BootsnAll Travel Community

I am 19, and a college student at UC-Berkeley right now. My love for travel is what keeps me going. I am currently attempting to decide what to focus on in college to best facilitate travel. To start off with I am totally ignorant about the working world. I figure there must be some professions that are easier to keep re-entering than others which might depend more on hierarchical, ladder-like systems. I am interested in any general advice people have about how they've managed to balance work and travel, but also I would like to know if there are some professions that are easier to come back to after long absences than others.

Dear Confusion,

Having spent my life in a profession that limits working overseas opportunities (but I still managed to work on 4 continents), I'd advise you look for a skill easily transferrable between countries, like medicine, music, teaching, etc. You may only be thinking of breaking off work to travel to other countries, but later may want to stay and work in some countries. Your choice of profession will influence your ability to do this.

Hope this helps,

Happy Travels.

Mo.

I work as a waiter and it pays pretty well and it is also really easy to get time off. The hard part is saving up all of the money. I've pretty much stopped going out to bars and I don't buy fancy clothes or have a car or any of these luxeries that define our modern world. But the result is that I've been to europe on two separate month long trips in the last 12 months, and I'm planning on going back for even longer in a month or two.

I have noted opportunities for webmasters while traveling.
A good auto or motorbike mechanic can always get a job, anywhere at any time. But the best overall skill to have (other than being in medicine) is to be a whiz at Excel.

A good one field to go into is accounting. It's really easy to leave and find another job when you get back. It's kind of expected that you will change jobs every 2-3 years anyway and there's nothing preventing you from traveling! The only problem is accounting very nation specific. There isn't much international opportunities.

quote:

Originally posted by Joe Ehrlich:
I have noted opportunities for webmasters while traveling.
... But the best overall skill to have (other than being in medicine) is to be a whiz at Excel.

Joe's spot-on, us web bods are pretty portable - the easiest way to get a decent pay-rise is often to change jobs - IT isn't for everyone though - there's quite a lot of pressure at times and you often work crazy hours - but the pay is excellent.

I would suggest that you learn a little bit of everything and try to specialise in one or two areas (something creative (e.g. photoshop or flash) and preferably a database (SQL server is always good)) that way you'd be able to fit easily into any organisation and you'd be bringing in skills that are usually expensive to outsource.

If you get a chance, then learn another language - Spanish and French are easy enough and spoken widely - language skills always look good on your CV/resumé.

You can always get work teaching English, Maths or Science -but you'll need some paperwork to back you up before you could work in Europe.

Thank you all of you for the imput. Anyone else please feel free to add your wisdom.

teaching. All those paid vacations. Added bonus, sometimes you can get your school to pay for your travel, depending on what you do & where you go...I'm trying to wrangle some educational funding from my district for a travel adventure next year.

go IT/Computers. I've been travelling for 8 months now while working from the road. Best 'normal' job ever short of being filthy rich. The independence is incredible...but, as others pointed out, not for everyone.