Inspired by this thread, what occupations offer a good trade-off of compensation versus educational high-jumps, stability and whatever else goes into the mix? IT was big in the '90s.
That seems to have soured somewhat. What would you advise a young person to pursue?
I’m going to say pharmacist. I was surprised at the amount of training you need to be a “certified” pharmacist. But if you are a math/science kind of person, the training should be tolerable.
I just heard that the U.S. is falling behind in the sciences. We need some big fat brains out there. I’ll bet it will pay a bundle, too. Just a guess.
Don’t bet your academic career, life savings, and social life on it…
There’s already a thread about this so-called “shortage”…I’ll have to find and post a link. In brief, don’t believe them, Ralph! Oh, how many of us were promised the moon and the stars for helping our country make a rebound in math, sciences, and engineering. Yeah, don’t us now, we’ll call you… :rolleyes:
Still holding my breath,
Despite current events I would recommend military service to those just released from the school system. While much of the education you get is illegal to practice as a civilian, it is an excellent place to grow socially. You get to meet new and interesting people whose experiences and opinions are different from yours, and if they are wearing the same clothes as you, you actually have to learn how to work together…Ok, and if they’re not wearing the same clothes as you, you get to kill them or rape them in a dungeon in a far off and exotic land. But seriously, the pay is criminally low, the dangers can be high and some of the greatest “people skills” you can ever hope to learn will be the reward. It also makes anything else/ look like a pretty good gig.
Insurance has been very, very good to me. Nobody wants to shoot at me, I get regular pay increases, 8 -hour work days, vacations, etc. And nobody screams at me. Yes. Very good indeed. 
Whatever interests them the most. I really have difficulty understanding why someone would choose to study to become something that they don’t even enjoy. Is money/stability really worth that much that you’d be willing to do something you dislike as a living? Or maybe they are hoping that they will grow into liking their chosen profession?
People are constantly asking me what I’m planning to do with a degree in philosophy and economics. I don’t know, but I’m sure I’ll find something I enjoy with it…
I agree strongly with Low Key. As a former Computer Science prof I encountered an amazing number of people who decided to be CS majors simply because there was money to be made. At least 90% of them were not any good at it and should have had another major. (Which many courses in the first 2 years were designed to do!)
Find out what you like/are good at (the two are probably related) and then figure out how to have a nice enough life doing that. Don’t try to be a bajillionaire or anything. Be happy with small goals.
I love being a Registered Nurse. I work 3 days a week, a 12 hour day shift in a clean, cool hospital with new moms and babies–happy-almost-always kind of place. I went to school full time for 3 years with a lot of financial aid in California—displaced homemaker, single Hispanic mom! Several of my classmates opted for more adrenaline-driven RN careers in the OR and ER, some are working for the state in the prisons, one in an elementary school, some in home health and for private practitioners. I did my share as a labor and delivery RN and easily transferred to postpartum. There are high-drama jobs and eduation jobs for a RN. You can join a travel agency and float all over. It’s not just bedpans and bandages and nobody I know made less than 50,000.00 the first year after we graduated.
Cyn, OB/GYN RN
I’d tell any youngun to go into any field having to do with old people. Nursing, especially. The boomers are going to start getting sick and dying off soon so there’s going to be a huge need for stuff like that.
Not the point of my question, although that other thread did seek to know where the biggest incomes are.
I meant to solicit replies regarding your perceptions of fields of endeavor that are satisfying to work in, achievable and do hold the prospect of making a living for the length of a career. There are lots of fields that have paid well in the past, but have run out of opportunities. I doubt too many people got into aerospace engineering for the bucks alone, which were good for many for a while, but in the late '60s and '70s, a lot of people got out of it to sell used cars.
I’ve been lucky in that I stumbled into a career where I enjoy the work I do, but the field has undergone a massive shaking out during my tenure and I’m undecided as to whether I’d advise a young person to pursue same, as I don’t really know how many 40-45 year career opportunities there are.
Cyn’s post is what I was looking for - why she likes it, how she got there and we’ll be needing RNs for the foreseeable future.
American wages for Nurses seem to be much higher than everywhere else in the world. Nurses earn about 36,000AUD a year here, or about 25,000 US. Which is why I plan on spending a couple of years in the US after I graduate ;).
Its hard to off shore them to India as well - although the life is getting a lot more stressful as hospitals keep staffing levels down and replace four year RNs with LPNs and nurses aides.
Teaching. I am a new graduate, but all through undergrad we were pounded with, “In the next 10+ years we are going to need 10 million teachers”. I love the thought of making a difference in a child’s life. Just being able to see the ‘light blub’ come on in a child’s mind when they finally understand a concept is rewarding. Also, depending on where you teach and how long you teach the salaries get quite rewarding as well. The benefits are unbelievably good as is the willingness to financially help you get your Master’s or PhD. The school district encourages you to grow all of the time, sending you to conferences where you can get new material to make class interesting.
You also have all of the students that come back to see you. You have those that tell you how much of a difference you made in their lives, but at the time you had no idea. I used to hate getting up at 6am and frankly I still do, but on my way to work I know I will like the time I am at school. There’s something undescribable about it.
you also get to be out of school by 3 and you have summers to enjoy
Another health care industry worker bee here, on the non-professional side.
I started out as a research assistant working on clinical trials at a cancer research hospital (filling out case forms, maintaining databases, learning a boatload of medical terminology and drugs, juggling doctors who wanted me for their own little research projects), then moved over to the pharmaceutical industry side of it. It’s kind of multidisciplinary work, involving medical knowledge, working in a variety of databases and programming environments plus the usual MS Office stuff, a bit of sleuthing, some travelling, doing presentations, surviving mergers, enough of a variety to keep me on my toes.
After a few years at the cancer center I wanted to do more database work and less filling out forms/getting pulled in a million different directions work. Working in a research/academic environment allowed me to develop skills I didn’t know I had, but the stress got to me and I had to go. The pharmaceutical industry offered twice the pay and half the stress. I do miss that comraderie brought on by shared misery, but not that much.
The career path is a little trickier to navigate these days because of the drive to offshore the technical side of it like building databases and programming validations, but if you can survive that and get into a more supervisory/managing role you can do pretty well for yourself, making good money doing fairly interesting work while working regular hours in a recession-proof industry.
I’m one of those adrenaline-junkie RNs to whom Cyn referred. I work in a busy Emergency Rooom where I am often tired, frustrated, and overwhelmed, but never bored! Sometimes I actually get to save a life, and sometimes I just get to hold a hand. Both are equally rewarding.
The nursing shortage is only going to get worse as the baby boom generation ages, so there are tons of jobs available. The hours are flexible, the money is good. It’s a great career.
IANA teacher, but having been through thirteen years of public school, I know that this is one of those professions where young people should only be encouraged to do it if they love working with children and teenagers, can deal with constant frustration, and don’t burn out easily. I sure had my share of teachers who apparently didn’t know what they were getting into and ended up as cynical student-hating burnouts content with doing the absolute minimum amount of work possible (and with tenure, the standards are pretty damn low). But I agree, teachers who truly love their jobs can have a tremendous effect on students.