Ditto. Demand is so high that you don’t even have to work full-time to make a near full-time income. My mother’s ex-husband did this a few years ago after suffering a back injury and he’s had no problem finding jobs wherever he wants to live.
Typical full-time pay is in the $60-70000 range right out of school.
but years later I went back to school to learn to use the Avid.
That’s one of my major plans of attack for the future (another option being law school). I still resent the fact that I spent four years at the best film school in the country and then would be expected to go to school some more in order to even get the rudimentary skills necessary for an entry level job in post. (I’d have forgotten those skills by now anyway, but the point is, as of graduation, I had never been taught them.) I consider that to be, basically, a scam.
But, onward and upward, no regrets for the past, etc…
I would play major league baseball, and marry Nicole Kidman (obviously, I voted unbelievably hot).
I absolutely agree.
While I make a comfortable living doing what I dreamt about doing, I still compromise. I have editors to answer to and assignments I don’t feel a burning passion to do - sometimes I even - gasp - have to churn out something passable from a crappy idea because what the people I’m writing to want isn’t what I want.
I’m good at what I do and somewhat recognized for that within a subset of my peers, but I’m not famous and nowhere near winning the equivalent of our Pullitzer.
You have to compromise… within reason.
Working on a tabloid became to much for me and I recently quit a job with above average pay to a more unsure and certainly not as well paid future as freelancer.
I meant: Follow your dreams… but try to keep both feet on the ground.
I didn’t say “general contractor,” and by “the same way” I don’t really mean “exactly like.” I’m describing the U2’s, Madonnnas and Yo-Yo-Mas of the world, too.
I’m not suggesting you hire yourself out to others, and do it like that. I’m not saying you shouldn’t, either. I’m saying that you approach it as a business with equal time for sales and marketing as much as towards developing your talents and producing works.
A friend of mine got her Pharm.D. and works for hospitals, telling doctors what drugs to give. She started right out of the gate making six figures, and in Texas, where money goes a long, long, long way. She also worked 7 days straight on, and then got 7 days straight off at her first job.
Then she moved to Corpus Christi and got paid even more…
If I were to start over I would be a locksmith. That way when I break into someone’s house and they say “Who are you and how did you get in here?”, I would say, “I’m a locksmith…and I’m a locksmith”.
If you finish your chemistry degree, you can take the patent bar and become a patent agent. Many inventors use them instead of full blown attorneys to present their patents to the USPTO because agents are cheaper. It’s also a job you can do on the side. You have to have a technical degree to become a patent agent and like I said, pass the bar. It’s interesting work, you get to see a lot of new technology.
You specifically list quality management and a good company culture as possible indicators of job satisfaction. While potentially true, my point is that those particular things only matter in a corporate office environment. There are many more careers to be found outside cubicle-land.
I dunno, looking for a better office job doesn’t sound much like starting over, to me.
That wasn’t my point, my point was more that trying to equate job satisfaction with a particular career is a bad decision making strategy because a lot of variables that influence job satisfaction don’t actually relate to the career. I did cite office job factors because let’s face it, a lot of people in raw numbers have corporate office jobs, but it’s just as easy to cite non-career job satisfaction factors for the self employed or other work environments.
If I could do it all over, I’d end it earlier.
North.
Another question that occurred to me; for those of you who suggest what I will call a “true” follow your dreams approach (e.g. that you are generally trying to do what you want to do most in life as a job). Do you think that suggestion is dependent on having the intellect and capability you would probably find on average on this message board (e.g. one that I would imagine is considerably higher than the “average” member of society)?
Perhaps put another way; you have a C student who just isn’t all that bright who really wants to be a physicist, or hell, even program really complex code. Would you suggest they go for it no matter what?
Yeah, I wonder about this. I mean, if you’re someone who dreams about writing a great American novel, would you rather spend your life writing dreck like that just in order to be writing? I think I’d prefer to be doing something, like pharmacy, why not, that’s not too taxing and well-paid even if it’s completely unrelated, and work on my writing as a hobby. Or look forward to retiring early to pursue my real dreams.
Public Health requires public funding.
And the public is never interested in it until after the pandemic.
I’ve been contemplating this myself for the last couple months. I’m 31, and considering going back to school, basically starting over on the road to Med school. I screwed around a lot in undergrad, and my grades suffered, and I haven’t done anything with my degree in geology. I had previously considered medicine before college, but got turned off by a lot of the snobbishness and competitiveness of pre-meds at the small private school I went to.
It seems Texas has something called the Academic Fresh Start, where you can apply to have grades from longer than 10 years ago wiped out when applying for grad/professional school. So, the tentative plan is to go back for basically a second degree, getting the best possible grades, and jumping through the pre-med hoops. Hopefully that will go well, and I’ll move to Texas to apply to med schools.
It’s kinda scary to think I won’t have a “job” for ten years or more, and may end up with a pretty large debt, but I’ve done some math. Financially in the long run things should work out better, and I know I will feel more fulfilled personally.
It helps that I don’t have a wife/ children at this point, and no particular attachment to any region of the U.S.
Hmm, that’s a good but hard question. Probably get a doctorate in computer science, not for the money (it’s a loser economically) but because I find the field very interesting.
But I like software development fairly well.
I’ve never met a student who was able to be both passionate and mediocre at the same time. It’s a coward’s excuse to feign indifference with regard to life choices and settle for the job that pays well, the spouse that will say yes, and the shoes that are on sale.
This isn’t some kind of soft-headed after-school-special motivational message either. Dare to dream and pursue your dreams with wild abandon, but there’s a key word there: pursue. The sad sacks who say “hey I followed my dreams and never succeeded” really have to admit that they didn’t pursue much of anything, they just kept showing up and hoping something good would happen.
Somebody mentioned that they were considering switching to a teaching career. Like I tell my best and brightest students who express interest in the field, it’s a pretty miserable job if you’re motivated by wealth and prestige… but if you want to change the world, there’s no better way to do it. And the pay’s not really that bad if you know how to spend less than you make.
It’s a coward’s excuse to feign indifference with regard to life choices and settle for the job that pays well
I’m sorry, but I think this is a serious exaggeration. The economy isn’t set up so that most of us can survive on our dream jobs. Certain careers and industries function in such a way that only the best of the best – or the luckiest of the lucky – or both – have a shot. This is because the number of available slots is vastly exceeded by the number of passionate and talented wannabes.
The universe doesn’t owe anyone anything and nothing is guaranteed to work out no matter how hard you try. Especially when you look at artistic fields like writing, film, music, etc., it’s quite possible for extremely talented and driven people to bang their head against a wall for decades, work very hard, and end up with very little to show for it. I admit I am not one of those people – I did not pursue my dream with the rigor I should have – but I have seen others who do qualify and have not “made it.” Will they some day? I certainly hope so, but who knows?
There’s nothing “cowardly” about deciding to take a surer bet. It’s a calculated choice with an upside and a downside, like anything else. And you may sneer at people who go for the money, but you know what? I’ve spent 10 years living within a budget that you can barely survive on in the city where I work. It fucking sucks and I’m tired of it and it’s killing me. “Going for the money,” at least within reason, actually makes a hell of a lot of sense from where I am standing.
I worked all sorts of jobs that I hated in order to put myself through college. The thing that kept me going at all those crap jobs was the knowledge that I was earning the money in order to accomplish my higher goals. There’s certainly nothing wrong with working a non-dream job in order to make money for a time. But I’ve never met anybody whose career was based primarily on the amount of money it earns that also feels happy and fulfilled. The lawyers, bankers, doctors, and other big-money-earners that I know who are happy people aren’t happy because of the money they make, they’re happy because they’re passionate about the law, about helping others do things like start businesses and build homes, and about healing people. The money’s the frosting.