Career Advice

[loramin]

Originally Posted by Cecily [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

I really enjoy writing as well, but an English degree seems like financial seppuku. Comedy writing would be my absolute dream job, but don't think I'm consistently funny enough. I'd love to teach, and I'd do it well, but I hate the school system too much.

I think I going with my original gut instinct for psych nursing is making the most sense atm. It's a outlet for my need to help people. Money is not my end game. I want a few elective procedures and I have almost no desire for anything else. After that I just wanna spend my life helping to unfuck what life does to people.

It sounds like you're pretty sold on nursing, which is meaningful, pays pretty well, and has almost guaranteed job security. But here's my (IT) story anyway.

I was a Literature major, Education minor in college. I learned to program on the side (didn't do CS because I hated most of the math), and while it took a little awhile because of the dot com bust I eventually got a job, and progressed to leading a team. Then I switched companies to one in the precision medicine industry (ie. looking at your genes to fight cancer). While there I wrote a book on a programming framework, and (after a few jobs in-between) this fall I'll be teaching an online Intro to Web Development online class.

What's my point from all that?

1. you don't need to like CS, or get a CS degree, or even get a degree at all to get an IT job. Just teach yourself or spend 12 weeks at a good boot camp (eg. Hack Reactor in San Francisco) and you can learn everything else on the job.
2. Even if you become a programmer, you can still help people. I helped people survive cancer by building a web application.
3. Even programmers can do things like write books and teach classes.
4. Programming pays well ... even (especially?) for Literature majors; so well I've been able to live off my savings while getting paid next to nothing to teach this course.

So IF nursing doesn't work out for you, a career in IT might be better suited for you than you realize. My advice would be to try a small IT project (eg. build a basic website) and see how you like it: it will be a completely different experience from a CS course.