I earned a degree in German, English, and secondary education with a minor in fine arts. I am a 2012 graduate. I am certified to teach - have to renew the certificate this year and take continuing education credits, but probably won't because I can't afford it and don't want to anyway. I know my content areas very well. I was great at linguistics, especially etymology and historical linguistics. I have an interest in computers and programming (HTML/CSS/PHP, learning some Python, know basic C++). At my job, I am good at organizing and planning, counseling people, and I believe I have good communication skills. I facilitate meetings and I believe I am good at this as well. I am good at picking up on patterns and training people. When I am motivated, I can do anything and I inspire others.
I am usually self-motivated, but have been struggling for a while.
The families I work with love me. I was just told that at a meeting before posting this today. It breaks my heart to hear this at a time when I am forced to think about quitting. Most of the people I work with chose me to be their case manager. This is typically not the case in my field. The state recently changed many aspects of human services and case management which heavily impacted my job. Those changes were handled poorly and there are many flaws in the technology we use to track progress, write reports, and develop plans. The quality of my work could be much higher if the technology was better. Mostly, this is all paperwork that is ultimately irrelevant, but that's all the management effectively cares about. Everybody on my caseload is doing well, is happy with everything, and I handle things in a timely manner and effectively.
Given your front line experience - and presumably that you work in social services at perhaps the county or state level - what about a move to the "back office" from the front lines? Not like staff management (or HR, Finance, etc. UGH) but in project/program management, strategic analyst or a policy analyst role? In these types of roles, superior motivation, organization and people skills are critical. The ability to help groups of people reach consensus - while working on your own 'brilliant ideas' should be an asset in that type of role - finding and directing new programs, new funding, new strategic directions etc - and working with those way higher on the chain of command. I know very few people grow up wanting to be "policy analysts", LOL, but its actually a very interesting type of work that really can affect the strategic directions of organizations - from local to national.
You might not even need to change employers - or maybe you need to make a move between similar types of orgs - education, healthcare, etc etc. You wouldn't need much more eduation (maybe professional certification at the worst) and you wouldn't need to take a step backwards into a apprentice role. Conceivably you should be able to maintain your pay, keep salaried and not have to do those time sheets (hopefully). All these skills are highly transferrable.
If you're really motivated to go the IT route, yes, you'll need some sort of training/certification. Length, cost and complexity depends on what you want to do: programmer, DBA, network analyst, IT security, business analyst, enterprise architect, etc etc. Again, transferrable skills.
A really interesting field if you're the programming type, generally good with numbers and a complex problem solver is something called "data science". Hot, in-demand, tech oriented career. A background in computer science, engineering or business is generally an asset, but some of the better data scientists I know have a more general education, have developed the required technical skills and have "real life" experience doing something, not just sitting behind a computer monitor all day. Once again, transferrable skills.
