Amaranth Games - My Forum Entries

Re: Career advice anyone?

Subject: Re: Career advice anyone?
by Aeternus on 2012/3/15 9:24:29

I honestly think it's important to do a job you have an interest in. Otherwise, you will be completely miserable and want to do something else. I am in nursing and am fortunate that it is something I like and is something that pays the bills, too.

However, you have to be realistic, too. Some fields are harder to get into than others. For example, I can be a nurse with just my Bachelor's degree. My friend who went into microbiology will probably need to get her PhD to get into academic research. If you want to be a writer, know that you will probably face a heap of rejection letters before you get a break, and even then must do many revisions before your work gets printed (and even then, you'll probably only make a tiny profit and will end up working another job to supplement the income).

Basically, what I'm getting at is know what you're getting into. Interested in a job or a field? Great! Now what are you going to do about it? Are you willing to get the educational requirements? Are you willing to put forth the effort to get a job in a field that's difficult to get into (i.e. screenwriting)? Will you be able to keep up with the demands of the job? Will it pay the bills or will you need to take on additional work?

I find a lot of people don't take these things into consideration before they take the plunge. For example, I had a friend who went into psychology in university, only to find out that she needed to take math courses. Thing is, she wasn't good at math, and so ended up switching to English. Or my friend who is a microbiology major? She's nearly done her Master's degree. She'd do her PhD but doesn't quite have the money for it at the moment. She said that, realistically, she only has hope of getting some kind of lab assistant type of job, which she could have easily gotten with a college diploma in a fraction of the time it took her to get her Master's for much, much less money/debt.

And I really can't count the amount of people who go into some vague area of study, hoping for a job at the end, without ever actually having a specific job in mind. They are often the ones who end up working jobs totally unrelated to their field of study.

If you are interested in a job or field, I'd suggest looking into what it takes to do it and talk to people who are actually doing these things so you can see what it's like and if it's right for you.