Reinventing your career

August 8, 2007 8:00 AM

Is there a website where people discuss their likes/dislikes about their occupations?

I'm thinking about going back to school, but want to get the 'real' scoop on the ins and outs of the field. If it makes any difference, I'm thinking about working towards becoming a Registered Nurse.

posted by dancinglamb to work & money (4 answers total)

You may be looking for something more highbrow, but there's Nurse's Notes on the LiveJournal (plus you can poke around other communities with the "nursing" interest).

In my experience, there's a dedicated livejournal community for war stories about any occupation you care to name.
posted by ormondsacker at 8:33 AM on August 8, 2007

There's generally a blog or some sort of website (LJ as ormondsacker says) for nearly any occupation that I've cared to look up, but bear in mind that the tone can be negative, since it's sometimes a site for people to vent and share frustrations. I don't know that you'll find the "ins and outs" there as much as you'll be able to identify the negative aspects of a specific occupation. The positive aspects tend to be posted less frequently, though they are there too. Which is useful in and of itself though.

A quick google search of "nurse" and "blog" seems to yield many results, including:

CodeBlog

Change-of-Shift Nursing Blog Carnival

A search for "nursing" and "website" also yields a bunch of results, including:

allnurses.com (looks especially useful)

Discover Nursing (appears to be a little conversion-y, i.e. wanting to get you to become a nurse)

You could also consider trying to find a family friend that's a nurse and talk to him/her. Or calling a nursing school that you're interested in attending and asking to be connected with one of their alums to find out what it's like. Maybe you could even contact a medical facility and state your objective and see what happens.
posted by ml98tu at 9:01 AM on August 8, 2007

Hey, you can contact me, since my job is to get people to go into healthcare careers. I'd be glad to answer your specific questions if I can. email me at my username at gmail.com
posted by BrodieShadeTree at 9:32 AM on August 8, 2007

I think it's pretty occupation-specific -- there isn't one "talk about your job" website. Here's a set of links for the librarians -- the "Love the Liberry" link is a literary masterpiece.
posted by gum at 1:55 AM on August 9, 2007