I started designing/drawing floorplans at 14 in Geometry class. I had to ask someone what is the name of the person who does this profession. I went around with one on career day & was sold. It was a legit profession that was well respected but also creative & challenging. Memorizing facts & regurgitating subject matter was not my thing at all. I also learned is was a major with a low amount of reading & paper writing...perfect for me! Plus I was good at everything equally...math, science, art, English, etc. I really love Architecture & have never seriously considered anything else. I don't always love practicing it & the direction the profession is being pushed but I deal with it.
What jobs involve memorizing facts and regurgitating subject matter?
I had a lot of different career ideas growing up. I thought about being an architect, interior designer, fashion designer until I realized I couldn't draw....haha. I "knew" I wanted to be a corporate lawyer when I was 9 though and I held onto that until my junior year in college.
At that point I didn't want to go to school anymore. I've always liked numbers and wanted to work with numbers, but didnt' really know what I wanted to do until a year after I graduated and tried a few jobs including mortgage consultant and banker.
H was doing well as a day trader at that time so I quit my job because I was extremely bored. I started watching the market with him. I found patterns and developed ideas so I started doing research. Come to find out there are people out there who do exactly what I was doing called Research Analyst and they got paid a butt load of money. H saw that my research looked really good so he started trading it live. Then friends and family started asking us to invest for them. and from that we decided to make it a business. Now we've turned it into an investment firm and we have clients all around the world. I'm also never bored since the market is also doing something different.
I started designing/drawing floorplans at 14 in Geometry class. I had to ask someone what is the name of the person who does this profession. I went around with one on career day & was sold. It was a legit profession that was well respected but also creative & challenging. Memorizing facts & regurgitating subject matter was not my thing at all. I also learned is was a major with a low amount of reading & paper writing...perfect for me! Plus I was good at everything equally...math, science, art, English, etc. I really love Architecture & have never seriously considered anything else. I don't always love practicing it & the direction the profession is being pushed but I deal with it.
What jobs involve memorizing facts and regurgitating subject matter?
actually, architecture does. especially when it comes to designing stuff that meets code. you have to have some basics memorized and regurgitate them on your drawings and notes.
also, i had to read and write about a shitton of history and theory in architecture school. i didn't write a lot of papers, but more than, say, my engineering friend majors. and i attended programs that don't even emphasize nor are that strong in history and theory.
I always wanted to go to medical school and be a surgeon (like my dad), but I took a 'So you want to be a doctor...' class through our university hospital and decided that I wanted a life before I was 30.
I got interested in pharmacy about 2/3 of the way through my BS in biology. Thank goodness because a BS in biology opens very few doors independently. When I was in pharmacy school I interned at a retail pharmacy and wanted to gouge my eyeballs out. I have no patience for rude and unappreciative people, so I decided hospital pharmacy was the way to go.
After a general internal medicine residency and a subspecialty residency in hematology/oncology (each 1 year), I work at a major Cancer Center. I started my first 'real' job, about a year and a half before my 30th birthday, so I can't say I made much headway on having a life before 30
I take care of the most fantastic patients. They are a tremendous challenge, but worth every minute. I wouldn't change my winding path for much of anything!
It's been an interesting road (for me, probably boring story) and while I feel relatively comfortable with where I'm heading now, who knows how I'll feel in a couple of years. Basically, in HS I was torn between theatre and psychology as a college major. I was really into drama club but also enjoyed my psych class. Decided on a theatre major for college, but in my 4th year realized that was not the lifestyle I wanted and took a hiatus from college to figure out my next steps. Went back a year later for a psych major. I wanted to do counseling, but realized quickly that I would need a PhD in order to have any sort of chance of making money or having autonomy in the counseling field. So it was back to the drawing board.
I was exploring the APA website and found something called Industrial/Organizational psychology, and you only needed a MS in order to make decent money in that. It is basically business psychology but with an emphasis on research as a basis for everything you do. It is a really broad field and I was leaning toward working in HR and/or training when I started out, but I was not completely sure.
The major was far more science based than I realized and I was totally out of my league. I had little interest in the research and statistics aspects and found my program extremely difficult and came out having no clue how to find my place in the field. I also realized too late the importance of making connections and networking prior to graduation and ended up working as a program coordinator to a survey research program for an assessment company. Totally not what I ever wanted to do, but it was a foot in the door.
Last January a coordinator position opened up in the HR training department at the same company, and thankfully I was able to snag the position. I'm 100% happier in this area and I feel like all of my interests and backgrounds kind of come together since there is some level of counseling/coaching involved in my job and I think my theatre background has helped a lot with being comfortable delivering training. It's also fun and fast paced which is definitely what I need!
I am still pretty young, but I definitely love the field that I am in. I was always really good at math and science as a kid. I applied to a specialized high school for math/science and computing and entered that program as a freshman. I had an amazing Statistics teacher as a sophomore in High School and once I got to college, I decided that is what I wanted to do. It seemed like a very practical application of math.
I got a part time job, while in college, in a lab that does women's health research, and when I graduated with my BS in Statistics, my boss asked if I was interested in taking a full time job as a Statistician/Data Manager for the office. I accepted the offer and haven't looked back.
I just started my masters program in Applied Statistics, and am working full time as well as taking classes full time (it kind of run's my life right now), but I will be done with my masters in less than two years and I will have over five years experience in my field. I feel like, while I may not stay in this position forever, I absolutely am putting myself in a good place for my future. I would like to stay in health research and I love the women's health aspect of my job, so I will probably try to stay in this field.
I was a poli sci and history major in college thinking that I was definitely going to law school. Since I finished undergrad a year early, I decided to work for a BigLaw firm in NYC just to make sure law school was really for me. 9 months in, and I ran screaming. lol.
Since my mom always told me that I HAD to go to law school, I never really considered any other career path until I realized I didn't want to go. I had $40K in SLs at the time and I just wanted to make as much money as I could given the fact that I was already working 100 hour weeks as a lowly case assistant at a law firm. One of the associates told me about investment banking and I said sure, why not. lol for real. I actually lucked out and found an analyst job at a boutique investment bank. I did my 2 years there then went to the portfolio management side of that world. I spent 3 years there and had many highs and lows. Since DH got a job opportunity that took him from NYC to FL, I decided that we had enough of long distance and followed him a year after he moved. I quit my job in Wall Street with nothing lined up.
So, for over 3 years I was a SAHW then a SAHM. I landed some decent consulting projects based on my investment banking background and it was cool to take on work know that I could still do it. Heh.
When we moved again for DH's job, I decided that I wanted to start a new career in development / fundraising. I lucked out again and got an offer after searching for 2 weeks in my new city. So, here I am a month in. I have mixed feelings and miss the paycheck of my old career. However, I want the hours of my new career but just in a different setting I think.