and then for the night hours I get $3 more an hour and I also get additional pay.  If it’s a weekend you get $2 an hour extra.

How much did you make starting out in this career?

I started out at $22 an hour maybe but that was in TX.

What education or skills that are needed to be a Registered Nurse?

Most hospitals require a registered nurse degree but you can do that two ways. There’s actually a Bachelor’s degree which is called a BSN and some hospitals prefer that and pay more; other hospitals don’t distinguish between a diploma nurse, which is an RN without the Bachelor’s, and the Bachelor’s.

What is the most challenging about what you do?

The patient load and the severity of their sickness.

If I have five patients and I have one patient who demands a lot of time because they’re in a lot of pain or they’re really sick then my other four patients might not get the attention that they deserve.  So I’ve learned time management skills are just absolutely critical and even then sometimes I’ll have my whole night figured out and something will come up and throw everything off.  So it’s definitely a skill learning to prioritize and juggle my plans for the night I guess. That takes a long time to learn.

What is the most rewarding for you?

The patients, just getting to know the patients and their families and seeing them get better.

What advice would you offer someone that’s considering this career?

The best advice I could offer would be to contact a hospital in the area and see if there’s any way that you can shadow a nurse for a full shift because I think that a lot of people watch TV shows and see doctors doing all the work and they think that’s the way things actually are and it’s not like that. Nursing is a very, very physical job. It’s a lot of thinking and it’s a lot of work.  I love it but I’ve met a lot of people who I think if they would have actually seen what it was really like before they went to school that they might have chosen something different.

I don’t want to sound discouraging by any means but I think it’s a good idea to actually shadow someone to see what it will be like.

How much time off do you get or take?

Well we technically have a 12 hour shift. It’s only three days a week so every week you get four days off and then it seems like hospitals give you a lot of paid time off because you don’t get holidays paid.  With most jobs you get paid when you don’t have to work on a holiday but hospitals they’re open every day all day so you sometimes have to work holidays so we do rack up a lot of paid time off and so it just seems like occasionally I’ll be able to take a day or two off which is really nice.

What is a common misconception that people have about what you do?

That nurses just give medicine and they don’t do much else.

What are your goals or dreams for the future?

I guess to eventually to try different areas of nursing and just see what is all out there because that’s one of the best things about nursing, there are so many different areas that if you get bored with something or something isn’t the right fit you can try a different specialty, or you can go from being a floor nurse to an operating room nurse and it’s almost like a different profession.  So you have a lot of options I guess. In the future I would like to try out different things and see what the best fit is for me.

What else would you like people to know about what you do?

That’s a good question. To be nice to their nurses! No, I’m kidding.  It’s a very rewarding job, you learn a lot, it’s constantly evolving, that people should only go into nursing if it’s their true passion.

And that if you really do want to help people and you are interest in medicine that it is a very rewarding and exciting career.

What do you do for a living?

I’m a full time ocean lifeguard in San Diego

How would you describe what you do?

Basically it is helping people in need, giving them band-aids, CPR, first aid, water rescue, river rescue, all sorts of stuff.

What does your work entail?

We have a lot of people on the water here in San Diego so we do a lot of ocean water rescue.  We also have a river rescue team when rivers flood.  We have dive rescue teams, so we can go straight into the water and touch the bottom.  We do a lot of boating rescues also where we put out fires if needed.

What is a typical workweek like for you as a lifeguard?

A typical week is never the same.  It’s typically very active, we do a lot of in-house training, non-stop duty calls, and rescues etc.  But it really depends on the weather, how the water is, and the time of year.

How did you get started?

For me it was straight out of high school and during college it was a part time job.  I was working here in the summers and then would go back to college during the fall and winters.  This is now my 11th full year.

What do you like about what you do?

I like helping the public, whether it is answering a question or saving a life.   Plus, I also like that I’m on the beach in flip-flops and a t-shirt.

What do you dislike?

Maybe the water getting cold in the winter, that is about it.  The water gets real cold.

How do you make money or how are you compensated?

We are hourly employees, so we work a forty-hour workweek and we get paid based on that.

How much money do you make as a lifeguard?

For first timers, they start at about $15 dollars an hour.  Full time, they start at about $22 dollars an hour.

How much did you make starting out as a lifeguard in this career?

When I first started 11 years ago I was only making $10 an hour.

What education or skills are needed to do this?

Basically you just need a high school diploma or a GED.  Then to become an actual lifeguard you need lifeguard training.  So they hire you and put you in lifeguard school and also about forty hours worth of first aid class.

What is the most challenging?

Just trying to stay fit and healthy.  It can be pretty dangerous around the cliffs in the water, so a lot of people get hurt, we are prone to injuries, so it’s challenging to stay in shape and stay healthy.

What is most rewarding?

When you get a thank you from a visitor.  Or when you save someone’s life and get a ‘thank you’ or they give you a hug.  That feels pretty good.

What advice would you offer someone considering this career?

Train hard, you’ve got to be in pretty great shape, it is a demanding job, and just enjoy helping other people, that is what the job is about.

How much time off do you get/take?

We work five or six days a week depending on what schedule you are on.  You tend to work weekends so you are off Mondays and Tuesdays most of the time.  When you sign up to do this job you know you are not going to have normal weekends like everyone else.

Okay so what is a common misconception that people have about what you do?

Maybe that show Baywatch.   I’m still trying to live that down.

What are your goals or dreams for the future?

Well working here is the dream.  But I want to continue doing my best to make sure that nobody drowns, and just keep helping people out.

Hollywood Stuntman John Stewart was kind enough to visit with us about his career as a stuntman.  You can find more information about him at his site www.hollywoodstuntman.com

What did you do for a living?

I was a stuntman and a stunt coordinator.

How would you describe that job?

It is very physically and mentally demanding.  We are not daredevils either, we calculate and try to eliminate risk as much as possible.

What did your work entail?

It was different everyday.  One day you would go to work and pretend to be drowning in a swimming pool, the next day I could be jumping off a sixteen story building on fire, and the next day I’d be jumping a car over a train.  It was different all the time.

What does a typical workweek look like as a professional stuntman?

It is never nine to five.  You are always in a different location, different country, and different city.  It is kind of like being a rock band on tour.  You never know what you are going to be doing.  One day you are going to work and you are doing fights, the next day you stand around doing nothing all day.  Sometimes it’s a lot of hurry up and wait.

How did you get started in this career?

I doubled for Matt Dylan on a film in Boston.  I did a few films there and then moved to LA.

What do you like about being a stunt man?

It wasn’t 9 to 5, you are doing something different all the time.  You get to travel a lot, and I get to be creative, especially when I’d get the scripts and there wouldn’t be stunts in the scripts yet.  So I would get to write and direct the stunts and actions scenes.

What did you dislike about it?

When a job ends it could be your last one.  For the most part a movie would last for a month or two and then you have to start looking for work again.  In general stunt guys are always looking for work.  It is not a career where a huge percentage make it either, it’s very difficult.  It is not how good you are, it is who you know.

How do you make money or how are you paid in this career?

You’re salary is paid through the screen actors guild just like the actors.  You also get what is called a stunt adjustment, depending on how dangerous the stunt was, and then you get residual checks just like the actors.

How much money did you make as a stuntman?

Back in the 80′s and 90s I was making over $150,000-$200,000 a year.  But that didn’t happen every year after that, it all depends on how much work you get.

How much do you make starting out in this career?

$600 dollars a day or so is your daily rate.  You can find the exact figures if you go to the screen actors guild for stunt performers, they have the day-to-day and weekly work rates.  Then you get a stunt adjustment on top of that if it is a dangerous stunt, which can be anywhere from $100 to $50,000 or $100,000 depending on the stunt.

What education or skills are needed to do this?

A gymnastic background helps.  Mathematics helps for figuring jumps and stunts.  It is not a dare devil sport at all, it is very calculated.  Most stuntmen come from gymnastic backgrounds though.

What is most challenging about this career?

The most challenging thing about it is finding work.  Once you’ve you’ve found the work the next thing is to try and do something that hasn’t been done before and keep it fresh and new because the movie audiences now are really sophisticated.  It is not like the old days where you used to jump off a ten foot building and impress people.  Now it is twenty stories and on fire, and of course now they have a lot of computer CGI too(computer generated imagery).  A lot of stunts you see in movies today are not even real, it is faked.  When I was doing it in the 80s and 90s everything was real.  What you see is what they did, that is how a lot of people got hurt and killed.  Now it is a lot of  CGI in the bigger movies.  They are still using the stunt guys, but they are doing some of the stunts and they are making it look crazier with CGI.

What is most rewarding about this career?

I guess for me I broke some world records back in the 90s jumping high falls off multi-story buildings on fire.  So, setting records was rewarding. Also, it’s rewarding to see what you wrote into a script being in the final outcome of the film.

What advice would you offer someone considering this career?

To be honest I would say walk away.  Find another job.  Try and follow your dreams of course, you should always do that, but the reality is very few people make it in this business.  I don’t even know the stats, but probably less than 3% will come out here to try to be a stuntman and actually make a living at it.  Like I said it is not how good you are, you could be the best stunt guy in the world and never work a day.  It is all about who you know and being connected.

But, you always want to follow your dreams to so I would say have a plan B in case it didn’t work out.

How much time off or vacation would you take with this type of job?

Well it depends.  If you are shooting in Hawaii then you are on vacation.

You don’t really get vacations in this industry.  You work when you work and you take time off when you take the time off.  It is not a 9 to 5 job where you work and then get a vacation.  A lot of the films you do on location so it is like being on vacation.

What is a common misconception people have about this job?

That stunt guys are superheroes and that we don’t bleed or break arms. It is all real and a lot of people get killed doing it.

What else would you like people to know about this career?

Take a good look at the names on the credits on some of the older movies on stunts.  A lot of those people are not around any more, and a lot of films are dedicated to some people that were killed.  People think it is all glamour and glory and truth of the reality is people get hurt all the time.  People end up in wheelchairs for the rest of their life.  Some people die.

What do you do for a living?

I climb and inspect cellular phone towers.

How would you describe what you do?

We climb up a cell tower, say anywhere from 200 to 500 feet and do maintenance mainly on cellular phone towers changing changing out transmission lines or antennas. Sometimes we just change out light bulbs on the tower, that sort of thing.

What does your work entail?

It varies. A lot of times it’s just maintenance maintenance, changing out antennas and feed lines and, you know, fixing lighting systems, changing bulbs.

…we’ve had people come to work here saying how they’re mountain climbers, they’re not scared of heights or anything and they don’t last a day…

Some weeks you actually get into the building of the towers and that kind of stuff.

How did you get started?

I had friends that worked for a company in Cedar Rapids at the time, they asked me if I wanted to try it and I said, Sure, you know, see what it was going to be like. If it didn’t work out I still had another job I could go back to, but I did it for two days and loved it, so here I am.

What do you like about what you do?

A lot of it is just that feeling you get when people are just set off and amazed when you tell them what you do for a living. They’re like, I could never do that. You’d never catch me up that high.  And it’s always a thrill because every tower’s different.

You’ve got to love your job because if you don’t love your job, then you’re not going to last at it because it takes a certain kind of person to be able to get up every morning and out of bed, go to work and then climb 500 feet in the air.

Every tower is a new, every one is a new experience so you never know what you’re going to find once you get up there.

What do you dislike?

The traveling’s pretty bad. You’re all over three or four states, so it’s kind of tough on the home life.

How do you make money/or how are you compensated?

It depends on the company. I’ve always been paid by the hour. But there’s some companies that’ll pay their employees by the job.

How much money do you make as a tower climber?

It depends on who you work for.  Some companies don’t pay very well, so it varies.  Last year, I think I made $60,000. But that’s working 60 hours a week on average.

What education or skills are needed to do this?

There’s some education because the more you move up, the more – as far as computer equipment and stuff, you need to learn how to run. But really you just need a good work ethic and I guess you’ve got to be a strong worker because nobody likes to carry anybody else’s weight.  Also we’ve had people come to work here saying how they’re mountain climbers, they’re not scared of heights or anything and they don’t last a day because they can’t do it. I don’t know if it’s the whole just being out in the open because when you climb a mountain you have a big wall in front of you so you can’t see nothing else but when you climb a tower, 90% of the time, you can see right through it.

What is most challenging about what you do?

I’d say the winters. I always say if you can make it through the winter, you can usually make it through about anything because being up in the air like that for –even if you’re up there just for an hour, it’s usually ten times colder in the air than what it is on the ground, you have nothing to block the wind.

What is most rewarding?

I think I’d have to go back to the same thing where you tell people what you do for a living and just the awestruck looks on their face sometimes.

What advice would you offer someone considering this career?

I guess my advice to anybody is never get comfortable when you’re up in the air because when you get comfortable, you stop thinking about what you’re doing. That’s when bad things could happen.

How much time off do you get/take?

Usually we work year-round so you get your vacation which is a week or two every year. The weather allows you some every now and then, like if it’s thunder storming, then obviously, you’re not going to be climbing when there’s lightning. Sometimes during the winter if it’s too cold and we’ll take a day or two off.

What is a common misconception people have about what you do?

There’s a lot of people that say, Oh, man. You guys must do a lot of drugs and stuff to be able to do that. They think we’re all crazy.

What are your goals/dreams for the future?

Well, right now, I’ve moved up from being a tower climber full time. I’m actually working in the office now as a project manager, so I’d like to just keep doing what I’m doing right now, moving up.

What else would you like people to know about what you do?

Just that you’ve got to love what you do. You’ve got to love your job because if you don’t love your job, then you’re not going to last at it because it takes a certain kind of person to be able to get up every morning and out of bed, go to work and then climb 500 feet in the air.

What do you do for a living?

I make beer.

How would you describe what you do?

Well, brewing is about 80% cleaning, so some say we’re glorified maids. I don’t like that term, but you have to be exceptionally clean in the brewing industry, so you’re always cleaning something. Whether it be circulating chemicals in a tank to clean it and then circulate chemicals to sterilize it and then, or maintaining your draft lines need to be clean because bacteria can build up in them. So you’re always cleaning something. Even during a brew day anywhere the beer or wort”before it’s beer it’s wort”comes in contact, you have to make sure that chemical passes through those pipes or hoses or valves and fittings.

…it’s still work but it’s work that you love. It’s not like you wake up in the morning like, Oh, crap! I got to go make beer today!

Besides that, there’s small amount of paperwork involved. You have to do your paperwork for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms. Twice a month, they get paperwork sent to them, and they get $7 a barrel that we produce. The state gets a percentage of beer that we sell and so there’s a small amount of paperwork. I’m not a desk-type of person, and a nightmare job for me would be sitting in front of a computer, in an office. So this is neat because you’re always on your feet. It’s very physical work, but you’re doing something different. Creating recipes is a fun part of it. When I was searching for jobs and I ended up here, I liked the pub environment and a smaller system where I can use my creative freedom. I can create new batches of beer, keep the customers on their toes as what’s coming out next; different styles, that kind of thing.  And then taking existing recipes and tweaking the recipes slightly to try and improve them. And the only way to really do that is change one small thing at a time. You can’t, change your water treatment and add different hops or different yeast strain, all three things, and then expect to know what the difference is. You have to do one subtle thing at a time. When I was searching for this current brew job, I had been offered positions in a micro brewery or production plant, where it’s basically a beer factory at that point where you’re, you know, at 2:10, you start this pump and at 2:30, you move this lever and do this. And you’re brewing the same beers day in day out, and you got the bottling line and the tagging line. That’s not a good job for me to have. I really like the small pub environment where I can come out and say hi to the customers, or you see a sample platter go out and you could approach the table after they’re half-way through them, and find out what they like, what they didn’t like, and what could I do to make it better kind of thing.

What does your work entail?

Typically, nine to five. Brew days are always longer. Brew days here tend to be about ten hours. There’s not so many events in this area because there’s not a lot of breweries, but coming from Chicago, it seemed like there was a beer event every weekend, and I would attend as many as possible to spread the word for the pub and get people introduced to Craft Beer in general. But they’re long, labor-intensive hours.

…that’s one of the beautiful things about brewing. It’s as complicated as you want it to be or it’s as simple as you want it to be. I’ve had great homebrew from extract formulas and I˜ve talked to people who have Doctorates in Fermentation Science that make great beer…

I like to fall into a schedule where I can get weekends off. That’s not going to happen here just because we do tours on Saturday. So typical days off here would be Sunday, Monday”because those are your slower days and because Monday we’re closed here”so that makes sense.

How did you get started as a brewmaster?

I have a pretty unique story. I mean, most people homebrew and develop a love for it and decide to seek it out as a career and go to school for it. Mine is completely different than that. My father was a school teacher, and he started collecting beer cans in the ˜70s when it was real popular¦And since he had summers off, we would actually camp at campgrounds as a family vacation, and tour breweries. And in each brewery, we went to get a couple of cans for his collection. And we were doing this since I was like four or five years old. Now this is the early to mid ˜70s when there weren’t brew pubs or micro breweries, they were all very large industrial-size brewing facilities. And growing up in the Chicago area, there were really none in Chicago to speak of, so we would go to Stroh’s in Detroit and we’d go to Hamm’s in St. Paul. And we’d see Pabst and Schlitz and Miller in Milwaukee, and we would go to Lacrosse, Wisconsin where they had Old Style¦ And we would tour all these plants all around the Midwest pretty much. And it left a huge impression on me as a young boy, walking into these breweries and seeing these tanks that go up seven stories and the smell of beer on the ground and the cold rooms and the smell of the wort boiling with the hops. And I could remember being in a mid-sized brewery in O’Clare, Wisconsin. It was like a 50-barrel brew house, pretty small compared to some of the other large ones. And the brew master was giving the tour”and a big burly German guy with a big beer belly and wearing suspenders and stuff looks at his watch and he’s like, Oh, it’s time to add the hops. And he’s like, Hey, kid. Come here, and he points to me”and I was about seven years old at this time”and he says, Climb up this ladder and I’m going to hand you this bushel of hops and dump it in, but don’t fall in the kettle. And I remember climbing up the ladder and looking at this big tank boiling and squirting¦I dumped in the bushel of hops, and I remember being seven years old and thinking like, This is what I want to do when I grow up. And so, freshman year, I sit down with your guidance counselor in high school and he’s like, So what do you want to do with your life? kind of thing. I said, I really want to be a brewmaster, then he looks at me and he like throws his pen across the desk and folds his arms back, and he said I’ve been doing this for thirty-two years and I’ve never heard anything like that. I’ve heard, I want to be a bartender or I want to work as a beer distributor kind of thing, but I’ve never heard anybody say that. And he’s like, Well, let’s check it out. So he gets down on his primitive Apple computer at that tim and lo and behold, there’s actually a school in Chicago that teaches how to make beer. And this the Seibel Institute of Technology and they’ve been teaching how to make beer since the 1870s. And for the longest time, you either went to Chicago, Illinois to learn how to make beer or you went to Munich, Germany where you better speak fluent German because they don’t have English translators. So I’m like, That’s great!. We looked further into it and the courses were quite expensive. At that time, it was about $10 or $12,000 dollars to go attend an eight-week course where you’re basically there nine to five and you’re just inundated with a plethora of information. So, in high school, I took a lot of math and chemistry and biology, and ended up going to community college where I furthered my chemistry and biology thinking that this is what I’m going to need. I ended up getting a job at UPS to kind of pay bills while in school, and save my money to go to beer school. And right before I turned 21, at my hometown of Burlingame, Illinois, a small brew pub opened up called the Wine Keller. And I’m like, This is unbelievable! There’s actually a brewery in my hometown. But I wasn’t 21 yet. So, as soon as I turned 21¦the owner had a free tour and tasting to promote his new company, and they’d been around for maybe a year at the most, and I went there with my family and my girlfriend at the time, and did the tour. And the brewmaster was a German guy named Udo, and during the tour, he had mentioned that his son Christopher was the assistant brewer, but he was attending college in August and he needed someone to fill his shoes. And I thought, No way! This is unbelievable! So after the tour, I pulled him aside, introduced myself. I said, I’ve always had a love for beer. I’ve wanted to be a brewmaster since I was a kid. I’m saving my money to go to beer school, and he’s like, Oh, that sounds great, he’s like, Why don’t you start tomorrow? And I mean, literally, I had been 21 for three or four days and I’m working in a commercial brewery now. So I was part-time assistant apprentice for six years. During those six years, there’s numerous brewmasters that came and went. As it turns out, this German named Udo was quite a stickler to work for, wasn’t very people-friendly. And I was still working at UPS at the time so I never did attend a beer school, but I learned hands on from numerous brewmasters, some who have gone on to open their own very prominent breweries themselves. So then it came down to a career choice in the mid ’90s of Am I going to drive a brown truck the rest of my life or am I going to make beer? Well, driving a brown truck, you’re a teamster, you get union, you get great benefits, you make great money, and then I’m thought, Well, then I’m dealing with, brown packages, wearing the same uniform every day, doing the same route every day, in Chicago weather and Chicago traffic, and thought, I want to make beer. So, I bounced around quite a few breweries in Chicago, the last one ended up canceling the brewing operations on me with four days’ notice. And I had an eight-month old daughter at the time, and my wife who worked for the same company, got let go as the party planner, so we were both without a job kind thinking, What are we going to do? So I got my resume together and the owners of this brewery actually contacted me through a person who had done some brewery work here. And then I did a phone interview, they sent my family down back in July to check the area out, see if you liked it. They made me a nice offer, and I accepted and sold my house, and I’m here now.

What do you like about what you do?

Well, the creative freedom that I had mentioned. I love interacting with the customers. I love the sights and smells of making the beer. If I don’t want to deal with the public I could close the door and turn the tunes up, enjoy music all day as I’m working. Or I can go out and visit with the customers and ask them what they like or don’t like about the beer. And, of course, I have a passion for beer and I love good quality handcrafted beer, so that’s the main part. And then getting free beer and food in the process is a nice perk.

What do you dislike about being a brewmaster?

I dislike the heat, especially here, the brewery here, for some reason, has no fresh air coming into it, and we just had a real hot spell and it was absolutely brutal. I’m down two belt sizes in four weeks because of it. But you basically, from the time you start till the time you finish, you are completely sweating. I’ve worked at other breweries that had, dedicated air conditioning units just for the brew house”and it was never uncomfortable” but you still got sweaty during periods of the brewing because you’re dealing with steam and heat and hot things. But that’s the most difficult part that I dislike is the heat.

How do you make money/or how are you compensated?

It’s a salary position with benefits. This particular job helps with insurance. You get a twenty dollar a day allowance for food and two free beers a day. Other companies will offer a 401k and profit sharing, part ownership where they will take a part of your salary and then you’ll be a part of the profits of the business.

How much money do you make as a brewmaster?

With all the benefits involved is between $40,000 and $50,000.

What education or skills are needed to be a brewmaster?

The biggest thing that helps is home brewing. You’re starting at home and tinkering around with recipes and switching from extract to all-grain and seeing how that works, and trying out different styles and using different yeast strains. And then a solid education will help. I know the University of California, Davis, has a bunch of different beer programs. I think the University of Wisconsin offers some beer programs, and definitely the Seibel Institute of Technology, that I mentioned, in Chicago is one of the most renowned brewmaster schools. Definitely willing to work physical labor, the ability to handle heat, the ability to work long hours”they can be long hours especially if you’re on your own. You need to have a solid foundation of Chemistry and Biology, which isn’t completely necessary”and that’s one of the beautiful things about brewing. It’s as complicated as you want it to be or it’s as simple as you want it to be. I’ve had great homebrew from extract formulas and I˜ve talked to people who have Doctorates in Fermentation Science that make great beer so, it’s just all those things.

What is most challenging about what you do?

The most challenging aspect is probably keeping up with demand. I’ve worked at brew pubs where you can make a batch of beer and you don’t have to worry about making it for month or two because it’s a lower demand setting. Here it’s really busy, so trying to predict the future of saying, Okay, this tank is getting low, you better have a back-up for it, because beer takes two to six weeks to age depending on the style so, planning for the future and keeping up with production is one of the most challenging aspects.

What is most rewarding?

Most rewarding is sitting down after a long hard workday and enjoying a cold beer, absolutely. And just hearing the feedback from the customer saying how much they love your beer or, you know, What did you do to change it? I love it so much better. That kind of thing.

What advice would you offer someone considering this career?

I would say get a home brew kit. Go to a home brew shop either online or in your neighborhood and ask a lot of questions, read a lot of books, subscribe to the beer publications, there’s numerous of them, check out all the beer websites and learn as much as you can before you decide to make it a career. Some people don’t like the smell of wort boiling, some people don’t like the smell of (spun grain), it’s revolting to some. I personally love it and can’t believe that some people find it offensive. I would say, find out if you like it first. I mean, most people think it’s going to be great, you know, I make beer, and some people have quit careers to be brewmasters and love it to death, and others have left the brewing profession because the money isn’t there, especially without much experience. I guess the starting salary is usually around $30,000 or less, $35,000 on the high side, and a lot of people will think they’d love it as their passion and their career and decide that there’s no way to make enough money at it.

How much time off do you get/take?

Typically, it’s a two-week paid vacation and two days off a week, but that doesn’t include festivals which, like I said, luckily there’s not a lot of brewery events going on here. When you have those you can plan on busy weekend.

What is a common misconception people have about what you do?

That we’re fat! No, you know, most people think of a brewmaster in a typical German environment with a big, burly, beer belly guy. My concept of the brewmaster, especially growing up as a kid, was always the guy with the white lab coat walking around with the clip board taking readings and telling people what to do. I guess another misconception would be that we’re drunks. I don’t know too many brewmasters who abuse the privilege. I mean, it would be the easiest thing in the world to come in and start nipping off of the tanks first thing in the morning, but you’re not going to get anything done and you’re going to end up hurting yourself because there’s a lot of dangerous chemicals and pumps and things and things that trip over always. Buy yeah, I would say those are the two biggest misconceptions.

What are your goals/dreams for the future?

Ideally, I would like to open my own. Location is the main thing. I mean, this place has a great location; you’re close to campus, there’s an endless supply of traffic, you have new customers every year. It’s an ideal situation. So I would say my ideal goal would be to make enough money. Save some money, and gather enough people and investors together to open my own location, in a small-scale, location to be determined.

What else would you like people to know about what you do?

Just that I’m doing something I love. I mean, it’s still work, sure I’d rather sit at home and watch cable or read a book and make money, it’s still work but it’s work that you love. It’s not like you wake up in the morning like, Oh, crap! I got to go make beer today! You have to have that passion and there are so many people I talk to that they hate their jobs. I love my job. I love what I do. Moving from Chicago to here was a huge change especially with a family. If I was a single guy, it wouldn’t be as big of a deal, but it’s something that the wife was there to support me in that decision and she knows that I didn’t want to get a job in a machine shop or something. And especially with this much skill and experience, I wanted to continue doing this.

What do you do for a living?

I’m the operations manager for a tower company, a company that builds broadcasts and communications towers, but I got my start climbing up and down them.

How would you describe what you do?

We do everything that’s involved with building and maintaining a tower.

What does your work entail as a tower climber?

We build the towers, we take them down, we put the lights on them, we change the lights, we paint them, we scrape them, we run the antennas and lines.

When you go up a tower and you’re climbing 400 feet, you’re not coming down to get a cup of coffee, you’re not coming down to warm your hands, you’re not coming down for a lunch break. When you go up the tower you’re going to be there all day, it’s kind of like being like a mountain climber.

One of the more interesting things for most tower climbers is when they do a really high re-lamp, because most of them they’re are at night, and the broadcast towers could be 1,000 or 1,500-foot tall. They take the station off the air at one or two a.m. and you’re climbing in the wee hours of the morning changing the bulbs. That would be one of the more interesting things, the view is really good. Other than that it’s a lot of hanging lines and putting nuts and bolts through holes and running cable. A lot of tower crews are on the road all the time, where they just go from one job to the other, always on a per diem and having to get lodging, never really putting down roots. We’re fortunate in our company here that we do most of our work centrally located, but there’s still a lot of time on the road, a lot of times it’s hotels and work, hotels and work.

How did you get started?

I got started because I had relatives who owned a company. I had been in restaurant management for twenty years and I’d had enough of that. I thought it would be really exciting to get out and do something where you’d be physically challenged all the time and your decisions have more of an impact than whether the salad dressing’s correct. It takes a certain kind of person to really enjoy this though. You have to want to do it. If you’re just looking for a job, this isn’t for you.

What do you like about being a tower climber?

I like almost everything except for the winter time. You maintain a pretty high level of physical fitness, though you don’t end up looking like Arnold Schwarzenegger. You’re not cut and all that, but you’re dragging yourself up and down towers every day, so you do have a certain level of physical fitness. Secondly, you’re outside all the time. So if you like being outside that’s a big plus. Also, it’s usually small crews and you’re kind of out in the boondocks, so you have to be a problem-solver, and every situation is a little bit different, things never fit the way the blue prints show, so sometimes were called to do some reengineering to make things work. When I was climbing with we had a great bunch of guys that traveled together, and it was a team effort. Everybody pulled on the same rope.

One of the more interesting things for most tower climbers is when they do a really high re-lamp, because most of them are at night, and the broadcast towers could be 1,000 or 1,500-foot tall. They take the station off the air at one or two a.m. and you’re climbing in the wee hours of the morning changing the bulbs…the view is really good.

If you weren’t getting after it, someone else was. There was a credo where you wouldn’t leave a guy on the tower. If you did your portion of the work and were done with it, you wouldn’t scamper down and let the other guy finish it. Everybody came off together, everybody went up together. That was a lot of fun then. People related what we did to the last cowboys, because we were always traveling and always out and about. So it can be a lot of fun.

What do you dislike?

I would dread the cold weather. Being up on a tower in the cold and knowing the night before that it was going to be 20 degrees the next day, and there’s still no way you’re out of it, the only way through it was to finish it, and you know you’re going to be up there for eight or nine hours. The cold is the thing that I like the least. I think almost every tower guy will tell you that. If you go up a tower and you’re climbing 400 feet, you’re not coming down to get a cup of coffee, you’re not coming down to warm your hands, you’re not coming down for a lunch break. When you go up the tower you’re going to be there all day, it’s kind of like being like a mountain climber.

How do you make money/or how are you compensated?

We’re hourly employees and depending on what level of climber you are; whether you’re a beginner or an elite climber, or if you’re taking crews, your pay varies.

How much money do you make?

Depending upon how much you work and what company you’re with the pay can range from $32,000 to $50,000 per year. They don’t make as much as you’d think. When I first started I thought, “I know these guys are making $50 an hour,” but it’s not true.

What education or skills are needed to be a tower climber?

It goes without saying that when you’re going up a tower and you’re at any height at all you’re going to need great balance. You have to be focused to be successful as a tower climber. If you’re scatterbrained or if you don’t plan well, and you’re not paying attention, you could have accidents.

It’s really not a dangerous job if you follow the rules and pay attention. There’s a lot of fatalities in the industry and it’s due to the fact that people don’t follow the rules or they’re not careful. I’d rather be on a tower than climbing a tree or on a roof. It really doesn’t have to be dangerous if you pay attention…

have to be focused because not only are you responsible for yourself, but you’re responsible for everybody that’s on the tower with you. If you drop things from any height, it could be very dangerous. As far as the skills that you need to develop, it could be as basic as sticking a big bolt through a big hole. Or it can be as complicated as learning some kind of test equipment and working with radio frequencies. There’s a wide gamut, so there’s room for everybody. At the beginning stages, if you can climb up a tower and be safe and follow instructions and follow the safety procedures, and put a bolt in a hole when someone tells you to, you can start. Then from there, as you gather more skills, you can take it to a higher level. Other than that, I think just stick-to-itiveness. You are going to get in that situation where it’s 2:00 in the morning and the dispatcher’s calling saying “It’s not working,” and it’s 20 degrees, and you just feel like crying and going home, so we look for guys that can just stick it out. The applicants that we look for must have a background in outside construction only because it takes a certain ruggedness to be outside and to manhandle that stuff. Anyone that really decides to, though, could give it a go.

What is most challenging about what you do?

Just the cold. Usually the physical aspect of climbing if you’re doing it every day isn’t a big deal. At the very beginning though, you’re using a whole different set of muscles, and so the first few weeks are challenging just because you’re tying to keep up with the guys that have been doing it for a while. But that’s probably not the most challenging. The most challenging for me is always the cold.

What is most rewarding?

It’s going to sound weird but when you’re working with a small crew you develop a good sense of camaraderie. And also, when you’re out there at the beginning of the week and the truck comes with a bunch of steel that gets off-loaded and by the end of the week, there’s a 400-foot tower standing there, there’s a sense of accomplishment. I think that and being outside is most enjoyable. And you feel kind of free because you’re not super supervised. There’s nobody there but your crew, generally. As long as you’re taking care of business and things are going well no one messes with you.

How much time off do you get/take?

In the winter the days get a lot shorter and you can’t be out as much and weather can affect you if you have iced up conditions or thunder storms. Usually, when the weather’s nice, you’re going at it from light to dark, so if you get a chance to get a rain-out day, you take advantage of it. So as far as time off you’re going at it all year as long as the weather’s working with you.

What is a common misconception people have about what you do?

I think there’s two… one is that we make a ton of money. Because a lot of time you hear truck drivers on the radios as they’re going by saying, “Look, those guys got to either be making $50 an hour or on crack,” and neither one of those are true. And second one is that it’s so dangerous. It’s really not a dangerous job if you follow the rules and pay attention. There’s a lot of fatalities in the industry and it’s due to the fact that people don’t follow the rules or they’re not careful. I’d rather be on a tower than climbing a tree or on a roof. It really doesn’t have to be dangerous if you pay attention, and if your company follows the rules.

What else would you like people to know about what you do?

Probably one thing that I’m always amazed by is that when you’re selling a job or you’re talking to a customer and they call you at 3 in the morning for an emergency and they’re kind of shocked that it’s expensive. I’m surprised that people don’t expect that it’s going to be expensive to get a tower crew to come out and do some emergency dispatch on Christmas Eve. People pay $50 just to have the plumber stop by, why wouldn’t they expect it to be expensive to have a crew come out and climb a tower in the middle of the night?

What do you do for a living?

I’m a commerical painter.

What does your work entail?

I started out doing everything, doing all the painting, getting the estimates, getting the estimate turned in, getting all the paint, have it delivered to the job site, then actually do the work, finish and make sure the client is happy, then get your payment, deposit that and record all this process all while hoping that in the middle of that job you are booking other jobs. So that got to be a challenge which is where having the guys helped out because now basically all I do is go out and do the estimating and the invoicing and then just quality check. So, rather than eight hours of my day spent actually doing the labor, I’m going around trying to continue the booking process and the invoicing and all that work.

How did you get started?

I was in school to get my athletic training degree and we moved into a place and we asked the landlord if we could get a decreased rent to paint it and she said ‘ok’. The landlord had someone she hired to paint the other side of the duplex and paid them $1200 and ours equated to $300 bucks, and our side looked better and so she said ‘well, there are plenty of people that have property that could use this’. So me and my friend that I lived with at the time came up with a name and put together some paint buckets for the logo and put out flyers all over town at hardware stores and that was in 2000, so seven years later here we are. For awhile I did it only part time. I started getting more calls for the painting thing and I was like ‘I’m going to give this a try’, because I’d get my pay check from my other jobs and I’d be like, ‘I still need more money’, and so I would plan on the paint jobs to make that happen and I was like, ‘maybe I can just turn that into something’. And it was difficult in the beginning but that was two and a half years ago now. So I went full time self employed and now I’ve had a crew of guys for over a year and I’ve been keeping them busy enough to keep them around.

What do you like about what you do?

It’s kind of a double edged sword. I love it and sometimes it’s challenging at the same time. I can basically write my own schedule. If I don’t want to get up in the morning, I don’t have to get up in the morning but then later in the day I’m just thinking about what I could have gotten done if I had gotten up in the morning. So, I love that that aspect of it, but at the same time if you are not disciplined about it that can be your downfall.

What do you dislike?

The inconsistency, it’s not like a regular job where you show up and you know you are going to get that money and you know you are going to have that money to count on. I can be in the middle of a job that’s going to end at the end of this week and I haven’t gotten any calls and I don’t know where the next job is going to come from. So that’s my biggest, the thing I hate the most is just not having any idea where the next job is going to come from.

How do you make money/or how are you compensated?

You walk in and you just got to figure out ‘how much is my time worth on this?’, ‘Is it my time or is it my guys’ time?’ ‘Alright, I have to pay my guys this much and I still need to make some money off of this.’ So planning those things out and then coming as close to possible as measuring square feet for paint costs. Another thing that a lot of people don’t take into consideration is the taxes. You try to figure out those numbers so that you do have a profit margin, otherwise it will get eaten by those little figures that don’t get taken into consideration very often. Then you put all those things together on a QuickBooks estimate form and send it to the customer and hope that you are able to fit all of that into their preconceived budget that they have in their head.

How much money do you make?

I had a really,in my opinion, a good year. It was our first full year of the painting company, with two guys only working six months of the year. We grossed $110,000. I ended up netting close to $50,000 from my first full January to December year of self employment, that’s pretty exciting.

What education or skills are needed to do this?

I don’t think a degree is necessary. But having a business education definitely would help. I mean you’ve got to know accounting, you’ve got to know how to set up the corporation right as far as an LLC, then you get to learn how to save money on taxes and make sure you are fileing properly so that you are not getting taxed the most possible. Then there is the invoicing and the management of customers. Then there is the advertising aspect of it, to make sure that you get your name out there enough to get more business and then there is the labor aspect of it that you might have to be doing until you get to the point where you don’t have to do it. It can be done, which I’m proof of the first three or four or five years I was doing it, while I was in college, but, then if you want to keep growing and reach different levels you’ve got to manage it on a higher level. And there is always the risk of getting sued or injured. If you get injured you’re screwed because you are your source of income, there’s not disability you can take or if you screw up somebody’s house on accident you could get sued. So, there are always those concerns that a lot of people just forget about.

What is most challenging about what you do?

Keeping your crew motivated and keeping them paid, and worrying about where the next job is coming from. You can’t think so selfishly about how am I going to get paid, and how am I going to be able to afford to live and then have some fun at the same time, because you’ve got guys that are depending upon you. One of the my guys has a wife and two kids. So I have got to provide for them and keep them happy first otherwise I ‘m not going to be able to get the work completed, especially considering that it’s been a year since I have actually done a lot of the work and you get rusty after that length of time. So just managing all those aspects of it and then managing the other people is the challenging part.

What is most rewarding?

At the end of the job, seeing the guys happy that they are getting their paycheck and enjoying the work that they do. And what’s amazed me the most, and I guess I just never thought of this because of my ambitions as far as wanting to own a company, but there’s people that just want to work. So that parts probably the most rewarding. I had one guy with two kids and a wife and another guy with three kids and a wife and I’m supplying them with solid work. It’s a pleasure to watch them enjoy doing the work for you. And being able to communicate with them and kind of empower them to a certain degree that they feel that they have some control as far as decisions are made and things like that.

What advice would you offer someone considering this career?

It’s tricky. I’m actually just now getting to the point where I am prepared to do things the right way. And I say the right way in that, the majority of the people who start up a business, ideally have a business plan, ideally they have capital and then put all those things together and put themselves on the market. If anything I had negative capital because I was in college and and trying to get to this point. As a result I was kind of piecemealing things together, you know, ‘oh I have an extra $500, we’ll call that marketing money and make some business cards’, so I’ve just been piecemealing all that together. The advice would be, in a perfect world, be disciplined about putting together a structured business plan and having goals, even if they are small goals, and say, ‘I am going to make sure I get three jobs this month’. If you get more than that, then that’s good. You’ll beat your goal and now you can have something to grow from. But it can be done without that.

How much time off do you get/take?

I like to think there a controlled out of control situation where sometimes you feel like, ‘I’m taking a lot of time off’ but then again there are time’s when I am working at two o’clock in the morning because that’s when I am feeling the most motivated. I am not always that person who can get up at eight o’clock in the morning and go ‘okay, it’s time to get work done’. Sometimes it is one o’clock in the morning and there are some creative juices flowing.

What is a common misconception people have about what you do?

That I don’t work. People always say he is “working”, you know. But there is a mind draining process to all these things. I’m in one of the few painting companies that have a website, and website development is probably one of the most mind draining things that I do. It’s lot’s of little things and then, ‘how can I plan for tomorrow to make it the most productive?’. So there is a lot of seemingly idle time that’s not idle.

What are your goals/dreams for the future?

I don’t just want the painting company. I have an idea box full of other things from at least a half dozen or more inventions that I would like to pursue as well as other business ideas. Someone could argue that I have already spread myself thin, I’m trying to make sure I don’t and focus on what I’ve got going on right now and keep that growing.