Anyone know which grad degrees are most useful?

[GGG]

Originally Posted by PyramidsofMars

it's more the stuff on how miserable it makes people and how often lawyers end up killing themselves and what not that scares me.

Law school itself mostly sounds like fun. It's the work that is keeping me away from it. I have the GPA for it and all.

It really sounds like you don't want to become a Cog in society. So I would pursue your goals of working in academia in whatever field you are interested in. Worst case is that you fail to get on a tenure track job after 5 years of Masters/Doctors work. At that point you could just go to Law school and join the rest of us in society.

Since you don't plan on getting married or having kids there is no real outside force driving you to grow up or finish school. So why not keep pursuing the academia dream until know one will hire you. In end if you enjoy school you would have spent 5 years studying something you are interested in and be out 50k in loans. That doesn't sound like a bad price for avoiding joining the corporate world.

[PyramidsofMars]

Originally Posted by GGG

It really sounds like you don't want to become a Cog in society. So I would pursue your goals of working in academia in whatever field you are interested in. Worst case is that you fail to get on a tenure track job after 5 years of Masters/Doctors work. At that point you could just go to Law school and join the rest of us in society.

Since you don't plan on getting married or having kids there is no real outside force driving you to grow up or finish school. So why not keep pursuing the academia dream until know one will hire you. In end if you enjoy school you would have spent 5 years studying something you are interested in and be out 50k in loans. That doesn't sound like a bad price for avoiding joining the corporate world.

actually, it's not really that expensive to pursue grad studies in Canada; most universities offer extensive funding, both of the guaranteed sort and of the teaching assistantship etc. sort. Not that there will be no expenses, but it should actually turn out cheaper than undergrad if I play my cards right. And I won't owe too much for undergrad, for various reasons (inheritance, savings, etc.).

I guess I just worry too much.

[VladtheImpaler]

Originally Posted by PyramidsofMars

it's more the stuff on how miserable it makes people and how often lawyers end up killing themselves and what not that scares me.

Law school itself mostly sounds like fun. It's the work that is keeping me away from it. I have the GPA for it and all.

You can easily make a fairly comfortable living in law as a slacker. As long as you get good marks in law school, you can do pretty much what you want. As long as "what you want" does not include family law, you should avoid suicide.

[ooogabooga]

Have you ever considered going the pharmacist route, from the ones I have worked with it can be decent hours and quite decent pay.

[fundmark19]

Sounds to me like a professional student. Your life could be alot harder then it is going to university. Just relax and enjoy it. End of day you have a degree and with that multiple fields will offer you jobs just based on having a degree even though it has nothing to do with that line of work. And I am a firm believer of if you work hard enough you will earn success. So start working hard and welcome to real life!

[Kybosh]

Alright, after seeing you answer a few questions I have some more advice. Since you genuinely seem to want to move towards an academic position, it would be desirable to find a supervisor who is well known/respected. Similarly, if just getting a position is the ultimate goal, try to pick a well known program/school. This goes against my initial advice a bit because my last advice was geared towards keeping yourself happy/sane in grad school. If you can work with a well known prof in a well known program and publish some interesting papers, you will find placement in academia somewhere (after a couple of postdocs. . . don't forget about the postdoc stints).

One thing that you need to consider is that you haven't even finished undergrad yet. A lot can change in grad school and you may find that academia isn't even what you thought it would be. Your 2% placement stat doesn't say why the other 98% weren't in academia. I would bet dimes to dollars that a significant portion decided that they didn't want academia anymore for various reasons.

Finally, I suggest to reassess your opinion on "meaningless and soul-crushing jobs" before someone in the real world punches you in the mouth. People in the real world punch hard.

[valo403]

If you're going the law school route be realistic about your goals. DO NOT GO TO LAW SCHOOL WITH NOTIONS OF GETTING A BIG FRIM JOB WITH THE ASSOCIATED LARGE SALARY. I can't stress that point enough, it's a very small percentage of attorneys who go that route and there are many times more law students who think that will solve their massive student loan problems. The Canadian legal system isn't quite as bad as there is still somewhat of a scarcity of lawyers, the American system is overwhelmed with barely functional people who scraped by at terrible schools, an issue that has lead to rather high unemployment in the profession.

BTW, if you do go Biglaw be prepared for 60 hour weeks to be your average, with 80-100+ being fairly common. If any of you fellow lawyers have advice on how to do this "living in law as a slacker" thing I'm all ears

[VladtheImpaler]

Originally Posted by valo403

If you're going the law school route be realistic about your goals. DO NOT GO TO LAW SCHOOL WITH NOTIONS OF GETTING A BIG FRIM JOB WITH THE ASSOCIATED LARGE SALARY. I can't stress that point enough, it's a very small percentage of attorneys who go that route and there are many times more law students who think that will solve their massive student loan problems. The Canadian legal system isn't quite as bad as there is still somewhat of a scarcity of lawyers, the American system is overwhelmed with barely functional people who scraped by at terrible schools, an issue that has lead to rather high unemployment in the profession.

BTW, if you do go Biglaw be prepared for 60 hour weeks to be your average, with 80-100+ being fairly common. If any of you fellow lawyers have advice on how to do this "living in law as a slacker" thing I'm all ears

All I know is that I am home by 4 pm every day and, while I certainly don't make "big firm" money, I'm comfortable. It's all a matter of choice.

[zuluking]

Originally Posted by PyramidsofMars

it's more the stuff on how miserable it makes people and how often lawyers end up killing themselves and what not that scares me.

Law school itself mostly sounds like fun. It's the work that is keeping me away from it. I have the GPA for it and all.

Wha? What's the question again?

[valo403]

Originally Posted by VladtheImpaler

All I know is that I am home by 4 pm every day and, while I certainly don't make "big firm" money, I'm comfortable. It's all a matter of choice.

Ya, that sounds like the path I'm hoping to get on in a few years time. Big frim life can be exciting, but doing it over the long term seems like it would be pretty soul crushing.

[Pastiche]

Go into policy. U of C has a new policy school. There will be no shortage of public sector work in the next 10 years.

[SeeGeeWhy]

Sounds like you're close to wrapping up your undergrad and don't know what you want to do with your life. Its a pretty crappy feeling, I know I experienced a pretty strong feeling of depression after I convocated the first time.

I ended up working in oil & gas as an engineer, and ended up not being happy working to make a fat rich white guy even more fat and rich. So I thought it would be great to go into business with some friends and make myself fat and rich! I also wanted some formal business training to augment my engineering degree, so I enrolled in an MBA program. Well, it's a good 4 years later and our partnership is growing steadily (we run two businesses now) and I'm nearly done with the MBA, but I am still employed as an engineer.

Despite the early success I've had in my engineering career, my feelings of personal satisfaction are deeper when I consider my family, and what I've been able to do with my business partners.

At the end of the day, I have had some very good fortune and the only thing I really know is that I want to be independent, self sufficient. I've been happier feeding that need than simply paying the bills. I've been holding back on getting into business full time, but I am feeling more and more ready to take the jump.

I guess what I am trying to say is that don't let the fear of making the wrong choice get in your way. You can always make new choices to change your path in life. The most fortunate thing I've had in my life is family and friends who are supportive of my choices no matter what. Do not underestimate the power of this support, because it sounds like you're planning on being a lone wolf your whole life. You're going to make it a lot harder on yourself than it needs to be.

As an outsider, you sound pretty down about your life, and resigned about what you're capable of making out of it. Like, there is a pretty heavy tone of defeat in your words, and that's pretty sad out of someone so young. Take some time to travel and experience life a bit and maybe you'll learn some surprising things about yourself and what you want to do with your life.

Action is better than just thinking about it. I know at this point you're just considering options, which is good and necessary, but be ready to pick a direction even if you're not sure its the right one. Life is too short to be worried about being right.

[tete]

Are you interested in History at all? I have a MA in History with a specialization in Archival Studies and have had constant employment from the time I finished my coursework to now. It's not a job for everyone, but I've enjoyed it for the most part - you can go towards records managment or more traditional archives or even library science depending on the school.

Feel free to PM me if you want more info.

[Regorium]

Originally Posted by SeeGeeWhy

As an outsider, you sound pretty down about your life, and resigned about what you're capable of making out of it. Like, there is a pretty heavy tone of defeat in your words, and that's pretty sad out of someone so young. Take some time to travel and experience life a bit and maybe you'll learn some surprising things about yourself and what you want to do with your life.

Action is better than just thinking about it. I know at this point you're just considering options, which is good and necessary, but be ready to pick a direction even if you're not sure its the right one. Life is too short to be worried about being right.

This recession has done this to almost every new grad (2009) I know including myself. For myself, I seriously think that if I was in your position - ie. getting a good oil and gas engineer job, then having the resources, experience AND the fall-back potential of a P.Eng, it'd be much easier to really figure out what to do with my life. Much harder as a grad student begging someone to give you a summer student job meant for 2nd year students.

It is depressing to see your buddies that didn't do an internship, or graduated the year before that get jobs that pay 70-80k as oil and gas engineers, and then you graduate in 2009 and have trouble finding a technologist job that might pay you 50k if you're lucky. Yeah, there's the whole "work your way up from the bottom" thing, but it's all relative. I mean, I am qualified to work as an EIT somewhere and have the successful experience to prove it. It's just that NOBODY is hiring (ie. see the layoffs in the oilpatch thread). Depressing.

Similarly, a lot of people that wanted to go the PhD and professor route suddenly find themselves in a huge bottleneck, as suddenly the competition is absolutely ridiculous. I was speaking with one of the few oustanding scholarly profs at UofC and he doubled his grad student count from the year before, and had to reject three times as many, whereas in normal years he'd accept almost everyone that asks.

Anyways, I have no advice Pyramid. Just another disgruntled grad student. At the moment I'm just doing my Master of Engineering, and hoping that things will work out. I'd say MBA and Law are both no-fail degrees, as hiring should recover by the time you finish either of them. Doing your masters in an academic field at this point is a dead end, unless you are lucky enough to find a good school AND a good prof. Even then, you'd have to be the cream of the crop to even have a sniff at a decent tenured position. All depends on what you're looking for I guess.

[chemgear]

Originally Posted by Regorium

It is depressing to see your buddies that didn't do an internship, or graduated the year before that get jobs that pay 70-80k as oil and gas engineers, and then you graduate in 2009 and have trouble finding a technologist job that might pay you 50k if you're lucky. Yeah, there's the whole "work your way up from the bottom" thing, but it's all relative. I mean, I am qualified to work as an EIT somewhere and have the successful experience to prove it. It's just that NOBODY is hiring (ie. see the layoffs in the oilpatch thread). Depressing.

Not to derail/sidebar too much, but there was certainly a measure of cockiness in the oil and gas grad classes of 2006-2008 I would have to say from job interviews. It interesting (nice even) to see some of the changes after the price corrections/layoff oilpatch thread.

No particular advice, just an observation.

[troutman]

Originally Posted by valo403

If you're going the law school route be realistic about your goals. DO NOT GO TO LAW SCHOOL WITH NOTIONS OF GETTING A BIG FRIM JOB WITH THE ASSOCIATED LARGE SALARY.

Never understood why that was the goal for so many. It's a soul destroying, life-shortening, substance abusing, stressful existence.

[tripin_billie]

I have a Master of Library and Information Science (the degree you get to be a librarian). I'm not working as a librarian, but I am working in information policy, an area I discovered while at school. I enjoy my work, but I got incredibly lucky. From the graduates that finished at the same time as me at school, I think no more than 10% of them have professional jobs.

So, I wouldn't recommend MLIS as a degree, unless you want to really think outside of the box.

Edit: Just saw tete's post. And I would change my recommendation to: only pursue a library degree if you don't want to work as a public librarian or running a digitization program (people at library school with the goal of working in digitization are a dime a dozen).

[amorak]

bizzoink!@

[valo403]

Originally Posted by troutman

Never understood why that was the goal for so many. It's a soul destroying, life-shortening, substance abusing, stressful existence.

Agreed, but I can understand the thinking. For US law school grads the debt load is often crushing, and a job that starts at $160k is sure a big help with that. I'd say that it's the primary motivation for a pretty large chunk of those employed at big firms, it certainly explains the people who do it for 3-4 years and then jump ship to lower paying less stressful jobs.

There are also people who feed off those kinds of jobs, people who love the 'prestige' of working on very complicated and high end deals (not to mention the ability to name drop) so much that they'll gladly take on the absurd lifestyle that comes along. Some people just genuinely love their practice area, they seem to be few and far between but they're the best people to work with.

There's also a bit of naivety among most law school grads destined for big law. They seem to have images of big money and high profile flashy job responsibilities when the reality is grueling menial tasks. Eventually you can find yourself doing pretty cool deals and making seven figures, but it's a long road that few make it down and that idea doesn't seem to get through all the time.

The first thing I tell anyone considering law school is to get a realistic impression of your career options before you make the choice. There are a lot of potential careers for lawyers, both within and outside of law, but don't get an idea that you will just work your way to partner in 8-10 years and retire to the French Riviera because it's probably not going to happen.

[tripin_billie]

I agree with all that is being said about law degrees right now. My wife has a JD and while she got a great job, a lot of her friends did not, or, if they did, had to wait a year to start because firms couldn't afford the full salary level.

We both work government jobs, which, while pay is lower, the security and quality of life is way better than all of her friends making the big bucks in New York.