What do you do?
The Blind Eternities forum
Posted on Jan. 7, 2015, 9:52 p.m. by pokeyrabbit
As a high school student who has to begin the dreaded process of applying to college in a couple months i have run into a problem: i have no idea what i want to do. So i turn to the wonderful community here with a simple question, what do you guys/gals do for a living or what are you currently go to school for? I am curious to see what you do and it might peek my interest because i am honestly lost. For your guys info my favorite subjects in school are science, psychology and government. Thanks for sharing and any ideas.
Epochalyptik says... #3
Moved to BE because this isn't about Magic.
I was unemployed while in college because I was in the fortunate position of having money and not having to pay for school.
I went to school for technical writing and history, and I currently work for my old Uni writing their IT security policy (I only work half weeks, too). I'm thinking about going to grad school for a doctorate in theological history or something similar, and I'm spending my free time reading, cooking, and lifting.
Best advice I can give you: Find a job with flexible scheduling that's on or very very near to campus. And keep in mind that you'll be competing with other college kids, so strike up a conversation with a manager or something if you happen to see one. Even if you don't think they're hiring, just be friendly and chat with the employees when they ring you up or socialize with you.
Also, go to school for something practical. I'm not saying pick something you hate because it makes money, but try to balance sincere interest with employability. Talk to professors. Talk to career counselors. Ask what possibilities are available to people in their field of study.
Take undergrad research opportunities if they're available, especially if you want to get a job in a scientific or technical field (including soft sciences).
AND DON'T SPEND ALL YOUR TIME WORKING. Seriously. College is a beautiful, hedonistic period where you're "in the real world," but you don't have all the real world responsibilities yet. Exercise. Party. Do irresponsible shit in the middle of the night for no reasons other than that you can and you need your adrenaline fix. Take classes that interest you (seriously, some of the best classes I've taken were ones that had nothing to do with my major).
January 7, 2015 10:17 p.m.
aeonstoremyliver says... #4
Amen to what Epoch said. For real dude, get a degree you can do something with. I've seen so many art/philosophy/English majors become baristas at Starbucks it's not even funny. You really want a degree you can apply to the working world.
As a musician, I can attest that your hobby and passions need to be just that, unless you're a freaking amazing prodigy discovered and put in the spotlight. If you love art that much, consider a teaching degree. With that in mind, also consider other subjects or avenues in education.
Psychology doesn't pay squat until you've reached the upper echelon of degrees, as in Masters and Phd. With a Masters, you'll also need an LCSW and other certifications. I've worked previously in social services for many years (loved it) but had to leave the field due to lack of substantial pay at my rate of education and inability to reasonably obtain higher education in the field due to my young family.
Science can pay off, though, pending which field you enter. Lots of companies are looking for chemists, engineers, and so forth.
One thing to consider is military experience. I'm a United States Marine. The training offered in military service is outstanding and looks excellent on a resume. Plus it can be counted as college credits. The Navy and Air Force offers much by the way of science related fields. Plus, there are ROTC and Academy options.
January 7, 2015 10:52 p.m.
I'm in school working on becoming a wildlife biologist. It took me a while to get to the decision though. My advice would be just think about it. Don't make any hasty decisions that you aren't sure of. What you want will come
January 7, 2015 10:55 p.m.
Epochalyptik says... #6
And be careful about taking a major in something you enjoy as a hobby. I've seen plenty of people take up interests as majors and drop the major because they lost interest in the classroom experience for that hobby. For example, one of my friends has done theater and production for many years, and he refuses to make it a major because it would become a chore and a source of stress rather than a way to relieve tension.
Also, think about the length of the path you'll have to travel. As aeonstoremyliver said, soft sciences are difficult to work in unless you've got experience and advanced degrees.
And consider what other options exist. A psych major doesn't have to become a psychologist. You could become a professor and focus on research if you like the lab/test environment and experiments.
Look also for opportunities in the area. I happen to have gone to one of the better engineering schools, and there are plenty of employers around here that prize engineers, especially chemical engineers. DuPont, Siemens, and AstraZeneca cover that market here.
January 7, 2015 11:02 p.m.
Epochalyptik says... #7
And don't be afraid to change your major. I highly recommend frontloading on electives and breadth requirements and taking a couple core classes so that you don't set yourself back if you change out of your major. You'll still have all the credits and requirements because you didn't overcommit to all your entry-level cores.
January 7, 2015 11:05 p.m.
VampireArmy says... #8
I'm currently working for target. I pissed away my chance at making good money while attending trade school. If college isn't your thing, you can try that too by the way. A lot of well paying jobs come from trade school
January 7, 2015 11:06 p.m.
I am an English teacher. While English did not appear in your favorite subjects, education is a great field. It is a very fulfilling career if you actually care about it, and you really have more freedom to do things the way you want. June, July, and August aren't bad either, but you will end up drawing the envy hate from friends and family. That said...Science teachers are in high demand depending on your locale. Good luck with whatever you decide
January 7, 2015 11:11 p.m.
Rasta_Viking29 says... #10
I'm a Project Engineer for a commercial framing and drywall contractor. Job title is misleading as it's just the construction industry's name for a junior estimator/project manager. It's a living but construction's future looks bleak to me regardless if the demand will always be there. The labor force is shit and getting worse by the day. Projects are being built with money that isn't there. It's a compounding problem.
I prefered being an independent contractor doing residential carpentry. There is good money to be made if you have half a brain and learn a skilled trade. Depending on the trade and union/non-union Apprentices make around $15-$25/hr.
January 7, 2015 11:36 p.m.
pokeyrabbit says... #11
Thanks for all of the advice guys this has been really helpful. I will keep looking for degrees that might interest me, sorry for posting in wrong forum epoch
January 7, 2015 11:48 p.m.
aeonstoremyliver says... #12
@Rasta_Viking29 I work at Pro Source, a wholesale flooring company. Many moons ago I worked for a general contractor. Business has steadily increased since the crash of '08, especially the last few years. I find your comment regarding new construction being built on non-existent funds interesting. Isn't this one of the variables that caused the market to crash initially?
January 7, 2015 11:49 p.m.
im the head cook at a family restaurant. i've gone to school for both music and to be a history teacher. I didnt have my finances straight and had to drop out. since then, i've worked and saved and will be applying to culinary school.
January 8, 2015 12:02 a.m.
Havok.Bane says... #14
I'm working for VOA as a caregiver which doesn't really pay well but is very rewarding if you can handle it. Also I am going to school to become a science teacher.
January 8, 2015 12:13 a.m.
BreadManDan says... #15
I'm a small business owner as of a month ago. I deliver bread so I don't get to loaf around
January 8, 2015 1:31 a.m.
@capriom85: That's interesting to hear. I'm actually currently studying to be an English teacher. My endgame is to be a high school or university librarian, because I'm cool like that, but I want to start with teaching. What surprised you most when you first started?
January 8, 2015 1:42 a.m.
@vault and @capriom85...actually, I am also studying to become an english teacher. Hopefully at a Junior college level...perhaps literary studies or something along those lines. Currently my primary degree is liberal studies (english) with a minor (completed) in astronomy. :p Tried the physics route because I LOVED astronomy...turns out I hate physics, who would have guessed? :p
January 8, 2015 3:21 a.m.
@Scytec: I'm just surprised you enjoy both English and science. I don't understand anything sciencey for the life of me. I actually just took astronomy this past semester for my final gen ed, and Despised it. My minor is in Psychology, but I haven't actually started it yet. Hopefully I'm better at that than science.
January 8, 2015 3:44 a.m.
I'm currently attending college with the eventual plan of getting a PhD in psychology, specializing in abnormal psychology. I only discovered what I wanted to do with my life relatively recently.
January 8, 2015 3:45 a.m.
About Psychology:
I took Psychology at university in the UK. Go an undergraduate degree in it. Was in the fortunate position, like Epochalyptik to not have to worry about money at any point during university. It's worth noting that Psychology, if taken seriously, can be a pretty tough subject; but here I'm referring to proper rigorous academic psychology. For my final exams I had to learn somewhere around 400 papers off by heart, because it is a science and you to have to know about experiments etc. If you veer away from medical Psychology then you have to do less Biology and Chemistry which is good for some people.
Also consider what aeonstoremyliver said. If you want to go into healthcare prepare for one of two things: your family having to support you until you're like 26 or something, or having to work kind of shit jobs while you move up the chain. After my degree I cycled through a few bad jobs until I got the assistant position I'm in now which is great. Although, you can't properly practice medical Psychology without a Doctorate / Phd so my mega bucks won't come in until I'm about 26/28 (I'm 22 now). For reference my girlfriend just left university (she's 22) and is on $45,000 a year. I'm on about $30,000. However I should mention that we both went to one of the best colleges in the world so we were in the position of being offered lots of jobs before we even finished our courses.
Healthcare is fantastic, and the job satisfaction is amazing; but it's a long, long road. However, there are many jobs within Psychology that require less training. Working with kids, working in the prison system, working in education, working for the military (I was offered a job for the British secret services at one point). Don't think healthcare is all you can do with it; it's just the best paid and probably most respected but meh. Not worth anything if you're not happy.
vault: Psychology is science.
On College:
But to skip back a bit. When in high school and college. I fully agree with Epochalyptik: it's not the time to spend all your life worrying! Sure, you might have to get a small job, part time, somewhere close to campus, but really you should be splitting your time between having fun and working. In my case I spent a lot more time going out / getting drunk / clubbing / hitting on women than I did writing my own papers and other stuff. I still remember going to 1-to-1 classes still drunk from the night before.
The job market is improving, as aeonstoremyliver mentioned. Internships and apprenticeships are rising massively and job opportunities are picking up again. Whilst it's certainly true that a lot of people go to college, if you're committed you can still excel and do really, really well. There is a balancing act between having fun and working hard but it's not too difficult to get right. I must urge you though to not go to college and just be completely mediocre. In that case it's almost worthless, given the extra financial debt you pile on yourself, without actually demonstrating that you're more capable than anyone else. Marking yourself as a good employee to people hiring you might be a case of picking up lots of extra activities, or volunteering, or getting really high grades. Whatever it is, go for it; don't be mediocre.
aeonstoremyliver: The market crash was propelled primarily by sub-prime lending, which is essentially giving loans to people who aren't likely to pay them back. As financial institutions continued to do this they eventually find themselves lending out money with no capital of their own. You have to understand that banks rely on loans and mortgages completely. The only way they make money is by charging you interest on a loan, or on stock exchanges. If however, they find themselves without the capital to give people loans then they just collapse. For example a bank could loan 3 billion dollars upfront to people, and look like it's doing well; but if they fail to pay back their debt (defaulting) then in a years time the bank will fall.
The situation was made worse by the banks claiming to be more secure than they really are; which they were encouraged to do by the government. There's like a credit rating for banks which basically tells people how sturdy they are; how good their investments are; and how much capital they have to keep giving loans. Many of the banks ended up with high ratings when really they were on very shaky foundations. This fuelled further lending.
January 8, 2015 4:21 a.m.
@ChiefBell: It's a social science, not quite like the stuff I have trouble with - math/science, like physics and some parts of chemistry. The specific class I'm taking to start the minor is Thinking, Creativity, and Intelligence. I'm going to try as hard as possible to avoid applied psychology.
Of course, I haven't taken a psych class since high school, I may be completely off. But it's something I'm interested in doing. Primarily to help me better understand writers and their characters for my English major, but still. Interested.
January 8, 2015 4:42 a.m.
Oh right yeh. Like I said, if you avoid medical Psychology then you don't have all the Biology and Chemistry. Or at least, not as much of it at all.
January 8, 2015 4:55 a.m.
I hope not. Chemistry is terrible and biology is... boring. Probably not as boring as astronomy though.
January 8, 2015 4:57 a.m.
vault, the most shocking part of starting out was the severe apathy of the students. I honestly have never seen people care less about something. Don't get me wrong, there are some incredible, fantastic students, too.
January 8, 2015 5:26 a.m.
Wow. That is somewhat depressing. Do you have any tips for getting students interested in actually paying attention to class? I have some ideas just from how my favorite teacher did things, but I'll take any advice I can.
January 8, 2015 5:32 a.m.
vault et al.
Is American school streamed? Ie. do you have one class for all the people achieving high grades, and one class for all the people not achieving high grades?
That's how they do it in the UK, and it works to increase grades. The people who don't care all sit in one class and screw up each others time, whilst the people who do are all together in another class.
January 8, 2015 6:16 a.m.
I don't know about other universities, but there's nothing like that where I attend. There's an honors program, but it's more a vanity project than anything else.
January 8, 2015 6:34 a.m.
Oh, yea, definitely. Honors and AP programs are definitely set apart from a standard class. A student can't just durdle like a UW deck and expect to stay in the upper level classes. Those classes were a huge relief though. As bad as I am at math, I had to get out of standard algebra when the guy next to me says "What's a integer?" So done.
January 8, 2015 6:42 a.m.
GeminiSpartanX says... #31
I know it really doesn't fall in with what you listed as your interests, but I work as an architect (more of the math/artsy-creative subjects). Something that may help would be to understand what type of work environment you enjoy being in. Are you ok working in an office? Would you rather be working physically doing things and running around all day? I know a guy who went to school for some normal-sounding major, but found his passion in woodworking. He found he didn't like sitting around all the time in an office (or classroom). Now he builds custom furniture that sells for top $ and couldn't be happier. Are you a people person? (I'm not so much, which is why I'd never enjoy being in the medical field.) I know it was mentioned earlier, but there are likely resources at your high school (or they can at least point you in a direction) to find out what types of things you'd be most interested in. Guidance counselors are there to help you figure those sorts of things out. Good luck!
January 8, 2015 10:50 a.m.
Rhadamanthus says... #32
I do pricing, proposal writing, and contract administration work for a 3rd-party logistics (3PL) contractor. My personal work is heavy on numbers/financial content, but I work very closely with people from operations, engineering, IT, marketing/sales, and upper management. I took a bit of a winding road to get here, and I'll say that all the advice you've gotten so far about being flexible and keeping an open mind is very valuable. I don't have any advice to offer about what to do for work while you're in school, because I was able to qualify for enough merit-based and other scholarships to pay my way through to the end (with a small bit of spending money left over).
For several years when I was in middle school and high school, I was certain that I wanted to get into Education and teach Mathematics at the high school or college level. I entered into college with that plan, but after getting some student teaching experience I could see it wasn't the right environment for me. I went ahead and finished out my Mathematics degree, and the extra time in my schedule that opened up after bailing on Education let me pick up a second major in Classical Studies (a personal interest).
I also spent time researching my other options, and after graduating I entered a Masters program for Industrial and Systems Engineering. To qualify for a Teaching Assistant scholarship and stipend, it required I be on the thesis track, but I planned my courses such that I could finish the non-thesis version of the degree if things didn't work out quite right (they didn't). After graduating I spent about a year as an Industrial/Process Engineer before finding my current job that's a much better fit.
January 8, 2015 10:58 a.m.
Rasta_Viking29 says... #33
aeonstoremyliver what ChiefBell said. What's going on now is kind of similar. Banks got bailed out, start lending money again, bunch of projects start up, there's not enough labor to build these projects on schedule, bidding war on laborers raises hourly wages by approx 30% while productivity decreases, costs go up and projects are over budget, owners stop paying general contractors, GC stops paying sub contractors, subs can't fund the job themselves so work stops. Nobody wants to take the loss and usually the subs get shat on while the investors get bailed out. Check this out for a representaion of what is happening: Colorado VA Hospital Construction
Besides the economic problems there is a ever growing issue with logistics. There's a massive disconnect from where it all starts with the owner, architect, and engineers to where it ends with Pedro the border jumper who dropped out of Mexican primary school.
January 8, 2015 12:26 p.m.
CastleSiege says... #34
I currently go to a community college for basic liberal arts but will be transferring my credits to a different university this fall. I currently work at a pet store and volunteer at my local vet clinic.
January 9, 2015 7:20 p.m.
fluffybunnypants says... #35
Damn, Epochalyptik. I would've paid to have you as my advisor back when I was in college.
Necrotize says... #2
I'm going to school as a Pre-Vet major at the moment, partially because I always excelled at science(mostly Biology) but mostly because I love animals. A lot of people are deterred by the amount of chemistry you need to take for anything medicine related(I've met very few people who actually enjoy College Chemistry) but you kinda need to plow through it. It will suck, but I'm told that in most jobs, college chemistry is almost nothing like what you actually do.
I considered psychology as a minor(decided not to after seeing how much chem I needed) but a few of my friends take psych classes and love them.
You don't need to worry so much about what you do in your first semester. A large amount of people completely change majors just in the first few weeks of college. In fact, for usually the first two weeks, you can drop, add or change to pretty much any open class. Best advice is if you're contemplating dropping a class, try to tough it out until at least the first test, you might realize you can do better than you originally thought. Especially in the harder sciences, lots of classes curve tests and finals based on the class average so keep in mind that you might not always get a good raw grade, but the actual grade you get could be much better. When I was considering dropping chemistry, I was kinda sad about my low test scores, but after asking my professor, I realized I was scoring above the average even though my grade was barely passing, thus when the curve was factored in, I was doing great.
Hope that helped.
January 7, 2015 10:06 p.m.