What is your career? What education did you need to get it?

19 comments

1. I’m a mental health counselor. I have a master’s degree in social work. Six years of college.

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4. Teaching. In my jurisdiction, that requires a 4-yr undergraduate degree. I actually qualified in a jurisdiction that requires a 4-yr AND a 12-mo undergrad. And I know folks who took a 4-yr undergrad and a 12-mo Masters. The level (undergrad vs Masters) doesn’t seem to matter as much as years of specialization.

   Pay is highly variable, and never actually reflects the hours worked. Expect to work a minimum of 40 minutes for every hour spent in front of students, for the first few years. I’ve been told that after 5 years you stop feeling TERRIBLE, and after 10 you might begin to find some sense of balance and competence. I don’t know ANY teachers (including those retiring after 30 years) who think they’re actually good at it.

5. Quality improvement and research in a mental health setting

   I have a master’s degree in experimental psychology

6. I have a degree in English lit. I work as a commercial underwriter. All that mattered was that I had a degree.

7. I’m a mental health case manager in public health. I have a social work degree but you can also do this role as a nurse, occupational therapist or psychologist.

8. I run an advanced analytics team (think giganerds) at a F100 tech company

   I have an engineering undergrad (4 years) and an MBA (2 yrs), both from prestigious schools.

   The pay is high, but as I read everyone else’s background…I feel like I wish you guys had the higher pay. Some of you do some super important work!!

9. I’m a wildlife biologist 🦬🐘🐢 I feel really lucky to have landed a full-time job with just a Bachelor’s degree. Most people need a Master’s or even PhD.

10. Community health worker for pregnant women. I have my bachelors in community health education.

11. I work in IT. I needed a bachelor’s degree (“or equivalent experience”) to get my current job, which pretty much meant experience because while I do have a bachelor’s, it’s in business administration which had one data processing class and that was all I had in the entire CIS world so I never even said I took it.

    Also, I’m old, so my story probably doesn’t count anyway.

12. Registered Practical Nurse. Normally it’s 2-2.5 years but I went to night school and it was almost 4.

13. Director of Research and Development; MCS, MCE, Ph.D. quantum Artificial Intelligence

14. Physicist. Currently a postdoctoral fellow, slowly working my way up the ladder. I have a PhD. From the end of high-school to my thesis defense, it took a little under 10 years.

15. I’m an accountant. Got an accounting degree for it, and had a job locked down and waiting for me about a year before graduation – personally I got a masters because I was switching from another field, but a bachelors is also adequate.

16. I’m a technical writer, basically I write the manual for other software engineers so they can do their jobs.

    I have a B.S. in Computer Science & Engineering.

17. HR… college drop-out

18. I’m a translator, proofreader and occasional editor. My degrees are in English and translation studies, but many of my colleagues who work in the same place have studied languages along with various other disciplines like anthropology, biology, and law. However, more and more in my workplace are adding translation studies on top of their existing degrees. The translation studies degree is not a requirement, but it gives people an edge when my workplace is hiring new translators.

19. I’m a SAHM with a degree in Japanese language and literature