Looking for my Career Path

August 31, 2015 12:05 AM

I've been out of school for a few years, and have had trouble finding my career path, due in part to my distractibility and lack of certain skills. Difficulty: Bad at Math

I’m 27 years old, and I’ve been out of college for just about four years, graduating with a degree in a Liberal Arts field. Since then, I made it about a year through a Masters in Communications and Information Science program in the Northeast before figuring out that it really wasn’t for me (Despite having a ~3.5 GPA in what I did complete), and decided to move back home for a few reasons.

In the last three or so years, I’ve:

Continued my technician job for a well known company, at about nine years (Which I really do love many aspects of, though, have been somewhat disheartened at of late simply because I've been at this for ages and need a change).

Performed a sort of internship for said company, performing a sort of data analysis role a few years ago, making some very concrete changes to procedures worldwide (though, due to the nature of the position, I’m unable to really specify on a resume what these changes were, and haven’t really been able to leverage that into an area of interest)

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I know that I likely need to complete an advanced degree to really get beyond where I am right now, but I still haven’t a solid idea in terms of what direction to move. (And my interest in getting an advanced degree isn’t really based on money as much as my want to get out of the retail/service industry rut and feel like I make a difference on more of a macro level)

What complicates matters is that I have general areas of interest, but they seem so niche-like that I feel like I couldn’t really get anywhere with them in terms of a career.


Things I love/could talk one's ear off about:

Technology/consumer electronics (including troubleshooting/figuring out how products function or why they fail)
Vintage video games
Film (Specifically film history in addition to archival practices)
Information Science/Civil liberties and digital law
20th Century History


Considerations/complicating factors:

I have a diagnosed mathematics learning disability (so, pretty much anything outside of addition/subtraction/multiplication/basic algebra is out of the question)

I have ADHD (Which I have worked on sans medication for the last 15 years with varied success, though I’m not opposed strictly toward medication if it helps)

My undergraduate GPA was, due in part to math courses and, in retrospect probably due as well to my own distractibility, below 3.0, while in major was ~3.8.


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Ideas I’ve juggled around:

IT Masters (Seems to be a field that will become more and more automated over the next 30-40 years, to my detriment)

Computer Science (InfoSec, maybe? But also due to become more and more automated; also, given my difficulties with learning math, and as a result programming beyond VERY basic Python, seems a degree that is a bit out of reach.)

I’ve also considered UI/UX and Human-Computer Interaction, but I don’t really have much in the way of Photoshop or Illustrator skills which may be necessary for such a thing; I’m also becoming more and more certain that I enjoy the hardware aspect of computers more than software.

I also find electronic engineering interesting in theory, but, again, due to the math involved, seems fairly out of my league.

Film (or video game or music) archival, while I find fascinating, seems to be a field in low demand after graduation, which being risk averse, makes me kind of hesitant.

I’ve considered law and took a timed practice LSAT in the last year or so and received a score in the high 160s. That said, from all I’ve read, law school seems like a one-way ticket to pain unless I'm lucky enough to get in a top ten school and do well in that (Plus, I’m unsure if my hyperactivity would allow for my studying for the bar exam without going nuts).


Are there any paths that I haven't considered, or not given proper consideration to given the aforementioned?

posted by anonymous to Work & Money (3 answers total)

Although I am from a completely different country (UK) and have little knowledge about the job situation and prospects in the technology industry, I can give you some insight into the legal industry since you did mention that you are considering going down the law school route. I have some knowledge of what goes on across the pond from stories of fellow students etc.

You're right, the law school route in the US is a long hard road. Law school programmes are normally three years, and you need to prepare very well in order to get into reputable law schools that give you good job prospects. I'm not sure at your age if you would be willing to commit 3+ years for a complete overhaul of your career, and factoring in your condition, if you would be happy following a long, arduous career that can be very unrewarding at times because all the time, effort and grit you invested into pursuing law don't pay off immediately. Also, consider this: these days you have to secure holiday legal work - from paralegalling to clerking in courts, anything that you can get hold of - and those can be unpaid internships that is just for window dressing up your CV for recruiters. Sadly, law firm recruiters are still very traditional and they need to see some sort of legal experience in order to assess your commitment towards a career in law (as well as seeing what kind of network and connections you have, which they won't admit to but I know for a fact that they value your connections just as much, if not more, than your ability as a lawyer). Combined with the heavy academic workload, all of this mean that you always have to be on the ball. If you slack off, you have a very hard time catching up with your fellow students, and unfortunately law students tend to be highly competitive.

That being said, I know a fair few amount of people like you, who around your age or in their mid 30s, decided to do a career change into law, and they have been fairly successful at it. This one guy I met in an unpaid internship in a law firm had a STEM undergrad and postgrad degree in the US, taught for a bit, then did the law school route and became a lawyer around early 30s. A lady I met there was a restauranteur in NY before deciding to go to a law school in Virginia and she has managed to secure a legal role. Another lady was married to a MBA student in the US, moved to the US to be with him, decided to do the law school route and now she has a legal role in one of the courts somewhere in the US. While many law firms do not look past the cookie-cutter types who have done the traditional route into law, there are other alternatives in the legal industry and some law firms who do value your breadth of experience outside law.

Now that I think about it, if you are into the technical side of things, especially hardware, you might like to explore the option of becoming a patent attorney? I know that this might not be ideal since you have a liberal arts qualification not a STEM one (and I am almost certain they require you to have a STEM undergrad degree to be eligible to become a patent attorney), but if you are already thinking of going back into education in STEM fields, the patent attorney route could become an option once you complete the qualification, and if you really want to go down the law route, you might as well merge your passion with the career together. Just a food for thought.
posted by cicero at 4:41 AM on August 31, 2015

Wait, you did a bunch of data analysis that resulted in a major business change? I think you need to consider the idea that you may not be bad at math, but rather bad at math classes. (As a card-carrying math professor, I can attest that the skills have less overlap than you might think.) I also think you need to work harder on figuring out how to spin this accomplishment on your resume: you should be able to say something like "Implemented training change that saved $_____" or "Designed procedure that saved ____ hundred hours of employee time" without going into detail about the specific procedure.
posted by yarntheory at 6:35 AM on August 31, 2015

Government and public policy! I work with Australian equivalent of the "Government in the Sunshine Act" so it's all about legal/legislation/privacy/information access/etc. My background is a BFA and an AA in library technology, I did more specific training once I was hired, but there are more training options in the US (I think it was.... Georgetown Extension School?). The department I work for is local government "governance" - so other members of my team help run local elections, make sure Council meetings are run and recorded correctly, liaise with local government officials, etc. I've found it a pretty satisfying balance of intellectual/conceptual challenge and feeling like I'm promoting democracy and "helping". I get a good balance of routine requests (I listen to podcasts and process them), and more in-depth research ones. People in my department and that I see at conferences tend to have studied or be "into" public policy, public administration, privacy, law (privacy or administrative), etc. I have a friend who's a paralegal outside Chicago, who's day to day is not dissimilar. She gets to do all the "research", still earns a decent paycheck, but the degree was much cheaper, less cutthroat, and she doesn't have to go to court or do the actual "lawyering".

fwiw, Photoshop and Illustrator are things you can absolutely teach yourself if you want!

I agree with the assessment of some of the fields you've mentioned. Film archivist sounds awesome, but there's really not heaps of jobs. I say, pick a job you're ok with and then volunteer for film festivals and stuff.

I will also second what yarntheory says about math. I was always "bad at math"... until I hadn't had a math class in over a decade and started studying for the GRE. I was older, under less pressure, and it was probably better explained by the test prep materials than my crappy high school math teacher. I got a good math GRE score - not just "good for liberal arts" but *good*. I know you have a diagnosis - but that doesn't necessarily mean you're bad at it inherently, it just might be extra work. Don't automatically cross off something you really want just because it might involve some math. If you really just don't LIKE it, well.... that's different ;)
posted by jrobin276 at 4:03 PM on August 31, 2015