What should I be when I finally grow up?
February 18, 2023 11:11 AM Subscribe
I'm in my mid-30s and still struggling to find a career I'm satisfied with. I have diverse interests and skills. Help me narrow it down? (Or, alternatively, recommend that I settle and come to terms with dissatisfaction?)
I am in the U.S. I did my undergrad in math/stats with a decent dose of computer science. I then mostly worked in commercial construction as a licensed trades-person (think electrician, plumber, something along those lines). A couple years ago, I quit my construction career and went back to school for a pre-med post-bacc. I got excellent grades, but I got freaked out by stories of physician burnout, and also happened to take a really engaging molecular biology research course, so ended up deciding to take a job in biotech instead of applying for med school.
I have strong interests in healthcare, public health, biosciences, harm reduction, and the built environment. Ideally I want to be able to work towards eventually making at least $100k in my high cost-of-living area (where wages are generally also higher in most but not all fields). And if I do make another major career change, I'd like to stick the landing this time.
Careers I've had so far, and things I've liked/disliked about them:
Emergency services caseworker for food, clothing, housing
Liked: fast-paced, seeing many walk-in clients a day with different issues, interacting with people, having resources to help people
Disliked: not a liveable wage, no room for advancement to a liveable wage, no spatial/hands-on work. (Obviously I also disliked the existence of systemic injustice that I interacted with daily, but that didn't make me dislike the job itself, at least not for the year that I did this.)
Municipal policy consultant
Liked: almost nothing. Doing research on a project was okay.
Disliked: business travel, wearing a suit, talking to politicians, being expected to talk like a politician
Commercial construction worker in a licensed trade
Liked: working with my hands, solving problems, being out on a physical construction sites instead of sitting at a computer, working with a team, excellent wages, directly useful, learning on the job
Disliked: getting up at 4:30am (and thus never being able to do anything creative or interesting in the evenings because I went to bed at 8pm), building the same high-rise over and over, got boring once it wasn't new anymore, no direct sense of helping others
Mechanical construction CAD detailer
Liked: fun initial learning curve, solving complex spatial problems, facilitating meetings with multiple stakeholders to resolve design problems
Disliked: being trapped in front of a computer all day, having to laboriously document everything the engineer had FUBARed in the initial design, problems felt exclusively spatial so I felt like a glorified constraint-satisfaction-problem machine, working only with mechanical systems and never biological ones
Synthetic biology research assistant (academia)
Liked: working with my hands, reading scientific papers, planning experiments, learning new things constantly, troubleshooting, understanding the complex and fascinating research, designing biological systems
Disliked: very low wages, limited room for advancement without a PhD
Molecular biology research assistant (industry)
Liked: liveable wage, room for advancement, some work with hands, some computer programming, spatial thinking, systems thinking, flexible schedule, interesting coworkers, designing better templates for experimental record-keeping, optimizing data structures
Disliked: Daily tasks are often boring and repetitive and functionally divorced from the science they contribute to downstream, I don't get much opportunity to learn about the science I'm contributing to, all the intellectually interesting work appears to be done by people with PhDs, unclear if room for advancement ever gets me closer to doing the actual science instead of feeling like a manufacturing technician
Careers I'm considering, ranked in order of how excited I am about them:
1. Physician assistant, NP, or CRNA
I *really* dream of being a healthcare provider. Due to healthcare experience hours requirements, even PA would likely require me to get my RN first (I could also do something like respiratory therapy, but that's two years unemployed and in school instead of a 1 year for an accelerated BSN, which would be a lot harder on my bank account). So, I'm trying to figure out if I'd sufficiently enjoy being an RN for a few years before pursuing a more advanced healthcare degree. I need to take a psych course but otherwise have my nursing school (and PA school) prereqs done, and then some. I think emergency medicine PA, surgical PA, flight nursing, and CRNA would all be great fits for my interests and aptitudes. I do worry about potentially working night shift being hard on my health and social life. This is also a lot of unpaid years in school, and my healthcare friends say healthcare in general is definitely a tough row to hoe these days. Would I love being an RN (and possibly other healthcare jobs to follow)? Would I be hopelessly frustrated as a nurse? How do I find out?
2. Prosthetist/orthotist
I'd get to work with my hands, solve spatial/mechanical problems, and see patients. Prosthetics/orthotics is an awesome combination of building things and working with patients and their emotions as well as their bodies. I do worry that, like everything else, this would get boring eventually -- but maybe not? And maybe there would be room to participate in innovation? (Side note: I have a kinetic prosthetic-orthosis device of my own that is currently changing my life by giving me my pain-free mobility back.) I would need to finally get around to taking physics (not stressful to me, but would need to get done), as well as a couple psych courses, but otherwise I have the prereqs completed. This requires a masters degree and is a more direct path than PA, but I worry would have less diversity of work / ability to shift gears a decade in. I also worry it'll have less hands-on work as the technology for off-the-shelf and 3D-printed prosthetics advances. Maybe the only way to know is to shadow some prosthetists?
3. Bioinformatician
I think this could keep me in biotech and get me closer to the actual science, but I worry I'd feel trapped and bored sitting at a computer screen all day. I like the idea of being able to work remotely and have a dog and maybe a little cabin but... see previous sentence. This path may or may not require a masters degree, which I might or might not choose to do at night while working full-time in my current job. As a plus, it might allow me to work in academia again without a PhD. I do enjoy building conceptual structures as well as physical ones. But sitting in front of computer coding all day historically has made me feel alienated from my body/environment in a not-good way. Coding and/or computer work 1/4 to half the day feels just fine to me, but something about doing it 8 hours a day drives me off a mental cliff. I guess the question is whether I could tolerate the computer-fixated environment for work if I was doing a lot of meatspace things in my free time... I dunno, but even thinking about it feels stressful.
4. Subject matter technician expert in biotech
I could continue at my current job, amassing more lab skills and eventually becoming a technical expert at a particular area. This would allow me to advance in the industry without a PhD. This is definitely the easiest path forward, and doesn't require an advanced degree. However, I am having trouble finding a specific subject role that actually interests me.
Aside: Although I'm definitely interested in being a physician or a podiatrist, and I have almost all the prereqs complete -- including organic chem and biochem -- I don't think I could survive the sleep debt required for residency, so I'm currently not considering MD, OD, or DPM. I looked into veterinary as well, but the debt-to-income situation is completely nuts.
Advice? Thoughts on the careers I'm considering? Is it reasonable for me to even consider healthcare these days? Other amazing careers I haven't thought of? I feel a bit ridiculous that I'm still career-searching this far along but... I can't shake the feeling that there's something out there that won't be mind-numbingly boring to do 8 hours a day.
I am in the U.S. I did my undergrad in math/stats with a decent dose of computer science. I then mostly worked in commercial construction as a licensed trades-person (think electrician, plumber, something along those lines). A couple years ago, I quit my construction career and went back to school for a pre-med post-bacc. I got excellent grades, but I got freaked out by stories of physician burnout, and also happened to take a really engaging molecular biology research course, so ended up deciding to take a job in biotech instead of applying for med school.
I have strong interests in healthcare, public health, biosciences, harm reduction, and the built environment. Ideally I want to be able to work towards eventually making at least $100k in my high cost-of-living area (where wages are generally also higher in most but not all fields). And if I do make another major career change, I'd like to stick the landing this time.
Careers I've had so far, and things I've liked/disliked about them:
Emergency services caseworker for food, clothing, housing
Liked: fast-paced, seeing many walk-in clients a day with different issues, interacting with people, having resources to help people
Disliked: not a liveable wage, no room for advancement to a liveable wage, no spatial/hands-on work. (Obviously I also disliked the existence of systemic injustice that I interacted with daily, but that didn't make me dislike the job itself, at least not for the year that I did this.)
Municipal policy consultant
Liked: almost nothing. Doing research on a project was okay.
Disliked: business travel, wearing a suit, talking to politicians, being expected to talk like a politician
Commercial construction worker in a licensed trade
Liked: working with my hands, solving problems, being out on a physical construction sites instead of sitting at a computer, working with a team, excellent wages, directly useful, learning on the job
Disliked: getting up at 4:30am (and thus never being able to do anything creative or interesting in the evenings because I went to bed at 8pm), building the same high-rise over and over, got boring once it wasn't new anymore, no direct sense of helping others
Mechanical construction CAD detailer
Liked: fun initial learning curve, solving complex spatial problems, facilitating meetings with multiple stakeholders to resolve design problems
Disliked: being trapped in front of a computer all day, having to laboriously document everything the engineer had FUBARed in the initial design, problems felt exclusively spatial so I felt like a glorified constraint-satisfaction-problem machine, working only with mechanical systems and never biological ones
Synthetic biology research assistant (academia)
Liked: working with my hands, reading scientific papers, planning experiments, learning new things constantly, troubleshooting, understanding the complex and fascinating research, designing biological systems
Disliked: very low wages, limited room for advancement without a PhD
Molecular biology research assistant (industry)
Liked: liveable wage, room for advancement, some work with hands, some computer programming, spatial thinking, systems thinking, flexible schedule, interesting coworkers, designing better templates for experimental record-keeping, optimizing data structures
Disliked: Daily tasks are often boring and repetitive and functionally divorced from the science they contribute to downstream, I don't get much opportunity to learn about the science I'm contributing to, all the intellectually interesting work appears to be done by people with PhDs, unclear if room for advancement ever gets me closer to doing the actual science instead of feeling like a manufacturing technician
Careers I'm considering, ranked in order of how excited I am about them:
1. Physician assistant, NP, or CRNA
I *really* dream of being a healthcare provider. Due to healthcare experience hours requirements, even PA would likely require me to get my RN first (I could also do something like respiratory therapy, but that's two years unemployed and in school instead of a 1 year for an accelerated BSN, which would be a lot harder on my bank account). So, I'm trying to figure out if I'd sufficiently enjoy being an RN for a few years before pursuing a more advanced healthcare degree. I need to take a psych course but otherwise have my nursing school (and PA school) prereqs done, and then some. I think emergency medicine PA, surgical PA, flight nursing, and CRNA would all be great fits for my interests and aptitudes. I do worry about potentially working night shift being hard on my health and social life. This is also a lot of unpaid years in school, and my healthcare friends say healthcare in general is definitely a tough row to hoe these days. Would I love being an RN (and possibly other healthcare jobs to follow)? Would I be hopelessly frustrated as a nurse? How do I find out?
2. Prosthetist/orthotist
I'd get to work with my hands, solve spatial/mechanical problems, and see patients. Prosthetics/orthotics is an awesome combination of building things and working with patients and their emotions as well as their bodies. I do worry that, like everything else, this would get boring eventually -- but maybe not? And maybe there would be room to participate in innovation? (Side note: I have a kinetic prosthetic-orthosis device of my own that is currently changing my life by giving me my pain-free mobility back.) I would need to finally get around to taking physics (not stressful to me, but would need to get done), as well as a couple psych courses, but otherwise I have the prereqs completed. This requires a masters degree and is a more direct path than PA, but I worry would have less diversity of work / ability to shift gears a decade in. I also worry it'll have less hands-on work as the technology for off-the-shelf and 3D-printed prosthetics advances. Maybe the only way to know is to shadow some prosthetists?
3. Bioinformatician
I think this could keep me in biotech and get me closer to the actual science, but I worry I'd feel trapped and bored sitting at a computer screen all day. I like the idea of being able to work remotely and have a dog and maybe a little cabin but... see previous sentence. This path may or may not require a masters degree, which I might or might not choose to do at night while working full-time in my current job. As a plus, it might allow me to work in academia again without a PhD. I do enjoy building conceptual structures as well as physical ones. But sitting in front of computer coding all day historically has made me feel alienated from my body/environment in a not-good way. Coding and/or computer work 1/4 to half the day feels just fine to me, but something about doing it 8 hours a day drives me off a mental cliff. I guess the question is whether I could tolerate the computer-fixated environment for work if I was doing a lot of meatspace things in my free time... I dunno, but even thinking about it feels stressful.
4. Subject matter technician expert in biotech
I could continue at my current job, amassing more lab skills and eventually becoming a technical expert at a particular area. This would allow me to advance in the industry without a PhD. This is definitely the easiest path forward, and doesn't require an advanced degree. However, I am having trouble finding a specific subject role that actually interests me.
Aside: Although I'm definitely interested in being a physician or a podiatrist, and I have almost all the prereqs complete -- including organic chem and biochem -- I don't think I could survive the sleep debt required for residency, so I'm currently not considering MD, OD, or DPM. I looked into veterinary as well, but the debt-to-income situation is completely nuts.
Advice? Thoughts on the careers I'm considering? Is it reasonable for me to even consider healthcare these days? Other amazing careers I haven't thought of? I feel a bit ridiculous that I'm still career-searching this far along but... I can't shake the feeling that there's something out there that won't be mind-numbingly boring to do 8 hours a day.
You sound like a surgeon or orthopedist to me. It sounds like you really wanted to do med school. So why not do med school?
posted by shadygrove at 11:25 AM on February 18, 2023
posted by shadygrove at 11:25 AM on February 18, 2023
I would—and I say this as someone who this applies to as well—ensure you are able to manage and control your own expectations. For a certain type of person, looking for something they are "interested in" in the long run is a high bar, and will lead to constant, eventually unproductive, career-switches. You may want to concentrate on something that is well-compensated and offers a good work-life balance, and that you find you are good at, or is satisfying enough on balance that it's tolerable. Look for "interesting" in other places, such as hobbies, side-projects, or by achieving enough seniority that you can control your own destiny within your career (e.g. by defining project / priorities for yourself, having people or teams to manage if that's of interest, publishing articles if you enjoy doing that, etc.).
You have what appear to be a bunch of reasonably-in-demand skills. Making $100k seems entirely within range, at least where I am (also a high-cost area), once you get out of the "inexperienced new guy" tranche in the workplace and build some professional reputation. But in order to do that, you need to remain in an industry longer than it sounds like you've been.
My recommendation would be to stay in your current industry unless it's really intolerable, or you think it'll be intolerable over time, or you think there's really a hard limit on upward mobility (I don't really think that's the case in that field, but I'd defer to someone who works in it). That's going to get your compensation where you want it most quickly, because it doesn't involve another career 'reset'. So I would try to avoid that, and avoid more education expenses. Concentrate on your career development, maybe finding a mentor you trust if you can, and see how you can gently bend your progression over time to keep it interesting enough to not be soul-crushing, while preserving the value of the professional experience you've accrued and will continue to build.
posted by Kadin2048 at 11:37 AM on February 18, 2023 [9 favorites]
You have what appear to be a bunch of reasonably-in-demand skills. Making $100k seems entirely within range, at least where I am (also a high-cost area), once you get out of the "inexperienced new guy" tranche in the workplace and build some professional reputation. But in order to do that, you need to remain in an industry longer than it sounds like you've been.
My recommendation would be to stay in your current industry unless it's really intolerable, or you think it'll be intolerable over time, or you think there's really a hard limit on upward mobility (I don't really think that's the case in that field, but I'd defer to someone who works in it). That's going to get your compensation where you want it most quickly, because it doesn't involve another career 'reset'. So I would try to avoid that, and avoid more education expenses. Concentrate on your career development, maybe finding a mentor you trust if you can, and see how you can gently bend your progression over time to keep it interesting enough to not be soul-crushing, while preserving the value of the professional experience you've accrued and will continue to build.
posted by Kadin2048 at 11:37 AM on February 18, 2023 [9 favorites]
Best answer: It seems like the uniting factors in what you're interested in/have enjoyed in the past are jobs with day to day hands on with people and problem solving. Another complicating factor with the medical and medical adjacent fields you mention is how much of that day to day work involves these skills and how much involves insurance paperwork and other similar soulrending but necessary to live in our modern Healthcare world. A friend who recently went back to school to be a speech language pathologist has been encountering this- they love the work with patients and the whole field, hate the Medicare reimbursements. It's my understanding that the individuals in Healthcare who have to do the least paperwork are the specialist doctors/surgeons, since they can hire people to do it for them. Ask a real PA about this, but my understanding is don't invest in becoming a PA if you don't want to do a lot of daily routine paperwork.
Could you continue part time in your current position while interning or apprenticing with a prosthetist? This one is interesting because it really combines your yin to provide hands on care with your need for problem solving, but it's unclear to me if you actually have experience with the field to help you decide if it's worth the investment.
posted by theweasel at 11:40 AM on February 18, 2023
Could you continue part time in your current position while interning or apprenticing with a prosthetist? This one is interesting because it really combines your yin to provide hands on care with your need for problem solving, but it's unclear to me if you actually have experience with the field to help you decide if it's worth the investment.
posted by theweasel at 11:40 AM on February 18, 2023
Best answer: I don't know what you should do next but I am here to tell you not to settle. I worked in the securities industry for 8 years after college, then started law school at 30; at 41 I decided to take the pressure off and work as a paralegal; I had a great run with one attorney with whom I had a sometimes frustrating but mostly intellectually rewarding partnership, and when that ended (due to circumstances under the control of neither of us), I spent 2 years in the worst job in the world and then landed the best job in the world. I am happier now than I have ever been in my adult life and I've made it clear to everyone that I am never going to retire because I would be so pissed off to find the best job ever and then only work at it for a few years.
Keep searching.
posted by janey47 at 12:52 PM on February 18, 2023 [1 favorite]
Keep searching.
posted by janey47 at 12:52 PM on February 18, 2023 [1 favorite]
Perhaps you should consider physical therapy as well. You’d get problem-solving, direct work with with patients, and hands-on work that definitely wouldn’t make you feel alienated from your body. The care has an immediate impact on quality of life, which I imagine is rewarding. I believe the prerequisites are in line with what you’ve taken.
posted by Comet Bug at 3:47 PM on February 18, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by Comet Bug at 3:47 PM on February 18, 2023 [1 favorite]
Physical therapy, occupational therapy, speech language pathology, or creative arts therapy may be of interest to you?
posted by fox problems at 6:15 PM on February 18, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by fox problems at 6:15 PM on February 18, 2023 [1 favorite]
Just FYI you do not need to become an RN before becoming a PA. A lot of PAs work as medical assistants (several months training), CNAs (2/3 week training), or EMTs (weeks/months training) to gain their patient contact hours -- among other things-- you can become an x-ray tech, medical scribe, etc whatever so long as it's valid patient contact experience.
posted by erattacorrige at 9:23 PM on February 18, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by erattacorrige at 9:23 PM on February 18, 2023 [1 favorite]
I agree with Kadin2048- if you have good work life balance, then you can scratch your itches with things outside work. I enjoy working with my hands, so I do DIY projects on the weekends.
posted by Monday at 10:08 PM on February 18, 2023
posted by Monday at 10:08 PM on February 18, 2023
Best answer: If you are a person with a tendency to career-hop and experience work boredom, medical school/physician-ing is not the right field. Being a doctor is an all-your-eggs-in-one-basket situation, mostly due to bonkers school loans- if you get thorough medical school and residency and hate it, you're still kind of locked in until you can pay back huge amounts of money.
All of medicine is paperwork heavy- I'm at the worst end of that in primary care, but even the surgeons I know are spending hours staring at screens most days.
THEN: if early mornings are a problem for you, being a physician requires a minimum of five years of pre-dawn starts (two years in medical school, three years of residency). If your interest is surgery, that's a whole lifetime of a fucked up schedule.
That said: in my state, PAs can hop from field to field: five years as a surgical PA, two years as a primary care provider, two years as a respiratory clinic manager -as one non-random example. This isn't trivial- it requires a lot of self-study and some retraining, but those are very different careers that didn't require more years of schooling. (The drudgery of paperwork is still high though.)
posted by aint broke at 8:03 AM on February 19, 2023
All of medicine is paperwork heavy- I'm at the worst end of that in primary care, but even the surgeons I know are spending hours staring at screens most days.
THEN: if early mornings are a problem for you, being a physician requires a minimum of five years of pre-dawn starts (two years in medical school, three years of residency). If your interest is surgery, that's a whole lifetime of a fucked up schedule.
That said: in my state, PAs can hop from field to field: five years as a surgical PA, two years as a primary care provider, two years as a respiratory clinic manager -as one non-random example. This isn't trivial- it requires a lot of self-study and some retraining, but those are very different careers that didn't require more years of schooling. (The drudgery of paperwork is still high though.)
posted by aint broke at 8:03 AM on February 19, 2023
Best answer: Due to healthcare experience hours requirements, even PA would likely require me to get my RN first
I'm a physician, not a PA, but this seems like an unusual path to me? Bedside RNs are more likely to become NPs than PAs. I work with several RNs who are doing their masters in nursing part-time with an eye to becoming NPs. There are also programs where you basically jump straight into the NP coursework (with a bachelors in something else), although to be honest from a patient care perspective I can't really recommend this. There's a level of clinical intuition that can't be taught, but the best bedside RNs develop just by being around patients in a way that doctors, PAs, and NPs are not.
In addition to prosthetics/orthotics, I'd look at the requirements for becoming a PT or OT if I were you. I think my PT/OT colleagues are straight up brilliant problem solvers. I send them referrals like "dressing issues" or "gait and balance" and they are like "here is a snap-button shirt! a space age loopy thingy for regular buttons! a pocket metronome for freezing of gait!" A good physical or occupational therapist will listen to what the patient *really* needs and think outside the box to make it happen.
posted by basalganglia at 8:31 AM on February 19, 2023 [2 favorites]
I'm a physician, not a PA, but this seems like an unusual path to me? Bedside RNs are more likely to become NPs than PAs. I work with several RNs who are doing their masters in nursing part-time with an eye to becoming NPs. There are also programs where you basically jump straight into the NP coursework (with a bachelors in something else), although to be honest from a patient care perspective I can't really recommend this. There's a level of clinical intuition that can't be taught, but the best bedside RNs develop just by being around patients in a way that doctors, PAs, and NPs are not.
In addition to prosthetics/orthotics, I'd look at the requirements for becoming a PT or OT if I were you. I think my PT/OT colleagues are straight up brilliant problem solvers. I send them referrals like "dressing issues" or "gait and balance" and they are like "here is a snap-button shirt! a space age loopy thingy for regular buttons! a pocket metronome for freezing of gait!" A good physical or occupational therapist will listen to what the patient *really* needs and think outside the box to make it happen.
posted by basalganglia at 8:31 AM on February 19, 2023 [2 favorites]
Response by poster: Just to clarify since it seems like it's sidetracking people: the reason I said RN to prep for PA school is it's the only healthcare profession I have found with high enough pay and short enough schooling (I could do a one-year ABSN). I could do respiratory therapy or anesthesia technician or interventional radiology tech, but the schooling is at least two years and I don't have the money to not work for that long. CNA, MA, scribe, surgical technologist, and EMT have shorter training, but do not pay enough for me to afford an apartment in my city.
The reason I'm more interested in PA than NP is it seems to have more ability to do lateral movement among specialities, although ACNP with a surgical first assist cert or CRNA all look interesting to me.
posted by octopodiatrist at 8:00 PM on February 19, 2023
The reason I'm more interested in PA than NP is it seems to have more ability to do lateral movement among specialities, although ACNP with a surgical first assist cert or CRNA all look interesting to me.
posted by octopodiatrist at 8:00 PM on February 19, 2023
Response by poster: I think I am reluctant to consider being a PT because I had such a bad experience going to PT for years and years for what was really severe, progressive post-traumatic arthritis from a compound fracture. I always felt bad because doing the exercises hurt a ton and never helped me, but also people implied that if I did them properly I'd be getting better and thus my pain was my fault.
Finally my podiatrist and my prosthetist explained that even the best PT isn't going to help you re-grow cartilage when you've got bone grinding on bone in the joint capsule, and we need to try other alternatives instead. The whole experience really left a bad taste in my mouth and made me feel like the PTs had an "if you're a hammer everything looks like a nail" approach with me that left me kind of stranded as an injured person for years, when they could have been sending me to seek different kinds of help. But maybe this isn't fair. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
posted by octopodiatrist at 8:15 PM on February 19, 2023
Finally my podiatrist and my prosthetist explained that even the best PT isn't going to help you re-grow cartilage when you've got bone grinding on bone in the joint capsule, and we need to try other alternatives instead. The whole experience really left a bad taste in my mouth and made me feel like the PTs had an "if you're a hammer everything looks like a nail" approach with me that left me kind of stranded as an injured person for years, when they could have been sending me to seek different kinds of help. But maybe this isn't fair. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
posted by octopodiatrist at 8:15 PM on February 19, 2023
Best answer: Friend, if you dream of being a healthcare provider, then go be a healthcare provider. Everything you listed that you liked involved working with people and seeing and helping multiple people in a day. I wonder if you'd like working in an ER. Maybe you could be a traveling nurse and take 6-month stints followed by a break if you're worried about burnout. Or you could move from job to job by working in different specializations. There are for sure opportunities now. Don't let fear of burnout scare you off from a job you are dreaming of, because you can burn out in anything.
posted by bluedaisy at 3:31 PM on February 20, 2023
posted by bluedaisy at 3:31 PM on February 20, 2023
Response by poster: I think I'm going to get my CNA and apply for per diem emergency department technician jobs. That way I can keep my current fulltime job, but also pick up some weekend shifts and get some healthcare experience. Then I can decide how to move forward -- whether that's an accelerated BSN and working towards NP or PA, or something else!
posted by octopodiatrist at 11:35 PM on February 20, 2023
posted by octopodiatrist at 11:35 PM on February 20, 2023
Best answer: Would I love being an RN (and possibly other healthcare jobs to follow)? Would I be hopelessly frustrated as a nurse?
Yes.
posted by jesourie at 9:28 PM on February 23, 2023 [1 favorite]
Yes.
posted by jesourie at 9:28 PM on February 23, 2023 [1 favorite]
ER healthcare social workers do exist, in high income areas you could theoretically get 100 k but it's going to require a masters degree at the minimum. Also issue is that there isn't many of those positions and generally they require a significant amount of experience. But social work wise There's child and maternal health, ER , and all sorts of subspecialties like oncology social work in hospitals and medical settings.
Nurse case management is also an option (and general pays a bit better!) And depending on the role can also hit some of those social problem things you enjoy working on.
Honestly I keep thinking about going back to school to be a nurse, but I am fairly entrenched in what I'm doing now but I keep it in my mind.
posted by AlexiaSky at 12:52 PM on March 6, 2023
Nurse case management is also an option (and general pays a bit better!) And depending on the role can also hit some of those social problem things you enjoy working on.
Honestly I keep thinking about going back to school to be a nurse, but I am fairly entrenched in what I'm doing now but I keep it in my mind.
posted by AlexiaSky at 12:52 PM on March 6, 2023
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posted by Juniper Toast at 11:21 AM on February 18, 2023 [1 favorite]