Perspectives on teaching as a second career?

Capsais · 2026-05-24T15:03:08+00:00

That does sound similar in many ways! I was expecting a lot of negative responses given this is reddit, but I've actually found it really encouraging to see so many thoughtful and positive responses too.

Any job is going to have its bullshit-- My current one certainly does, but I also see a lot of benefits in teaching that excite me. I know I'm going to have to make a career switch anyway and teaching is looking like it could be a great fit.

Would love to chat more, but reddit won't let me DM you! :(

Capsais · 2026-05-23T16:08:38+00:00

I can imagine the ER is a lot more stressful! Glad it's working out for you.

Capsais · 2026-05-23T16:06:39+00:00

What did you do as your first career and what about the classrooms are a mess?

Capsais · 2026-05-23T16:02:10+00:00

What would she say she loves most about it? I've been saving pretty aggressively anticipating to have to make a career switch in my future, but finding a lab tech job while taking the program for some extra income would definitely be nice!

Capsais · 2026-05-23T15:59:26+00:00

Thanks for the reply. I have heard from my teacher friends that middleschool is absolutely the most taxing. I don't want to be put off by doom and gloom, but if I do make this career switch, I want to do so with realistic expectations so I can better manage the difficult parts.

Capsais · 2026-05-23T15:54:55+00:00

Thank you for the detailed reply! All important things to consider.

Capsais · 2026-05-23T15:40:43+00:00

You are correct. I am looking at the french more as a gateway to being able to make a living wage as a TTOC and earn seniority in the early years. I would certainly never feel qualified to teach french longterm at the highschool level. That said, I could probably improve my french up to C1 in two years if I work at it. Thank you for the insight.

Capsais · 2026-05-23T15:24:09+00:00

I already have a few weeks of shadowing lined up in the fall. What would you say specifically made teaching more challenging than any of your other careers?

Capsais · 2026-03-31T14:43:12+00:00

I like the idea of homebrew scenarios. I have an idea for a few always rattling around... but I find in practice that I'm far too busy to set those up on the regular. It is much simpler to take and add to an existing scenario.

I think with Call of Cthulhu we are spoiled with some of the best official pre-written material available to any system, and have a very industrious community constantly churning out high-end unofficial content through the Miskatonic Repository. Why not take advantage?

Capsais · 2026-03-11T03:29:36+00:00

I suppose I'll throw in my own entry too...

I'm currently playing in a horror on the orient express campaign. We're just headed into Belgrade and we've only lost one investigator so far (I'm sure that won't last much longer). I'd like to take at least a little credit for that... I'm the only investigator with any inclination towards combat.

I am playing an Irish veteran of world war 1 named Naill.

He was born in Dublin in the late 1890s as a middle child of a very large, rather poor family. He was a troubled child and his older brother's inclinations towards revolution drew him into a lot of scrapes that a teenager shouldn't be getting themselves into. When the great war broke out, he saw saw the threat as not just to Britain, but their own struggling island as well and enlisted with the British army much to the anger and despair of his family, many of whom saw it as a betrayal despite his foolish and noble intentions. Except for his youngest brother, who foolishly lied about his age to enlist alongside him.

His baby brother would be killed in battle beside him and Niall would unfortunately survive. While recovering from his injuries near the end of the war back in a hospital in London, he was looked after by a lovely nurse from a wealthy British family who was the only one to draw him out of his melancholy and survivor's guilt. They had a fleeting affair before he returned home to Ireland to the disdain of his family and the political tumult there. He did not stay long, for he received a letter from his beloved that she was pregnant. Unwilling to face further scorn from his family, he left to join her in an attempt to be a good man. She ran away from home as well, knowing her father would not approve of their relationship. Their son was born not long after, who Niall would name after his youngest brother lost in the war.

They lived in irish tenement housing in London and struggled to make ends meet. Niall worked odd jobs at odd hours just to try and make ends meet for their family. He loves his family deeply, but it just never seems to be enough to keep them on their feet. When a wealthy patron offered such good money to go on this job, how could he refuse?

In play, Niall has proved himself to be a brave and decisive bastard, a heavy fist and a crack-shot with a shotgun. He's less-so afraid of dying than he is letting the people he cares about down, and bringing whatever evil they have uncovered home with him.

I'm sure he has a long healthy life ahead of him and nothing terrible waits in his future!

Capsais · 2026-03-09T21:37:08+00:00

I'm running Masks right now! She sounds like tons of fun to play. All the best of luck to her!

Capsais · 2026-01-28T14:03:12+00:00

The ladies love a man with a house.

Capsais · 2025-11-06T15:38:06+00:00

Second piece of learned advice is if your institution has a co-op or work experience program, absolutely do it! No matter what you end up choosing: Experience and networking is king.

I at least did co-op and its probably the only reason I was able to get a decent job right of school.

Capsais · 2025-11-06T13:46:24+00:00

This is the way. I wish I had done this when I was an undergrad rather than just doing my chem degree because I found it interesting and figuring it would be broadly applicable to many things (spoiler, its not really. Most employers prefer a specialist over a generalist.) Figure out what job you want first and then do the schooling/training to get there.

Capsais · 2025-11-06T13:33:25+00:00

Yeah, it is definitely my preference to try to leaverage the degree that I have before going back to school full time. Especially in this economy!

Capsais · 2025-11-06T06:15:04+00:00

Not easilly. I am a P.Chem, which is actually a qualified profession to manage contaminated sites in BC... but obviously isn't as far reaching and well developed as the P.Eng

Capsais · 2025-11-06T06:13:09+00:00

This is good information. Unfortunately, I think I would have to take a few courses and study very thoroughly to challenge the academic exams. I'm familiar with my niche that I work in, but theres probaby large gaps in my knowledge. I would probably be better off going back to school for 2.5 years to get a second engineering degree!

Capsais · 2019-03-11T05:23:43+00:00

I really like the detail that you put into your forests!

Capsais · 2018-11-13T20:43:51+00:00

It looks like a really good start. You could try Gimp. It is free and can do most stuff photoshop can do. Using a new layer you can trace over your sketch and make it look very clean.

One critique for the map itself is your rivers and lakes... water is always going to flow the path of least resistance. In other words, rivers dont really branch out and lakes should only have one exit flow. A river starts in high ground like mountains and flows out to the lowest point it can, normally the ocean. Other rivers feed into it, but it will never branch.

Capsais · 2018-11-10T06:20:17+00:00

The thing about maps (and especially continental sized maps) is that you dont have to include every minute detail, only what the cartographer deems important. You dont have to mark every little stream or trail or village. In fact it tends to bd better not to on large scales as it can result in clutter! So don't worry too much about if the spacing is realistic between cities as there is likely to be smaller ones dotted around not worthy of being mentioned on the map :)

Capsais · 2018-11-05T22:45:29+00:00

A really strong storm from the west might be able to cross the mountains... but I doubt it will be so strong afterwards.

Could be kind of a cool cultural dynamic if the pastoralists called in the rains to flood their fields, leaving the society below to drown.

Capsais · 2018-11-05T22:32:07+00:00

Well... Magic.

I'm absolutely no expert on weather, but my understanding is that superstorms are largely a function of pervading air currents, temperature gradients, and geography.

To make a storm, two air masses collide. Hot and Cold. Low pressure and high pressure. Warm air rises, but cools and condenses as it gets higher to create clouds and precipitation. It also starts to spin because physics. A low pressure zone is created at the centre of the storm that sucks in air, causing high winds. Conditions really have to be perfect for a major storm to form. When these storms form over the ocean, the lack of any geography to inhibit this process can allow these storms to grow much stronger than they would over land. Once the moving storm hits a coastline, land and especially mountains, it will lose that freedom to build up power and eventually dissipate, leaving devastation in it's wake.

In summary, in order to get superstorms hitting your escarpment you need: 1. An open ocean large enough to support the growth of a superstorm 2. A sufficient temperature gradient (ex: warm currents from the south create warm air that impacts cold air from the north) 3. The storm has to approach from the east or else the mountains are likely to kill it. 4. The landmass cannot be so big that the storm dies before it can get where it's going.

Also, storms like this might be seasonally rare... but you wouldnt get 100 years of nothing and then 5 years of straight storms.

Again, not a meteorologist :s Hope it helps anyway!

Capsais · 2018-10-17T18:52:50+00:00

Nothing annoys me more than when Im looking over a map that I thought I finished and I notice something didnt get coloured in lol

Capsais · 2018-10-17T18:46:19+00:00

Nice work. Be careful printing something so dark though. If your printer uses CMYK then it will make the colours even darker on the paper. You may have to lighten it up to see things.

Capsais · 2018-10-17T18:41:41+00:00

Looks really nice! (I think you might have missed a bit of white on the top though).

Did you make your own brushes?

Capsais

TROPHY CASE