Career unrelated to your degree?
 

As I was reading though some of the posts about job hunting, I was struck by what axdalum87 (I think?) said about having a job in a office-type environment even though she had a BS in Elementary Education. BTW, kudos to her for sticking through her job and rising up the corporate rungs!

I was just curious what other people have done with their degree when it doesn't seem to "match" the standard path. Or did you think you knew what you wanted to do and then did something completely different?

I think a lot of people with liberal arts degrees aren't really working in their field, exactly, but maybe that's not the same. I mean, no one needs me to do deconstructionist analysis of Jane Austen (I was an English major), and, well, none of my philosophy major friends are working as professional philosophers.

I do know people who swapped careers by getting an advanced degree (nurses getting MBAs, psych majors going into law). I would be curious to see too how people manage to make a total swap, though, esp. when their initial field is one that does have jobs in it!

I have a degree in history and polisci and am currently working as a secretary. I'm returning to school this sept to do a degree in marketing so I can actually get a job.

My degree will be in IT, where there are jobs, but I'm going to law school. I don't want to move to have to get a job, and I don't like dealing with the business end of IT. If I could do web design all day, I'd be happy, but that's not going to happen.

So, I want to work in IP law. It's kinda the best of both worlds

Boy that sounds familiar :) ! My education:

Bachelor of Music in Music Education (Instrumental music, percussion specialty)

Master of Library and Information Science, Specialty in Young Adult and Children's Services

Even though there are music teacher jobs available, I was born to be a librarian. I was able to go to library school as a trained music teacher because only about 2 or 3 schools around the country have undergrad LIS programs: Pitt, Illinois, and some I can't remember. You can't be a librarian without a Master's, so a lot of people with a desire to become librarians and a desire NOT to go to UIUC or Pitt take undergrad majors in English, history, art/art history (for those who want to work in museums), or other humanities. I was unique in my library school class, being the only one with a BM. Library science is different that way, it doesn't have any prerequisites or tests except for the GRE, which I bombed and I still got into a top school anyway.

:eek:

here is a prime example...
 

When my mother was a little girl she wanted to be a nurse. She went to nursing school after high school. At 20 after three years of nursing school she went to work in a hospital. When I was born, the powers that be suggested that the nurses go to college and earn a bachelor's degree which my mother did in three more years. After my mother became a widow, she realized she would need to be the sole bread winner and went to law school. She is now a lawyer on Wall Street. At 20 she graduated from nursing school, at 30 from college, and at 40 from law school. Her interests and financial needs changed during her lifetime, and she needed to adjust herself and her educational level to accomodate these needs.

Florida State has an excellent library program. One of my friends here got her masters in it and now runs a local community college library.

Anyhow...I have a biology degree and work as a technical writer (software manuals and help systems).

Life changes do indeed cause career changes. I got my BS, MS, and PhD in agriculture/biology, taught college for years, and then started teaching high school Spanish so I could have the same schedule as my husband (a teacher) and kids. When I returned to teaching college, I became a Spanish professor.

I can't think of the numbers, but a huge percentage of workers switch horses in midstream, so to speak.

Whoa, I'm going through this exact thing right now. I'm a journalism major but I just decided this year that I want to be a casting director for TV shows or movies. Yet, how does journalism relate to that? It doesn't. But since I'm going to be a senior and graduating next year, I think it's safe to assume that it's too late to switch majors now. ;)

my sad case!
 

I have an AA in liberal arts, a BS in psychology, and a MS in tourism with focus on professional event planning -- where does that get me? A receptionist job! Yep - receptionist. For the past 22 months!

The biggest problem I had was that when I started my Master's degree, I was single (but dating my hubby-to-be) -- so by the time I finished my degree, we were married, and he has a great job. So he didn't want to leave, and I had to take what I could get. Its rough because I am so over-qualified for what I do. I don't mind it -- I love working with people -- but I do wish better for myself because I worked SO hard for that degree. The city I live in is just not event planning or tourism material. The 2 big facilities are all staffed by people brought in from their corporate HQ, and I have NO desire to be in hotel management or catering. So this is my life....at least for a couple more months. I'm trying to go part time, and then I won't work outside the home after Eli gets here (which is why I'm looking at the Creative Memories thing). My big dream is to move to Charleston, SC and get on with a big company there -- major tourism and conventions coming through there. But, it would be far away from my family (more specifically, my 3 - 4 to be - nieces whom I dearly adore).

So...I guess that I just wish better for myself - my grades have always been through the roof, and I know that I could make it in a big career.

Anyway - that's my story :o

calm down :) You know I adore Pittsburgh, but for a lot of people in the West or South, it might be too far away or expensive to spend four years as an undergrad, so they might desire a degree from someplace closer to home or cheaper and then put the big bucks into library school. Why anyone wouldn't want to live in Pittsburgh is beyond me, unless maybe you're a Patriots fan.

I almost went to UIUC, but I'm not big on cornfields or the smell of cows. Great school, though. Top library school in the country, their application alone is somewhere around 10 pages.

In defense of my beloved UIUC, you only smell the cows when the south winds blow. ;) (However, the first time I visited it was at it's most ripe and I remember thinking, 'oh MAN! Who would go here if it smells that THAT!')
Hey juniorgrrl - I'm with you on designing webpages all day! If I could, I would...but alas I can't. I did try to teach my third graders how to build basic ones though. What a crazy time that was!

I have a political science degree. i don't know what kind of job i'm to even look for. i'm really thinking about going back to school too.:D

I'm getting my political science degree and plan to enter the police department upon graduating. It may seem like political science is irrelevant to becoming a cop, but as corny as it sounds, i think its important to get an education. The way you learn to think in university is priceless.

I go to Clarion and I know that they have an undergrad LS degree. Is this different that LIS?

Emmi

For what its worth..only about 1% of the worlds population has a college degree...makes ya feel pretty good about yourself doesn't it?

I don't know that this was addressed to me but I'm going to answer it anyhow ;) It does feel nice to know that I will have a college degree, and to also be doing something that I absolutely love, however, considering what teachers make compared to what a college education costs . . . especially what someone in another field can make just on 1 degree is kinda sad and pathetic. My boyfriend will graduate with a BFA in graphic design and his starting salary will be almost twice mine. As a side note, my personal opinion is that there should be more rigid standards in the hiring and yearly review of teacher performance, but on the other hand the starting salary should also be more than what it is . . . especially considering how much of their own money a starting teacher has to spend on supplies that the school won't or can't pay for.

*stepping off the soapbox and turning this thread back over to the reguarly schedualed topic*

Emmi

It's my understanding that it IS different. I believe LS is more of a focus on the standard library services like information retrieval and cataloging. When you throw in the "I," that includes training on more information technologies. Pitt and Clarion have drastically different Master's programs. Clarion is shifting more toward a focus on Information (rather than Library) Science and is training fewer and fewer people who want to become public or school librarians, while Pitt is still training many people for public service and has thrown the "I" into the degree because the IT people were complaining that they couldn't get a job with a degree that read "MLS," everyone thought they were librarians. At Pitt, the two programs have split and they offer an MIS and an MLIS.

More and more schools are going the same direction as Clarion, getting away from training public librarians, and this has created a huge need in the field of public service. There are just as many of not more jobs in the field, but fewer schools are training for the positions. So if anyone's reading this, let me tell you, as a trained public services librarian you will never get rich, but you will also never be unemployed, especially if you're in children's services.

Amen, Emmi! I also would love to see more stringent requirements for substitute teachers (in our area they need not be anything but T.B. free, practically) and therefore higher pay for them (currently it's only $55/day). This would benefit the teachers whose classes would be taught by professionals while they're out and would allow certified/licensed teachers to make some sort of living while they're subbing in hopes of getting a full time position. But, alas, budgets just aren't what they should be...there are soooo many more items an increase in the budget for education would pay for!

Ahem...back to the regularly scheduled topic.

I would definately agree that people's needs & lives change, resulting in changes in careers all of the time.

I started college as a music major. Until that time, that's all I could have imagined doing. After 2 years of music school, though, I'd had enough. So 2 1/2 years into my schooling, I changed majors to "Speech & Communications". I intentially kept a broad major of communications not because I wasn't sure what I wanted to do, but because there's so much I want to do! And that degree gave me a good general background for a lot of things (from technical aspects of TV and radio productions to management). I am planning on pursuing either an MBA or an MA in the near future (but also want to save up some money for that first since I have racked up enough in student loans already).

At the moment I'm in project management at a copy shop, and vying for a position as an assistant branch operations manager for that same company. My current job is loosely tied to my major, but I hope to eventually pursue something a little more creative and "artsy", one of my goals being to teach communications (especially film studies) at the undergraduate level.

Something funny... one of my friends from school has her BA in Art and Art Therapy. She teaches art part time at a private elementary school, but also works for the same company as me in several capacities. Her focus and best subjects as a student were printmaking and photography: replication and duplication, as she says. And now she's making copies. :D (Her joke, but pretty funny).

I have a BBA in Financial Services/Risk Mangement (Finance and Insurance all rolled into one) I work as a Software Specialist for the Texas Workforce Commission. I do plan to use my degree...someday.

I have a BA in Biology and English, which sounds crazy and unrelated, but I'm currently writing for a healthcare publication, so I managed to find a job that uses both of my degrees. :) I don't know too many other people that are doing anything with their degrees...my boyfriend was a Neuroscience major (basically psychology and biology) and he's in sales, and all of the liberal arts-History, English, etc-majors I know are either secretaries, receptionists, or working in some kind of office until they go to grad school. I don't think you can do much of anything in a specific field without a master's or PhD anymore. :(