Friday Question #178
By kilax, January 13, 2012 5:43 am
What field do you work in? Has your field been affected at all by “the economy”?
I found this little gem when I was looking through the papers at my grandma’s house last Friday:
I have an architecture degree (I am not licensed though) and yeah, our industry has been hit big time. A lot of people from college are unemployed or working in entirely different fields (<– which I think is totally okay*).
I have a non-traditional architecture related job, and work for the federal government. It was not my intent to work for the government**, but I am very happy that I do.
*Just because you get a degree in one thing does not mean you have to be that ONE thing. IMO.
**The opportunity kind of fell in my lap!
Themocracy
I am happy you have the job you have too. 🙂
I’m an economist… so I guess you could say my field is affected by the economy. heh. 😉
My degree is in the recording industry, music business. I work in the financial software industry, which, of course, has been affected. Obviously my fields don’t really match!
I am a bean counter. Apparently there are lots of beans to be counted as there seem to always be lots of jobs out there for us bean counters…:)
I have a degree in engineering and I work in the engineering field. There are still a lot of jobs open for engineers but it isn’t the same as before 2008. Depends what industry you are in, some are booming and some are not. But its good to have a job.
If my line of work followed my degree, I’d be in a very sad place. There aren’t many happy places for math majors. =) I work in the vague world of consulting. Tell someone you’re a consultant and they have no idea what that means, even after you explain it to them. Seriously. But, that’s ok, I like to be mysterious like that. hahaha.
Steven has his own consulting business, and I can just see people’s eye’s glaze over when I try to explain what he does 🙂
My daughter will be in high school next year and she wants to be a fashion designer. I don’t want to squash her dreams, but I am telling her to try a bunch of things in high school and not JUST the art stuff because you don’t know if you like something until you try it. My son wants to be an architect. My other daughter wants to be a teacher. My youngest son wants to be an archeologist. I love to encourage them to go with what they love, and hopefully by the time they are ready to start working they will all be able to follow their dreams and find a job. As a parent it is kind of scary to know that after we pay for college for them or they pay for college or whatever, they may not be able to find a job.
I hope by the time your kids graduate that things are better, job-wise! 🙂
Ah, this is a funny question. Because I studied English thinking I wanted to be a teacher (bad field across the board). And then I fell into HR (bad field in bad times because we don’t generate revenue). And then I became a Recruiter (even worse field in bad times because companies aren’t hiring). Yet somehow in all of this I’ve only been out of work for a month my whole career.
I joke a lot that I would push my kids to go into marketing because I think it is a field that is so diverse and seems to be always thriving in the US. But, I didn’t do that and turned out just fine, so maybe I don’t know what I am talking about??
I am very in favor of kids learning about a lot of different things because I think it makes them more successful at being a human being. However, I know firsthand that we want kids who have done internships in a relevant field with preferably a 3.0 or higher. I worry those kids will hit year 5 of their career and have a nervous breakdown or run off to L.A. to become an actor or something.
I majored in communication and dealt with all the jokes that it’s not a “real” major. However, once I found a job after graduation (it took me 5 months), I’ve always had a full-time job. Working in my field, no less (public relations and marketing). I realize I’m very lucky though. I guess that was the one nice thing about being in an understaffed department before the recession hit.
I have a BS and a master’s degree in journalism. The newspaper industry has been dwindling for a long time, but as long as the Internet can’t do its own interviews, I’ll always have a job. I work in nonprofit PR and social media now.
I graduated with a degree in dietetics and then went right back to nursing school. I graduated from nursing school in December 2008 and that was when the bottom fell out of the economy. Everyone told me, “they’ll always need nurses!” but it is very expensive to train a new nurse because when you’re being precepted (for anywhere from 8-16 weeks, depending where you work), they’re basically paying for two nurses to do one job. And they run the risk of you not even staying past a year. I heard somewhere that you have to stay two years past orientation in order for it to be worth it to the hospital, yikes! My current hospital didn’t make me sign an agreement, but they requested that we stay for at least two years. (The other nurse I started with left after about six months.)
It took me five months and over 150 applications in order to land a job that I knew I didn’t want and wouldn’t like, and ended up hating. Nursing is totally economy proof…
I was so lucky to find a job in the architecture field, and even luckier to work in a small enough firm that we always have projects to work on. My boyfriend, however, didn’t do so well. We both graduated in 2008 and I found my job right away, but he didn’t find one until this November. He worked for a couple of people who didn’t pay him and then he was a machinist. I think he was decently happy as a machinist, he’s good at it, but I think he’s a million times happier now that he is in his chosen field.
I studied psychology in college and am now a stay-at-home-mom. Best. Job. Ever. My husband and I have talked about how we hope to encourage our kids to pursue a degree that’s more practical. What can you do with a degree in Philosophy?
Well, my undergraduate degree was just a stepping stone to get my Master’s degree which is really what got my my current job. Records Management is not a well-known field so I’m happy I found a job that pays well and has good benefits. Not sure it’s my dream career but it’s what I’m doing for now. There are usually jobs in the field out there but, like yours, they aren’t always “traditional” ones.
I hope we both have our dream jobs someday. I am really not digging exactly what I am doing lately.
I have a degree in Women’s Studies and Literature but I am an Event Manager. I do work in social service though and have since I was in college. Luckily, my agency is thriving despite economic downturns and I’ve never worried about losing my job.
One of my dear friends has an architecture degree and he focuses on historical renovations or something like that. snort, see how well i pay attention? Anyways for awhile it was rough here. He accepted a position in North Carolina and moved his family there but they couldn’t sell their house here. He was lucky and after a year he was able to go back to his old job but it’s just one of those things that if you are really to specified you might have trouble finding something.
I on the other hand have had job titles from mechanic in a nuclear power plant to insurance sales. So I don’t think people know what to think when they see my resume.
I’m in a subfield of academia, and academia has been hit very hard by the economy. However, the university that I work at has been doing really well and is expanding!
I’m a teacher, and while some people call education “the recession-proof profession” (ha ha), that is definitely not true! The school where I work has been very stable, but we are all pretty aware of the recession.
I sometime wish that I had a “sexier” job (not like at Hooters…), but I also really like teaching. So, there you go.
Where I work hasn’t really been affected. We’re basically a supplier for a trades industry. Its a pretty niche market, but its one that will always, always be needed. So that’s been pretty helpful.
I am a Network Admin and work in the IT industry and have for almost 27 years now. My job is affected in a couple of ways when the economy tanks. Firstly, when higher ups are looking to cut employees, IT is the first area since we are not a revenue generating department/group. Secondly, when we do too good of a job, meaning we are just working normal hours because things are running great and smooth, we are looked at as “not busy” or “not needed because nothing it broken” I’ve lost work due to these two reasons before.
I didn’t know you had a degree in architecture! That’s one of the degrees I think I might be interested in if I were to go back and “do it all over again.” My degree is in engineering. I’ve veered a little away from traditional engineering, but I still basically work in the field. I think the economy has affected engineering as well. My job was never really in jeopardy, but my company definitely cut way back on hiring for several years.
What type of engineer are you?
Chemical