Any Suggestions for careers?

[mmskate13]

Hey, i'm currently a little lost. Not sure what i want to shoot for as an occupation. (Fireman football player cop hurrdurr!)

As anyone in the US, and most people outside of it know, we are going to shit. I'm worried that seeing as I'm not as knowledgeable and wise as some other people in this forum due to a lack of life experience, I might make a decision to embark on the challenge of learning the ropes of a job in college, and that job having no seat in the work force or collapsing altogether. I understand that the most important thing to choose when picking a job in your life is doing something you love, but it is pretty important to be able to support those who you love.

That said, here is an EXTREMELY general group of topics im interested in.

- Astronomy/Aerospace Engineering? - I'm so fascinated by space. I've taken some courses and electives on it, and i'm excited to be speaking to some astronauts and aerospace engineers from the US, Japan, Russia, etc in these upcoming months through an elective at my school. The different challenges like storage, safety, radiation, and propulsion interest me very much, although i would prefer to stay on the science side (viewing and solving problems) than the engineering side (designing and fabricating the solutions). I would look into getting a Mechanical Engineering undergraduate seeing that it would leave me open for a wider range of jobs, and the courses for Aerospace i could get through elective courses in college, plus you need higher degrees in it anyways, and you can jump from ME to AE in higher years.

- Medical Research Field? Eh, this one isn't too much of an excitement. I'm interested by the field now, but i'm not sure i will be 20 years from now. Doing cancer research at my

- Nuclear Engineering? - Pretty complex stuff, but again, I'm pretty interested in it. Stems from one of my astronomy electives, I researched viable nuclear energy propulsion techniques. Worried about positions in the field, but then again with its new increased safety measures, France has 75% of its energy, and US has 20% of its energy coming from nuclear reactors. Would probably get the ME undergrad in this situation too, if possible. Need to research that more.

- Computer Sciences Field? - This one is ridiculously broad. Problem is that the US doesn't do much computer engineering or sciences itself. :/ No matter which field i choose i could keep computers a hobby.

That's it for now, I'll update as I go along.. Need to finish some things. Comment if you have any insight, and thanks in advance

[Ninjahunter]

Off the top of my head I cant think of anything that would go well with your list

Most of the stuff is high end, 4+ years in a university stuff but im not too keen on most of those fields.

Here a list of knowledge based careers that i can think of that are high demand.

-I know language (teaching) is in high demand, but salary is definatelly lacking.

-Web/program development is huge. With phones and tablets making a rise there is endless demand for this, but at the same time rapidly increasing participants so i would see this as a challenging career.

-Network/database management/security. Every business seems to have a database these days, they dont fix themselves

Anyway, theres a little help, i dont know much of the 'making new things' field so sorry i couldnt help from that aspect but hopefully this triggers some ideas.

[mmskate13]

@Ninjahunter, Thanks for the input, any bit helps! And yeah, I know that basically all of those fields require 4+ years :/ But hey, knowledge especially has its costs.

[Brian]

Degrees in accounting are in demand and will land you a job fast. In the sciences, bioengineering is a growing field, especially in California.

The medical field isn't worth it, it takes too many years, costs an extraordinary amount of money and is dominated by HMO.

Computer engineering still pays ok but I think the future is limited because most hardware is designed in China now.

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[Stevenxowens792]

MMskate - let me do you a solid here and add to your discussion. Career goes hand in hand with demand and location. Realistically most come out of college thinking they are going to pull 60-100k right out the gate. Most of the time its more like 30-60k. Whether its computer (IT), Teaching or Nursing nobody will pay well until you get some experience. As I have mentioned before your shifts will be the worst due to seniority and thats just how it goes. Nothing you can do about it. What people fail to think about is location. If you jump out of school and make 45-60k, you get so much more for your dollar in states like Texas or Oklahoma or Arizona than you do California or New York. This means you pay your school off faster and obtain that experience. Dont be fooled be a "bit" higher salaries in states like Cali or Ny. 100k goes less in Cali than 75 does in Texas. I have a friend that still works where i do but moved locations from Texas to Cali and the median house in Tx is like 150k and in Cali its hard to find anything remotely close to work for less than 350-500. (The Cost Of Living) Also something else to think about. Its nice to have a Career and then have a "backup" career. It gives you options as a "just in case". In this day and age, if I were starting all over again I would be thinking about a career in the "essentials". Things that are essential for survival. Whether it be in the first world of the third world you need Medical Staff, Food, Water, Engineering, Supply Chain, etc... Nobody gives a shit about if their laptop boots up when they haven't eaten in 3 days. So I would most likely do some things different. I think Brian made a much smarter career choice than myself. Ive been very blessed and can't complain. This is a great discussion and a good time to have it. Good Luck, StevenX

[mmskate13]

Wow thanks for all the tips you guys. Really great to know people who have some experience in life. Definitely going to have to consider quite a few things. Thankfully, the guidance center in my school is having talks with everyone about these types of topics, so between their help and T|I help i think everything will go just fine

[unreal25]

Hey mmskate13,

Where are you from?

I can give you some info for the stuff I know something about.

1. Astronomy.

I think its a very cool field, but there may be some confusion about what people do in it. It depends exactly what you want do to however: typically astronomy involves either observational or purely theoretical work. My PhD adviser, e.g. 20 years back or so built some balloons that were going into the upper atmosphere and I think were measuring extraterrestrial x-ray sources. For example, for what I remember people found out that some pulsars (basically space objects rotating insanely fast) could be detected by looking at these periodic x-ray signals. I also have a friend at Harvard who is doing purely theory, that is he has access to the data of large sky surveys and last time I talked to him he was showing me how he used this data in his computer simulation of the distribution of dark matter within the milky way galaxy. Also my university participates in the Mars rover program, so there is quite a few of physicists and engineers workig on that, that goes from building the thing to actually analyzing the data. This is for example what astrophysicists/astronomers do. And to do that typically one goes by getting a BSc degree in physics then a PhD in physics/astronomy, then probably 3-4 years of postdoctoral positions before landing an assistant professorship position. It is a bit time-consuming profession, but for many it seems it is worth it. They are not super-high paying jobs but its more having to do something that they really enjoy doing (i.e. it doesnt feel like a job).

The good side, the research can be very interesting. The bad side is that getting into a good astronomy PhD program in the US is insanely difficult as they are very competitive. Also the chances of getting a job as the professor in the field is very hard. On the other hand, I've heard a lot of astronomy PhDs easily get other jobs where you need to do a lot of computing/numerical simulations (I know in particular Wall Street/Consluting companies are popular destinations).

I don't know much about engineering side of it, but it seems there is a demand for it. I know every years or so NASA Jet Propulsion Lab folks come to my university recruiting graduate students in physics/engineering close to getting their PhD. Also, I am not sure what are the qualifications to become an astronaut (not an astronomer).

It is hard to predict what kind of jobs are going to be in demand once you finish your university education, so in my opinion my best suggestion is to find something you really enjoy doing with the constrain that it will allow you some flexibility even if you aren't able to score your first choice profession, which may not necessarily be a bad thing, btw. (Like being a painter I imagine you'll have trouble earning money.)

I'll comment on the other stuff you wrote later, I want to go home now. Also if you want I can write down, in length, about what I am doing.

[Michael]

I'd love some details about what you do unreal.

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[unreal25]

... cont'd ....

(again not sure what you're doing so I'll try not to complicate too much)

2. Medical research

Here I can only say something about biomed research. In terms of research in biomedicine there are a lot of things going on right now. I am mostly familiar with computational stuff, which may be what appeals a lot to the newer generation of students. There is a huge field of computational biology in which for example you could do something like the following example. Experimentalists would sequence a genome of an organism X (say amoeba) then folks on the computer use that data to compare to other organisms and for example study how the genome evolves. There are lots of basic and applied open questions here, from figuring out how the proteins fold the way they do to be able to perform some function to say using computer science techniques to figure out . Then there's applied stuff concerned with diseases, e.g. where people have looked into the genetic sequences of sick people and figured out a particular mutation (e.g. lets say where you're supposed to have ATGC, you have TAGC in your gene) has to do with causing a disease. As you imagine there is ton of work here on different kinds of cancer as well. I don't see biomed research going away any time soon and in fact my impression.

3. Computer Science

A lot of people confuse IT with CS just in case you aren't aware. CS is a cool field as well, and the techniques from it are becoming very popular in computational biology/biomedicine. Basically there is stuff about robotics/AI I learned abit this semester as I took the Stanford online class (ai-class.org) and I am somewhat familiar with machine learning where you make computer programs that try to "learn" something from the data... maybe if you are interesting it is useful if you take their 101 course they are offering next semester: Computer Science 101 to get a feeling of the field.

If you are even remotely capable all of these fields -- physics, astronomy, biomed, cs (especially cs) should be able to provide you with a decent salary. In fact even as a graduate student in the US, I think the salary is quite nice -- e.g. I can easily afford to travel across the world 2x per year, high end laptop, and a car if I wanted (I get about $2K per month and my 1bed apartment costs $750/mo; NY state). While the salary lacks like mad given my qualifications, its not that bad + I am not paying anything extra for my studies (I am guessing that's included in my nett salary but I never see that money). If you do decide to enroll in an university (I am not sure where are you now, high school?) you should talk to different people professors, grad students, perhaps you can access so called "resident fellows" if you live in a dorm on campus and talk to them as well.

I guess if you have any particular question, I can try to give a more concrete answer.

Edited December 21, 2011 by unreal25
completed incomplete sentence.

[mmskate13]

wow, thanks unreal, extremely helpful lol.

If i may ask, will you please go into depth on your occupation? You sound quite interesting!

To answer your question, I am currently in high school, sophomore year, and go to a pretty prestigious school, which I am really grateful for. My school is ranked within the top 25 of the US, and is divided into 7 academies, mine being an academy of science and technology. Our average SAT score is 2230, and my GPA freshman year (although I know colleges do not care much for Freshman Year) was a 3.995 / 4 (we don't use a system that goes above 4 since all of the classes are honors/college or ap/ib level). So I am looking to try getting into these more difficult fields, although i do have to work more on extracurriculars. As a reference, 10/12 applicants for Princeton for my school's senior class made it in, and many more into colleges like Columbia / Yale.

Unfortunately, I do not know of many other students that share my interests, specifically on the Astronomical side of science. This could actually be helpful though if i do decide to seek a career in that field. On the other hand the school teaching staff is a pretty fantastic resource, other than in the computer field (they all teach web programming, which isn't exactly what I am after) . I think i'm going to see the following teachers more:

A physics teacher who teaches a 2 hour long "projects" class where we discuss the issues and possible rewards of space travel, specifically to mars. I took a previous Project class with him on the physics of building bridges, and an elective about astronomy.

Another physics teacher who has an M.S. from PennState. This teacher is one of the coolest teachers i have ever met haha, and he does fun things like an extra-curricular projcet involving sending a weather balloon to outer-atmosphere, and designing a measuring device to take a sample of something (i can't remember what lol). I wanted to take join that project, but the slots were filled.. Hopefully he can help me out and describe to me what exactly each field in the physics/engineering department does, rather than the vague descriptions online. Apparently, he contributed work to the U.S. Navy's massive railgun system attached to war vessels to launch attacks from 126 miles away at sea.

And I currently have a teacher who organizes the research at my school and helps the students prepare to submit research papers to intel's ISEF. She's the teacher helping me do my cellular biological research right now. I think i'm going to ask her more about her job before she went into teaching.

Thanks again for your help, and i'm looking forward to hearing about you, i'm really curious now

[unreal25]

Ah thanks!

I actually plan to put up a website of my research that *should* be sort of understandable but I was just too busy recently to work on it at all.

Basically I am working towards a PhD in Physics at one of the, as you put it, "pretty prestigious" schools in upstate NY. I work in the field of biophysics doing both experimental and computational work. Simply put, I study how living cells can sense and respond to very weak signals from their environment and I try to answer how the limit of this sensing is achieved.

For example, in my lab we study amoebae which can hunt and eat bacteria (amoeba is about 10X bigger). The way it works is bacteria constantly poops out molecules that are byproducts of its metabolism and amoeba has evolved to be able to detect these signaling molecules. The way the detection works: the amoeba has lots of (about 100,000) of small proteins on its surface that can bind these molecules but for a short time. So in the environment where each molecule is moving quite chaotically the amoeba is constantly being bombarded by these signals that constantly bind and unbind, but on average there will be a little more of these events on the part of amoeba's surface facing bacteria, than other -- because the molecules are coming from there so there is a gradient. The amoeba then uses that information to move towards its food source (yummy bacteria) and eats it. So basically one of the things I am doing is trying to make a model of these binding/unbinding events and the noise that is associated with them due to the random nature of these molecules hitting the surface of amoeba and randomness of these binding/unbinding processes. The reason is that we need another model to explain our experimental data -- which the current, "simple" model, cannot.

Overall I use some ideas from physics, obviously doing a lot of experimental biology, mainly working with living cells in the lab, and also I apply some ideas from computer science (mainly the information theory) to try to understand what amount of information cells can get about which way to go at different steps of this sensing process.

It is a very similar process to how white blood cells in your body react when you get hurt and infected, since its basically a study how the cells sense and respond to a particular signal -- there's a cool video showing the white blood cell chasing and eliminating a bacteria:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OWUmXx5V_wE

As for you, I think its great that you have the opportunity to go to a good school and its certainly very helpful to get into the "pretty prestigious" university. Even though I have to say, I was a teaching assistant for about 2-3 years in various physics courses here, and can't say that I am impressed with the general knowledge of about 95% of my incoming students. In fact, even for people claiming to have taken Advanced Placement courses, their math knowledge was very poor (no offense to anyone, but where I come from with that knowledge you wouldn't get in anywhere). However, I do mostly enjoy working with them, as they are nice people and because I just like to talk about physics. The good thing in the US is that you don't have to choose your major until I think your 2nd year, so you'll definitely be able to explore different things. Also, it will make a huge difference to talk to university professors. My adviser is one of the people advising several of our undergraduate students (most of the time about choosing a major), so sometimes I got a chance to talk to them as well. We also had a high school student working with us in the lab once and that went pretty well, so I am assuming that helped him as well in applying to college.

[mmskate13]

haha wow that's a pretty awesome topic! You know your doing something right when you can make something complicated relatively simple! Did you capture that video on your own in the lab or get it from elsewhere btw? If so, nice spoons video

I don't have much time right now because I need to go see my family, but here's my research project in a nutshell:

Skp2 is a protein that is over-expressed in some cancers, and present in all of them. Recent studies have proven that SKP2 is overexpressed in Pancreatic cancer. Another study has linked Mizoribine, an immunosuppressive drug to be able to inhibit the production of skp2 in vitro. The point that becomes really important here is that SKP2 protein is essential for the cells (regular or cancer) to go from the G1 to S phase in the cell cycle. Therefore, if SKP2 is inhibited, then the cancer cells should not be able to grow and thus lack the ability to proliferate, allowing conventional cancer treatments to take out the cancer without the fear that it will spread throughout the body. We're going to have to measure a few things to make sure that the SKP2 is inhibited and to view how effective it actually is, but if my hypothesis yields favorable results, my junior and senior year research could consist of ways to have the Mizoribine directed to the areas of cancer. The best part about Mizoribine, is that it is not very harmful to the human body as a whole. So if all goes right, people with pancreatic cancer would be able to live for longer than 5 months.

As for what you said about physics, I'm glad that there are people out there like you who also share an enthusiasm for physics, it makes me feel more reassured . Other people in school just do the work and get by, but I'm so interested by physics itself ever since I was exposed to it. I find it so interesting that we can quantify how things around us in the world work, and apply it to creating the most mind-blowing creations and solutions to problems. Good luck on getting your PhD!!

[unreal25]

Thanks!

Heh nope, the video is made in 60ies by late David Rogers at Vanderbilt University.

Cool research! And cancer research is currently very hot topic, but more important is whether you enjoy it. (If you don't you might as well do something else that you don't enjoy and at least earn more money. ) In any case, I think its very admirable that you're already involved in this kind of research. If nothing else, you get some experience, which can't hurt right?

[mmskate13]

I find it interesting, but i'm not sure i will go into that field. Its like I like ps3 games, but i'm fascinated by pc gaming . Regardless, as you said its good experience, and research can be applied to almost any scientific field