So how does something along the lines of: I appreciate the opportunity to work at ———— organization. I have accepted a job that is a better fit for my career and family needs, and ask that you accept this as my letter of resignation. I wish you all the best. Signed, person who just needs to be done with you (I’m two semesters from being done with my special education degree and have been offered a long term sub position in special ed)

I kept my ambulance position part time. I’m still on the schedule for a 24 hour shift a week because honestly I’ve got so much seniority there I get paid pretty well, comparatively. A 24 hour shift there earns me more than three weeks at the social work job. I left that full time for several reasons, but the main one is that I wanted to be home almost every night. My oldest’s emotional issues were escalating and we felt more stability would be better—so Mom home every night except one(and Dad is home that night) a week would help him. Obviously, that’s not working out so well. I SPECIFICALLY asked about evening work hours for this very reason, and was assured that there are very few people who work after 5.

I had a patient who was diabetic and had a diabetic dog, a GSD. He had the vest and was clearly remarkably well trained, but she was grocery shopping and ignored his alerts. We discovered later that she had a word she would use to tell him all was well and to back off, but she was unconscious at the time from hypoglycemia. The dog wouldn’t let any of us near her and she couldn’t tell him the signal to relax. We wound up waiting for animal control to secure the dog as no one desired to either get hurt or to hurt the animal. If she had stopped breathing, I suppose something drastic would have happened. It’s simply something to consider. If falling is an issue for your daughter, you will want to make sure the dog will allow for help, especially if she has, say, struck her head and is unconscious.

Normally i would be all honest and clear that I know they purposely misrepresented this job in order for me to take it. I don’t need the reference and the turnover is so high that my supervisor likely won’t be there when I go to apply for teaching positions next year. But, my cousin in law is in the same department and is vying for promotion—so I want to be graceful.

I would almost never have two clients in the evening because they are kids and it would get too late at night. But travel time between clients would be paid.Travel time would be paid if I went to the office, took a company vehicle, and drove to the client’s house. However because of the location of the kids, I’d drive 23 miles south to the office, drive 48 miles north to the client’s house, then drive 48 miles back to the office past my own house and 23 miles home. It just makes no sense, even getting paid for the time. I agree: I need to figure out how to gracefully exit. DH would like me to stay till March 6, because I can pick up a long term sub job at my kids’ school that week. It’s already been offered and would last the rest of the year.

Paperwork has to be done at the office, 23 miles from my house in the completely wrong direction from all my clients. (Say, the office is 23 miles south and all my clients are 25-30 miles east and north of my house) When I worked the job before, you did it at home and faxed it. New regulations say on office computers only on the shares server. I’m stuck working around the clients schedules, and many of them are in after school activities or parents/foster parents aren’t home till 6. I was originally promised my caseload would be close to home, all in my county. Well, these are foster kids and they ARE all from my county. What they didn’t tell me is my county has so few foster homes they contract out to other counties and all my kiddos are placed out of county.

This is not a JAWM. I’m looking for objective advice. I took a job back in social work, which I did before EMS. It’s the same job in fact, but the paperwork requirements have doubled. Unsurprising since it’s a Medicaid funded program. The job is nothing like what they told me in the interview. I’m traveling 45 minutes to see a client; that travel time is not paid and I only get mileage after the first 23 miles, since I could theoretically drive the 23 miles from my house to the office and utilize a work vehicle for the client visit. Most of my kids are 25-28 miles away with a 45-60 minute drive time. They can only bill Medicaid for the time I’m actually providing services to the client or completing paperwork. I was also told I’d almost always be home by 5:30, but with commute time and the kids after school schedules it’s more like 7-8. It’s not working. On top of this my toddler was just diagnosed with “significant cerebral palsy.†And DS7 with “severe anxiety.†I have dropped to part time but it’s still almost every evening plus trying to add in paperwork time. DH thinks I should just quit and stay part time on the ambulance(which pays 1.5x an hour what this job pays). He says to substitute teach in our older kids’ school on days he’s home with the toddler. Subbing pays significantly better than this job as well and I’m working on a second bachelor’s in special ed, so it makes sense in the long run. But. I feel guilty quitting a job I just took and they invested a month into training me. But it really is many more hours than I signed on for. If it matters, my cousin’s wife originally recommended me for the job. She works there, and I don’t want to reflect badly on her. If I leave I really need a graceful exit.

I’ll be honest—if she’s fallen, and has a protective dog that won’t let people near her, that won’t end well. Eventually someone will call 911, the dog won’t let EMS near her, and law enforcement will get involved. I’ve seen it happen, and it’s not pretty. I really think training one yourself is not a good idea. You need some very specific things in a dog, and that is likely best left to a professional service dog trainer.

My grandfather and step grandmother were a similar gap. 20 years, I think. She was only a year older than my mom. They were very happy until her premature death. I miss her a lot.

I’m dying. Omg. My aunt came to my bacholerette party and gifted me so many things I could never have imagined my aunt even knowing about....

They no longer make them, but we found a 2008 Chevy Aspen for a good price. It’s been a perfect car for me; we put studded tires on it and it’s been awesome in the snow. The third row is easy to get to, the only downfall is limited storage.

If he starts volunteering where he is, that will give him good experience. He may decide he wants to take a bunch of tests throughout the country instead of focusing on a local area. Not every place has a residency requirement. I know someone who took a firefighting job in Georgia; he lived in New York. The career department in the county I work in requires that you have to be in that county or a contiguous one in order to test, some just require that after hiring you move within a certain distance. It’s just so variable that it’s hard to give advice when he has no idea where he might end up.

I do know people who have become career firefighters with no volunteer experience. The teens are gaining credits through volunteering as many states and towns allow you to be a junior fireman at 14 or 16. It’s helpful, but I don’t think it’s going to make or break his career as a firefighter. He also may be able to find a bunker program for college—he can volunteer and live at the fire department(or housing provided by them) while getting fire fighter training and earning a degree(some require it is fire science, others, like the one that is affiliated with Ithaca College and Cornell, doesn’t care what the degree is). That gains him experience and training while saving housing costs.

By the way—about degrees. If you’re in a volunteer fire department it’s likely much of your training will count as credits towards a fire science program. My husband got the associates degree that way. However, career ending injuries in fire and EMS are so common—adding a degree in another field isn’t going to hurt. I had a degree in something else so when the day came, I had a place to go. My husband is STILL fighting with workers comp, four years after the original injury on a fire scene that should be covered, but workers comp is a PIA. He doesn’t have a backup plan or degree, and the settlement and workers comp won’t be enough for the rest of his life. He will eventually need to retrain for another career; it would be easier if he already had that bachelor’s degree in something.

Paramedic training depends on where you are. Some fire departments run ALS level ambulances, some run BLS first response. The career department I work most closely with runs BLS first response so all their guys are at least EMTs, but they do have a couple paramedics that work on the private ambulance a couple days off a month. Several of the guys do have second jobs, but I gather it’s not so much a money issue but more that they have a lot of days off and want to find something to do. I wouldn’t bother with a four year fire science degree. The department he gets into will want to train him themselves. I do know some career firefighters with bachelor’s degrees, but they’ve got degrees in history and political science. My husband has an associate’s in fire science, and originally took a few civil service fire tests before deciding he wanted to be a flight paramedic and volunteer fire chief instead. He said the degree didn’t really help him much on the tests. At least here, career fire fighters get the job through civil service tests. I wouldn’t bother with paramedic training, but some experience in a volunteer fire department and getting his EMT would be useful. If he winds up with a department that wants paramedics, they’ll send him to school themselves.

I have second hand knowledge. I (was) a career paramedic(now part time) but many many of my close friends are career firefighters.

I’m no help. I do know of an instance where someone was living in a basement for a long time before getting caught. So my weird story—my husband lost a set of keys. They included his work keys and the keys to the firehouse, so he was really annoyed. We turned the house upside down looking for them. Never found them. Six months later, the baby and I were the only ones home. The older kids were spending a fun day with their grandparents and my husband was working a 24 hour shift. The dogs were crated and the door locked. I was in the living room, rocking the baby to sleep. When he fell asleep, I took him upstairs. When I came back down, that set of keys was sitting on the floor in the middle of the living room. I took a picture of it, then took the keys, the baby and myself and got a hotel room until my husband got off his 24 the next morning. It freaked me out. We’ve never come up with a rational explanation for it either.

If you ask my children, I’m a terrible mom. Horrible, because I just made them do chores on a snow day instead of playing on their kindles. Where’s the list of moms?

You guys know everything. I went back to social work part time. I love the job. Part time is about 32 hours a week and flexible, so I work it around my kids’ appointments. We don’t have fantastic after school care so I add that into my situation as well. They offered me full time today. I don’t want to shoot myself in the foot later on, and not be considered for full time again, but right now it just won’t work for us. Do I be really honest and say I can’t due to childcare issues, or do I just say no and leave it at that? I would be interested later on, but until May I won’t have consistent after school care for a variety of reasons.

As everyone else has said, it’s so regionally dependent that it’s hard to answer. I work(now part time) at a privately owned 911 service. It’s not AMR or part of a large service, so we have a bit more leeway perhaps. There are three main hospitals we transport to, and two of them are affiliated(owned by the same nonprofit). One of them is a cardiac and stroke center, the other is little more than an urgent care. There is also a larger and highly rated hospital 30 minutes away. Patients generally have the choice where they go, as long as they are competent to make decisions. If they are not, our medical control at the main hospital can decide. So if the patient’s family wants them to go to Hospital A, but the issue is low acuity and Hospital B can handle it, med control is likely to tell us to go to Hospital B. If the patient can’t decide medical control has that authority. Also, if the patient is having an acute stroke or heart attack as determined by the EKG we’ve done, they automatically have to go to the stroke/cardiac center. It is the same for trauma. Most of our patients any more want to go to the really good hospital 30 minutes away. We try to accommodate as long as the call volume is okay. If we are just too busy and need an ambulance back in service quickly, we have to tell the patient we cannot go that far and they have to choose between the other three hospitals. There are large cities where they have a main medical control who decides where the patient goes. The paramedic radios into that medical control and the doctor determines what hospital they go too. The patients in those systems really don’t have choice. As far as the costs, that’s what your insurance is billed. Some insurances will not pay the extra mileage to your preferred hospital if there is one closer that can meet your needs. If you have a cut finger, for instance, they’ll only pay to the closest hospital that can suture it up. If you’re having a heart attack, they’ll pay the mileage for you to go to a cardiac center, even if it’s bypassing two closer hospitals. This is the issue with the “surprise ambulance bills†that are in the news—people are getting billed for hundreds of dollars that their insurance will not pay(Medicare is one). The insurance doesn’t care about the quality of the nearest hospital or where your doctors are. They will pay mileage to the closest appropriate facility and anything after that is your responsibility. I once worked for an ambulance agency that made us have patients sign a statement of understanding that they would be billed the extra mileage when they insisted on going to a farther away hospital.

My sister has Asperger’s. At 25, she is finally ready for college. She’s pursuing an accounting degree, mostly online classes with some on campus, and just got invited to the honor society. But she’s about five years behind emotionally and psychologically, as is normal for Aspies, and my parents have recognized that. At 21, she was babysitting a little and doing chores around the house, but really she was on par with a sixteen year old. Last year she decided to go to college, researched the degree and is doing fantastic. She would have completely failed at 19 or 20 or 21.

I know that chronologically he’s 21, but for all practical purposes, he’s 16. It’s part of asperger’s. I think I would treat the situation as if he was 16.

I had a nice overnight job working at a home for disabled adults. You had to stay awake but could watch movies or read a book while they slept. Human interaction was minimal. I hated it, but that might be an option for him.

I double majored in writing and philosophy. I was never able to find a job with those majors. I have a job now that requires a bachelor’s, but it was my experience that got me the job. I couldn’t have gotten it right out of college with those degrees. I would suggest an english major. Those are plentiful online from decent, accredited colleges. I honestly would also be expecting to support him financially. He would at least have a bachelor’s degree, but those types of work at home jobs that have benefits and can support an individual are tough to find.

I agree. My daughter rarely wears pants either. There’s been a couple times her teacher(at public school so no religious issues) has emailed me just to remind me they’re doing something that day where DD should probably make sure to wear some leggings under the skirt. I think that’s all this teacher is doing. She was nice to make your daughter feel good by telling her that she(the teacher) prefers to wear skirts and dresses. I think she’s just trying to be empathetic and send a reminder.