I'm burned out and I haven't even started yet!

[capybara]

I, too, graduated into this terrible market (in the far-flung edges of most-non-pragmatic humanities) and it took FOREVER to find a job and I had a few years of self-loathing and non-trivial anxiety. One thing that did help a lot when I was in the “OMG WHAT NOW!!! MY LIFE IS A WASTE!” about-to-bail-out-of-the-market phase was a book called “So What Are You Going to Do with That?”: A Guide to Career-Changing for M.A.'s and Ph.D.'s" which at least was a good slap across the face to remind me that it wasn’t just parchment but discreet skillz I’d gathered, and it made me look around at the world of options a bit and stop panicking-- if I did not find a teaching job it wasn’t the end of the world and there was a lot of other interesting stuff out there.

[Nava]

@statsman1982

One thing, though: Could the fact that I’m seeing a therapist and a psychiatrist (and may be hospitalized) actually work against me? I mean, most of these places make consenting to a background check a condition of the application. I know medical records are private, but,assuming I do the hospitalization thing, could an employer find that out in a background check?

@Tom_Tildrum

You would have to disclose it in a background check that you’ve been treated, although I don’t recall if they specifically ask about hospitalization. Fear not, though, as treatment for depression is typically not disqualifying, as I understand it. Basically, what the feds will want to know is whether you have a mental condition that would interfere with your ability to keep information confidential, and they understand that depression does not do that. You may need to authorize one of your doctors to give them a statement to that effect.

And what the heck, you’re getting it treated. I think that’s a definite plus! (I’ve had supervisors and coworkers who were depressed and refusing to see a doctor - absolute minus)

It seems to me that a doctorate in statistics would also be valuable on Wall Street, and possibly with the big consulting firms.

I’m currently working for a company in the aircraft industry, for the “Processes and Costing” department. They hired me because they needed “someone who knows SAP in depth” (hi, I’m a SAP consultant!) but one of the skills that made my bosses absolutely extatic when they found out about it is - I can read, run and see miscalculations in stats! Apparently, companies where the chunks of iron on engineers’ desks are actually titanium go quite a bit beyond Six Sigma, when it comes to using stats.

Another family of sectors which makes heavy use of statistics (and which therefore needs people who can perform stats and people who can train the first group) is “process industries” such as chemical, pharma or alimentary, where Gauss’s pretty bell is often Not Applicable (not enough data for it, skewed distributions).