Mama!

I've got a masters degree in Art, Design and Media, which makes me qualified to run an art gallery, curate a museum, write film reviews, publish articles about exhibitions I've never seen, or talk a load of bollocks as a consultant on "Urban Renewal and Cultural Regeneration".

Well, it would do if I'd spent the last decade sucking up to the right people, conversing in buzzwords at bitchy parties, and generally being the kind of vacuous tosspot who deserves to be hit repeatedly by an iron bus.

As it is, my MA just takes up one line of my CV, scaring off potential employers who think it means I must be ambitious and therefore won't stay with them for long.

So, I need a career change. Or rather, I need a career, and a change.

The best option I can find is teaching - and the two kinds of teaching most in demand are (a) teaching science (or computing) to teenagers and (b) teaching the English language to the offspring of the non-European middle class.

To become a science teacher in secondary schools I need to take a two year "conversion" course, which magically transforms my art degrees into art-and-science degrees by teaching me science for a year, and then teaching me how to teach it for another year.

The upside is: I'd never be out of work, because there's a great shortage of qualified people prepared to teach teens.

The downside is: Well, actually there's no shortage of properly qualified people, but no one wants to do it. Because it's such a hideously stressful and unrewarding job. About half of those who get the teaching qualifications never work as teachers, because they hate the job so much.

So, on balance I should teach in a language school instead. The culture, atmosphere and opportunities are quite different. Now, how do I get qualified to do this?

I could spend GBP300 on a two day course, and there are many such courses to chose from. But I don't think they're taken seriously by employers, and quite right too - I wouldn't trust someone with a weekend's worth of training and no experience to do any job for me.

I could spend GBP1000 on a six week course. There's lots of these, and they are taken more seriously. Unfortunately most are embedded in BA courses, and I'd have to relocate temporarily to do those that aren't - which I don't mind doing, but it is expensive and difficult. And they'd only get me on the lowest rung of the ladder - part time, short contract, classroom assistant work.

Or I could spend GBP3000 over a year on a locally run MA in "Applied Linguistics and Teaching English as a Foreign Language", which would pretty much guarantee me a career.

Oh, and it's also something I'd love to do anyway. I'd have to get a dumb part time job to pay for it, but I could live with that.

So I'm thinking maybe I should get...another master of arts degree!

Which would make me: Kapitano, MAMA.