I need a job, but I'm totally clueless.

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

I’m graduating! Yes, really, truly, after 6 years of various forms of Hell, I’m graduating. I’m getting master’s in Entomology. I’ll have that by August. I’ll be done with the data analysis work for the thesis by June. Then I’m moving to NY, where my boyfriend is. I’ll get a job and do the writing part of my thesis while working. In NY. With my boyfriend. Wow! Sounds great.

But that means I’ll need to find a job. I have no idea what kind of job to look for. I really have, as far as I can tell, no marketable skills or experience whatsoever. I’ve had meetings with job counselors at school. These guys have been a lot less than useful. I’ve checked out Monster.com and other such sites, but I just end up feeling completely overwhelmed and confused. I don’t even know what kinds of fields or job duties I should be looking at. I’m 32 years old, and I’m completely clueless on how to find job that’ll pay me more than the dirtballs I subsist on now. Any help you guys could give me would be greatly appreciated.

What I want from a job is really pretty simple:

  1. I want to make as much money as possible. Oh, and I want decent health insurance.

  2. I’d like to work no more than 40-50 hours per week.

  3. I’d like to work with and/or for people who are neither completely psychotic nor incredibly negligent. That would be a serious improvement over the gig I’ve got going on now. I wouldn’t expect to be friends with my co-workers, but I’d like to have one or two people around who I could enjoy having lunch with.

I have no illusions about making money doing what I love. That’s because I’m not on crack. No-one is going to pay me to read good literature or travel overseas. No-one is going to pay me to learn foreign languages. No-one is going to pay me to write funny e-mails to my friends or to collect and look at beetles under a scope and say, “Oooh! How pretty!” People who get to read good literature for a living tend to have doctorates. As it is, I’m getting kind of old to be broke all the time, and I can’t imagine going through yet more grad school ever again. The very thought of it exhausts me.

My job wouldn’t have to have anything to do with my classwork or research.

My work history is really…well…non-existent. I have no idea what I’d put on a resume. Here are the things I’ve done to earn a living:

  1. I’m a TA. It’s something I do well. Unfortunately, it’s also something that no-one really cares about or respects at all.

  2. I worked for state government for several months. Supposedly, I was support staff for a grant program. I ended up spending most of my time writing pointless e-mails and bending paper clips into the shapes of small animals while wearing uncomfortable clothing.

  3. Before that, I was an intern working for the state government. I attended a bunch of meetings and tried to look interested. I read lots of grant applications from people who wanted state money to establish tech-related businesses. I was the only person involved who understood the science and technology in applications from aspiring biotech entrepreneurs. I ended up explaining the science and tech in those proposals to everyone else involved. I also did a bunch of writing and editing for my boss, who couldn’t construct a clear sentence if you gave him a dictionary and hired a contractor.

  4. I did a bunch of tutoring to pay my rent after I got done with my undergrad (organic chem was my biggest seller, though I had a couple of people looking to get through mol gen, too.) I taught the Princeton Review’s organic chem classes for people getting ready to take the MCAT. I got terrible teaching reviews.

  5. I do translations from time to time (Spanish to English and English to Spanish. I can also do Portuguese to English. About a year and a half ago, I could have also done English to Portuguese, but now I can’t.) I have no formal education in Spanish whatsoever. None. And I don’t have the same fluency in the language that a native speaker would, so I’m not really competitive for any job that involves lots of translation. Especially not in the NY area.

That’s it. That’s all I’ve got.

Even if there were, in fact, marketable skills hiding in me somewhere, I have no idea how I’d compensate for the fact that it took me SIX YEARS to earn a master’s. I spent my first year as a part-time student with no funding, and, once I got my teaching eligibility, I got sick. Very sick. And I stayed that way for 2.5 years. It’s normal for students in my department to take 3 or 4 years getting a master’s, so, really, I’m not too far behind, when you take my years of being sick and my year of having no funding into account. But no-one’s going to see that I had good reasons for taking so long. Hell, my own advisor thinks I’m a loser for taking so long. So, as far as I can tell, do the other students. I have no idea how to put a positive spin on my abysmally long tenure in grad school for prospective employers.

Like I said, any advice you guys could give me would be greatly appreciated.

2

hm, interesting…
i’m 24 and i’m a second semester undergrad senior. i had to take about a year and a half off because i ran out of moeny.

so far, your unmarketable skills sound rather marketable. i dunno, can’t you cobble something interesting together out of that short list?

monster.com is rather large and beefy…try www.craigslist.com as well. it’s also beefy, but at least it’s a second opinion.

perhaps you’re also unrealistic with your demands. i wouldn’t necessarily want to work more than 40 or 50 hours in a job either, although i’ve already had one that i worked more (sometimes). reexamine your skill set and what you want to do versus your demands. usually when giving advice on the dope, we like more accurate things like “i like telling people what to do” or “i’m a good cook” when we can start doling out wisdom.

once again, though, it sounds like things you’ve done could be rather marketable. besides, if anyone asks why it took you so long, tell them you were sick. even better, if you talk to someone whose business it may be (a potential employer) bring up the fact that yes, you were very sick, and yes, you are feeling much better.

3

i’ve got the feeling that i’m going to post a very similar thread very soon, though…

i suppose i’m making a deposit into my karma bank. shrug

4

Just curious, if you wanted to make lots of money and not work long hours why did you get a graduate degree in entemology? Also it seems that by this point in your studies you would have a better grasp of the employment opportunities in your field. Not being critical just honestly curious.

5

So, you’re a bug specialist?

Cool.

Don’t sell your self short.

Research? Bug beneficial use?

Perhaps you could work for chemical companies?

Eradication? City and County jobs?

Health department stuff?

Museums?

What do YOU want to do?

6

ooh…what about research with bugs and transgenic crops?

7

Well, look–I started my degree 6 years ago. I had very different goals and priorities for myself then than I do now. I thought I’d have a career in research, in environmental education, or in forest management. It didn’t matter to me where I lived or how much money I made, as long as I could cover my bills comfortably. I didn’t realize that what I wanted and needed from my life would change so much between then and now.

8

There’s your hook. Check out the employment page at the New York State website. You might make a very good bureaucrat. 40 hours a week, good bennies, pretty stable. You would be surprised at the variety of jobs you can talk yourself into that have nothing to do with your education, based solely on a few months of experience in the “system”. I have a friend who has been working for the Alaska Dept. of Occupational Licensing for 20 years, and when he started, all he had a BA in Physical Education, but he had done some internships with the state.

Try it, you might like it.

9

Fair enough. I hope I didn’t offend I really was just curious. Good luck on your job search.

10

There aren’t any well-paying desk jobs for people with masters’ degrees in entomology? I imagine insects are enough of a problem that you should be able to find work somewhere…

BTW, gov jobs are stable, have excellent bennies and the hours tend to be sane, but they don’t tend to pay the big bucks. You might do better at a nonprofit, which is a lot like a gov agency but can have well paid staff.

11

Maybe you could work for the Men In Black . They worry about bugs a lot.

12

A govt job in some environmentally related field might be a good place to start. A masters degree ina science field will get you in the door to a lot of adminstrative positions.

If all else fails the armed services are looking for a few good men & women. Your education might give you leg up in a tech field you find interesting.

13

Thanks so much to all of you for your suggestions. I’ll check them out! (I haven’t done much of that yet, because I’m at the end of the quarter right now. I’ve got tons to do before the end of the week. After that, I’ll go back to the job hunt.)

If anyone else has any other suggestions, I’d be happy to hear those, too.

And I’ll let you guys know how it works out.

Thanks again!

14

Experience in gov’t and knowledge of bugs…see if the office of Vector Control is hiring.

15

While you are at it, look into local Science Museums, Zoos, & Nature Conservatories.

An entemologist would be welcome at all of them.

Try contactting the main office of exterminator firms, too.

16

You’re going to be writing up your PhD, right? I don’t know how things work in the U.S. but my brother made the conscious decision to concentrate on writing up his thesis and defended it rather quickly, whereas his friend tried the route you propose and almost missed the final date, four years later! If finances mean that you have to take a job, perhaps a part-time job might be best. You can also use the part-time job as an entry to an organisation. Indeed, you could make it a selling point, “Take me on half-time at half pay for 6 months while I write up my thesis…”

Good luck!

17

Something in public health might be a possibility. I’m a DoD contractor and someone at our medical research facility was an entomologist who provided background research on various critters that might be poisonous/dangerous in areas of interest around the world. They were working on contructing databases for doctors working in wilderness areas.