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Originally Posted by Bytor Peltor
The same boiling water that softens a potato also hardens an egg. It's not about the circumstances, but rather what you are made of!
Many who have degrees find ways to make their degrees work for them, while others spend all their time trying to pay off their degrees.
Here in the States, we are dreadfully low on nurses and respiratory therapist. When my father-in-law was battling West Nile, the respiratory therapist were working all the overtime they could handle. According to them, it didn't take much to pull down $150k and $200k plus was doable if you wanted it.
Lots of hospitals are offering sizable signing bonuses to nurses just out of college or tech school.
Sales, depending on the field, can be extremely profitable. Down here along the Gulf Coast, oil field and medical are big business. Like everything, this line of work has it's ups and downs......but a good salesman will rarely do anything else.
Most important of all:
1) be able to pass a piss test
2) don't have a criminal background
3) be personable and reliable
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I'm not a seller. I spent a long time handling accounts for commercial clients, and the reality of that system is not something I can handle. I wrote a lengthy piece about this recently and sent it to an old prof., and while it was scathing and nihilistic, it was also well received. I really think corporate American business and commodity brokerage corporations have resorted to a subtle and quiet new kind of human trafficking. If you take a long look at what some of the biggest marketing and sales outfits do, it's staggering that they're able to get away with it. They sell nothing, or the illusion of something, and place a heavy price on it. Their market is interested more in making services computer-efficient without losing their human workforce (which they pull from key demographics so they can claim charitable services during tax season), but neither service broker nor customer is willingness to adequately train these "specialists" who cost so much less through Broker A than all those qualified and seasoned professionals that were just laid off because they would never accept a pinner wage like the recent graduates or high school diploma holders that Broker A is tossing under the bus.
The individual worker is doomed to fail in these situations, but even if s/he succeeds, success is never realized. Working hard and being outstanding is a liability. Managers want people who are comfortable in their $13/hr job, who will tell them all about their fellow workers, and help them trim the talented and ambitious from the bunch. The last thing anyone wants is for people to start thinking they are valuable... Because when they think that, they stop fearing getting the axe, and start asking for more money.
It's just insanity.
I am not personable. I am odd and eccentric and creative and people get a "condescending" vibe from me. I am apparently incapable of not acting this way, because I reel myself in at work, and do as I'm told without question, giving minimal input (used to give lots of input bevause people asked for it, but when dumb people hear good ideas from their subordinates, they get uneasy and basically draw a little red dot on the subordinate's forhead).
I'm rambling, but this is my thing. I am smart. I am jovial and personable when I'm not being forced to do humiliating work for morons who in leadership roles.
I do not play well with others unless I am with others who share my beliefs about the world. So I do well at the non-profits, which are never going to pay a living wage, or pay me to do what I'm actually trained to do. I'm the kind of social autistic dude who belongs in academic isolation, and I'm very good at school work.
So, it's really a matter of hating my life, or trying to build a life I can stand. I am in the process of applying to some graduate programs in cognitive neuroscience and related fields. Wherever I go it will cost a lot of money and take a long time to earn myself the three letters that will give me some control over my future.
I would love medical school, and that's knly 4 initial years before being employable as a researcher, or living on a stipend as a resident. 3 years of rotations and I'll basically be able to do what I want.
But I'm losing my mind. The world is violent and cold and insane. I don't know how long I can last.
Sorry for all the drama. I'm going through a "No fucking way this is almost mid-life"-crisis. I'm sincerely concerned about my well being and the well being of others in similar situations.
I wish I could move to Canada or the UK or France, because I think it would be a more conducive atmosphere for my goals. Here in the U.S., only really rich people, really well adjusted people and (sometimes) people in the military have their education funded.