Please help me decide my next step

February 4, 2013 6:31 AM

I have been feeling discouraged with my life since the last half of 2012 but this year I resolve to make definite changes. I am 25 and earning my living as a part-time software tester. I have been on food stamps since August. I make *just* enough every month to pay rent, pay bills, and save a little bit. I have been aggressively and earnestly looking for full-time work. I have an undergraduate social science degree from a good university but I have a terrible, terrible GPA. I have internship experience with policy research and analysis, and held jobs in nonprofit administration and development. My references are excellent but my resume is pretty patchy.

I am leaning towards two courses of action:

1.) Stick to my software testing gig, learn as much as I can, and "see where it goes" (My boss is a good mentor who genuinely wants to see me level up and succeed) while aggressively looking for any full-time job I can get.

2.) Take steps towards a graduate degree in Economics (my undergraduate degree is in Sociology). It is really the only field I see worth investing myself in. I am not mathematically savvy, but I am willing to put in the work and focus necessary. What I want to do, eventually, is work for a think tank in DC or in SE Asia. I don't mind starting over i.e. take community college courses, but I am undecided if it's the right time to take out loans for a M.A as I am not even sure if a M.A. in Economics will be useful in say, 5 years. I am also hoping that there is another avenue I can do what I want to do without having to get a Master's.

I really want to make the most out of the next 5 years of my life. I would appreciate any feedback.

Thank you very much.

posted by anonymous to work & money (9 answers total)

Take classes at your local community college while you work. Just one or two a semester in Economics, to try out the new idea while also improving your GPA. You can keep your current job, you can look for a new job. The local community college should be able to help you polish your resume as well.
posted by RainyJay at 6:40 AM on February 4 [1 favorite]

It sounds like you have a supportive boss. If I were you I'd go with #1 first. Do you have any interest in programming? If you focus on developing programming skills, using your boss as support, you could parlay that into a job as a software engineer. Software engineers who understanding testing are in high demand right now. Programming skills would also be useful in studying economics (when I was in C.S. undergrad, we worked with a couple economics grad students who were studying things like trading algorithms). So that might be a good route to go, especially if you are reluctant to go for the Masters.

If you do have any interest in programming, see if there are any groups in your area that offer beginners' workshops. I also hear good things about Code Academy. You could try these out just to gauge your interest first.
posted by deathpanels at 6:52 AM on February 4 [2 favorites]

2.) Take steps towards a graduate degree in Economics (my undergraduate degree is in Sociology). It is really the only field I see worth investing myself in. I am not mathematically savvy, but I am willing to put in the work and focus necessary. What I want to do, eventually, is work for a think tank in DC or in SE Asia. I don't mind starting over i.e. take community college courses, but I am undecided if it's the right time to take out loans for a M.A as I am not even sure if a M.A. in Economics will be useful in say, 5 years. I am also hoping that there is another avenue I can do what I want to do without having to get a Master's.

I'm an economist and I can say wholeheartedly that investing your own money in an Masters degree is not going to help you get into a think tank.

Think tanks for the most part harvest excellent GPA recruits from top tier universities. They are only interested in the best and brightest. A low GPA in (what I am assuming) a non-elite university and a patchy resume has written you off for almost every credible think tank I can think of.

Regardless, a Masters degree in Economics needs to be mathematically intensive to give you any job prospects. Policy writers are a dime a dozen and there will continue to be a glut of trained social scientists into the foreseeable future. The only Economists getting hired these days are mathematical grinders. You'll need to become very mathematically savvy.

Further, if you have no independent wealth, you should not pay for this yourself. There will not be a need for people with an MA in Economics until the boomers start to retire in droves which is still years off. You'll go heavy into debt to do it and the prospects aren't great short-term.

I would stick with what you are doing and look into developing software if that's interesting to you - it's usually easier to grow in a field than make a lateral move into another one.
posted by Rodrigo Lamaitre at 7:17 AM on February 4 [8 favorites]

First of all you need to stop beating yourself up for a crappy GPA. If you graduated, then it's good enough. My GPA upon graduating, after 7 years of attending multiple universities, was 2.0. Done is done. Only super-elite places will even ASK for your GPA, think Google, the other 99.9% of the job market only wants to tick the box.

With my 2.0, I got into Grad School and got my MBA. I took three Econ courses and they KICKED MY ASS. The math...I can't even comprehend how to impart to you how hard it was. NO amount of focus or studying will make up for a lack of talent and interest. I squeeked by because I understood the concepts even though I still don't understand the damn graphs.

Husbunny is a mathematician. There is just as much artistry and talent necessary for that as there is for an English degree or a Fine Arts degree. Some things are just gifts from God.

Do you enjoy testing software? If so, hang in there with it. If you don't, keep that job while looking for one that you enjoy.

I believe that you're going into the job market with a "less-than" attitude. You think that because your GPA isn't as good as it could be (and I'm truly interested to know what it is, because my 2.0 includes a lot of D's) that you don't DESERVE to have a good job.

Now that you're out of school, your GPA is irrelevant. A total non-issue.

As for your resume, don't put that your current gig is part-time. Just list the skills that you've aquired doing it.

You seem very fuzzy on how the world of work actually functions. Just because you get a degree in Economics it doesn't necessarily mean that you'll get a job with a Think Tank. Just because your undergrad GPA is shitty, it doesn't mean that you can't get a good job.

What is it EXACTLY that you thought you were going to do with that degree in Sociology? You need to attack that with a vengence.

In the meantime, find another part-time gig, work at a "stop-and-rob", or do customer service in a call center, or take a job in the Food Stamp office or as a Social Worker.

For crissakes, don't let your GPA define you and define your life. I can't BEGIN to tell you how insignificant it is.
posted by Ruthless Bunny at 7:56 AM on February 4 [7 favorites]

I would stick to your current job and keep looking for a full-time job. You have done well in jobs and with people (you have good references), generally and compared to school, and the economy is picking up slowly. Make sure you are networking. Also, please do not downplay your advantages -- you have a four-year degree from a good university and good references. Play to your strengths. If down the road it makes sense to get a master's, do it then. And/or take community college classes now.
posted by ClaudiaCenter at 7:56 AM on February 4

PS I very very very occasionally participate in hiring decisions. For me, a good reference particularly from someone I trust is as important or more important than what is on a transcript or resume.
posted by ClaudiaCenter at 8:00 AM on February 4 [2 favorites]

Seconding what Rodrigo Lamaitre said.
posted by Dansaman at 8:11 AM on February 4

Well, five years from now do you want to be a software engineer or a policy person working in a think tank or nonprofit? The pay (in both the short and long term) is going to be better if you're working as a software engineer or tester, and the field is less competitive to break into. However, if you're not very mathematically inclined, it's possible that you'll always be passable and not great at that work, and that can lead to its own burnout/dissatisfaction when you're 35 and feel stuck in a career that's not a great fit.

If you really think you want to go work at a think tank, I'm not sure why you think economics is the only field worth pursing for a masters. If anything, a masters in economics is likely to read to hiring managers as indicating that you dropped out of an econ PhD program. Plus, it's unbelievably mathematically intensive. However, for domestic policy analysis in many fields, a Masters in Public Policy (MPP) is going to open similar doors at think tanks or nonprofits. If you really want to focus on international think tanks, getting a masters at somewhere like Johns Hopkins SAIS would function similarly. Masters degrees are almost never funded, so this route is likely to leave you somewhere around $50k in debt, and since the competition for jobs is still pretty strong at this level, it's only worth doing if you're going to a top-flight school. I wouldn't necessarily discourage this route but it's important to be realistic about the risk you're taking on by doing it. There is no guaranteed job at the other end but there is certainly more debt, which could leave you worse off than you are now.

If you were my younger sibling, I'd probably advise you to stay put at your current position and try to move up, while simultaneously broadening your search for full-time jobs to include positions that would allow you to excel. You mention that you have great references from your previous jobs in nonprofit administration/development and policy analysis, which makes me suspect that you might be a good writer and communicator. Focus on jobs--including but not limited to policy analysis--where those skills would serve you well.
posted by iminurmefi at 8:35 AM on February 4 [2 favorites]

Change something about your life, it doesn't really matter what, it doesn't really matter how, with a few caveats: For the time-being, stay at your part-time job, since it leaves you with free time to do other things. Also, try and limit your choice of things to change to things that won't cost a significant amount of money. Finally the changes you make should expose you to new people, experiences and points of view, and they should require some engagement with people.

Once you've made the change, do the new thing for a while/multiple times. If you still don't know what you want to do, think critically about the last change you made, repeat the cycle make another change. By "think critically," I don't mean, "think about the negative aspects of the last change you made," I mean think about it from multiple perspectives. What was good about it, what was bad about it, what was better and worse about it than whatever you were doing before. What was *different*?

I'll also add that you are 25, which in many ways isn't that much easier than being 15, and may in fact be harder, because you may feel the burden of of much more responsibility for your situation than you did at 15, but you are also just a baby adult. So, I hope you will cut yourself some slack to figure out your place in the world. Just keep trying.

All that said, it sounds like while you might not love being a software tester, it doesn't sound like you hate it either, and it sounds like you have a decent boss. I think you could do worse than following that path a little further. Being a software tester should give you some opportunity to develop some basic programming skills by writing automated tests. It may give you the option to create fixes for some of the bugs you spot and get constructive feedback from software developers who should review your fix before it is committed to trunk. You'll get some perspective, both good and bad, on how software is developed.

Developing these skills and comfort with code, will be useful in a variety of potential jobs in the future. If you do end up in policy research and analysis, it will enable you to work with larger data sets than many of your peers. It will give you edge up in communicating requirements to software developers in any domain with the need and funding for software solutions.

I'd also suggest looking at opportunities in the private for-profit sector. I don't know exactly what policy research and analysis entails, but I think there is a good bet that the same skills are transferrable to a business setting, perhaps in various areas of market research and sales and marketing analytics.
posted by Good Brain at 9:57 PM on February 4 [2 favorites]