TheHaitian
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Post by TheHaitian on Aug 4, 2015 17:31:51 GMT -5
I believe my wife should broaden her horizons and look at other options besides the PhD / academia tract.
She is willing to listen to me but just not sure what else she could possibly do... So I will ask here.
She has a Bachelors degree in Biology and a masters degree in Public Health, focus being Health Policy and Management.
With her student loans payment going up to do my income going up it defeats the purpose of working a low pay academia job for the loan forgiveness at the end when we might end up paying it off anyway or close to it!
What is your take?
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tskeeter
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Post by tskeeter on Aug 4, 2015 17:36:56 GMT -5
My cousin's wife used her Master's in transportation to become a Congressional aid, advising a Congressman from Oregon on transportation policy.
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shanendoah
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Post by shanendoah on Aug 4, 2015 17:39:52 GMT -5
In the Seattle area, I could tell you exactly what organizations to look at - Gates Foundation, PATH, PNW Laboratories, etc. I would think the place to start is to research global health organizations in your area. A lot of these are non profits, so still won't pay great, but have other kinds of perks.
Other places to look with a masters in public health is city, county, and state jobs. That includes Medicaid and other public health related positions. In addition, her skills could likely be put to use working for health insurance, large hospitals, and pharmaceutical companies.
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kittensaver
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Post by kittensaver on Aug 4, 2015 17:54:26 GMT -5
places to look with a masters in public health is city, county, and state jobs. That includes Medicaid and other public health related positions. In addition, her skills could likely be put to use working for health insurance, large hospitals, and pharmaceutical companies.
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chiver78
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Post by chiver78 on Aug 4, 2015 18:04:24 GMT -5
places to look with a masters in public health is city, county, and state jobs. That includes Medicaid and other public health related positions. In addition, her skills could likely be put to use working for health insurance, large hospitals, and pharmaceutical companies. for sure. I was about to suggest pharma companies (b/c we don't have enough of them in this area... ) until my boss walked in and I had to minimize the window lol... biology with a public health focus, she could start out in entry level Regulatory Affairs positions - they deal with the FDA (etc) filings for all meds currently being prescribed.
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emma1420
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Post by emma1420 on Aug 4, 2015 18:47:59 GMT -5
She might want to consider association work. There are a lot of associations and association management companies that specialize in healthcare, and her MPH would be valued and the work is interesting. There is still the potential for policy and research work once she has advanced enough, and in some associations she would still work with academics.
The pay and advancement is typically better than academia as well.
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Shooby
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Post by Shooby on Aug 4, 2015 18:52:52 GMT -5
What does SHE want to do with her degree?
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Knee Deep in Water Chloe
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Post by Knee Deep in Water Chloe on Aug 4, 2015 19:23:21 GMT -5
What did she want to be when she grew up? Why did she get those degrees in the first place? Does she have any interest in teaching? In my state, a master's is required to teach at community college.
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andi9899
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Post by andi9899 on Aug 4, 2015 19:25:52 GMT -5
places to look with a masters in public health is city, county, and state jobs. That includes Medicaid and other public health related positions. In addition, her skills could likely be put to use working for health insurance, large hospitals, and pharmaceutical companies. You guys beat me to it!
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busymom
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Post by busymom on Aug 4, 2015 20:40:14 GMT -5
If she does get her doctorate, does she know what she wants to do afterwards? It seems there are a number of young adults who don't know what they want to do with their lives, so rather than working, they just keep going to school...
I wouldn't encourage anyone to go to school just because they weren't sure what they wanted to do in life. Just my opinion.
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bobosensei
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Post by bobosensei on Aug 5, 2015 3:37:12 GMT -5
My sister has a MPH, but she got it en route to her MD. I'm guessing your wife doesn't want to do that.
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Shooby
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Post by Shooby on Aug 5, 2015 4:59:40 GMT -5
Hait- First of all, some people are happy just doing whatever their degree leads them to do. Is SHE unhappy with her current career choice? There are lots of people who simply want to be worker bees. Not everyone is the type of person who is motivated to get ahead or go higher or whatever. She's a grown woman. Why don't you let her sort out her own career?
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TheHaitian
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Post by TheHaitian on Aug 5, 2015 5:44:04 GMT -5
My sister has a MPH, but she got it en route to her MD. I'm guessing your wife doesn't want to do that. So does my cousin that is a DO... But no that shipped has sailed. She doesn't want to be an MD or DO anymore, something happened during college and she 100% just changed her mind. ---> but she has been considering PA as a probable options.
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TheHaitian
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Post by TheHaitian on Aug 5, 2015 5:45:42 GMT -5
Hait- First of all, some people are happy just doing whatever their degree leads them to do. Is SHE unhappy with her current career choice? There are lots of people who simply want to be worker bees. Not everyone is the type of person who is motivated to get ahead or go higher or whatever. She's a grown woman. Why don't you let her sort out her own career? Because she is MY wife and we are a TEAM Because we talk about those things and offer each other suggestions or just an ear to listen Because whatever I do or she does affects more than just 1 person. And don't worry, I am quite aware my wife is a grown woman
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Shooby
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Post by Shooby on Aug 5, 2015 5:49:07 GMT -5
Lol! I bet you are!
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Shooby
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Post by Shooby on Aug 5, 2015 5:50:28 GMT -5
I guess I am saying that some people are more ambitious career wise than others. And, that you seem very ambitious and maybe she is a bit more content to take whatever comes her way. But, I don't really know. And, of course you are a team and should discuss it.
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TheHaitian
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Post by TheHaitian on Aug 5, 2015 5:58:17 GMT -5
Thank you to all the suggestions, I forwarded them to her and it will be up to I guess figure out what she wants to do from here . What did she want to be when she grew up? Why did she get those degrees in the first place? Does she have any interest in teaching? In my state, a master's is required to teach at community college. At first (the bachelors in Biology) the goal was medical school but somewhere along the lines that changed. Then it was teaching, she wanted to eventually teach at college level and do research. She loves doing research, data analysis, etc, She has been in academia now for 2 years and is starting to realize that some of the tales of the backstabbing, cut throat and only the strong survive is real. My wife is an introvert that does not care for confrontation which is total opposite of me: I strive on chaos and I don't mind confronting someone. Ex: she worked her ass off on a presentation and basically did most of the work. Her name should have been the first one on there or the least second (academia: publish or perish).... It was Third or fourth with other people taking credit for her work. She doesn't say nothing.... She is the quote worker bee type that will just take it all in and come home and cry. Then I want to go to her job and smash people face in and I know I cannot do that. And maybe it is because we work in two different fields. I am in a field were you are expected to be LOUD, aggressive, on top or you perish. You thought your horn and you take credit for every single thing you do. Bragging is encouraged! As the VP of HR told a room of managers: if your VP doesn't know you on a first name basis; you are doing it wrong! You need to be the biggest advertisement for YOU that there is! You need to be LOUD! Anyway I am sure she will figure it out; she is currently studying for the GRE and I told her to keep her options open. We can cover all our expenses under my income (would not save as much or pay of debt as fast) but ok with her going the PA route.... As close to being an MD/DO she could get without actually being one.
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TheHaitian
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Post by TheHaitian on Aug 5, 2015 6:44:33 GMT -5
Drop her in a lab and just check on her once a month and she will be as happy as a pig in mud. She just cannot do the whole office thing .... In her own words from texting me:
"I'm just not sure if I'm suited for an office environment is my problem"
"Would love to do something where I can be in grossed in my job without having to worry about all the bullshit"
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TheHaitian
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Post by TheHaitian on Aug 5, 2015 6:45:14 GMT -5
Ex: Drama old job in the lab working by herself and the PI popping in from time to time would be in my wife world her DREAM job!
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bobosensei
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Post by bobosensei on Aug 5, 2015 6:46:43 GMT -5
My sister has a MPH, but she got it en route to her MD. I'm guessing your wife doesn't want to do that. So does my cousin that is a DO... But no that shipped has sailed. She doesn't want to be an MD or DO anymore, something happened during college and she 100% just changed her mind. ---> but she has been considering PA as a probable options. Ah, I also have a sister that is going the PA route after getting a masters in counseling. Of course she is doing it more so the be able to be taken seriously as a counselor. As she puts it right now a nurse has more credibility than her when diagnosing a patient in a hospital setting. And the PA degree will change that. But why did your wife decide not to go for an MD? I understand if it was just something she thought she'd do in college and now she understands the pressure of professional schooling when you are an undergrad. I am an english major that was certain I'd go to law school until I graduated and worked for attorneys. So if it was just a realization that she doesn't want to be an MD, okay fine. But if you think she's just isn't confident that she could be an MD then you need to help her get over that. The fact that she is considering PA school says to me she is still interested. Introvert or not, what you do as a PA is similar to what you do as an MD.
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emma1420
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Post by emma1420 on Aug 5, 2015 7:06:06 GMT -5
Drop her in a lab and just check on her once a month and she will be as happy as a pig in mud. She just cannot do the whole office thing .... In her own words from texting me: "I'm just not sure if I'm suited for an office environment is my problem" "Would love to do something where I can be in grossed in my job without having to worry about all the bullshit" Unfortunately, as we all know there is bullshit with all jobs. And this may be something that she needs to take time to figure out herself how to manage the bullshit most effectively.
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cael
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Post by cael on Aug 5, 2015 7:29:13 GMT -5
Carl - public health is my field. Health Agents/directors for local health departments can make decent money. Does she have any experience in local public health or any desire to get any? Being a director can sometimes be all office, and sometimes be more field stuff. PM me if you want to talk shop or connect me with her! Also I know DPH is usually hiring for different things, she should check out the job postings on mass.gov, they may have more research based things available.
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TheHaitian
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Post by TheHaitian on Aug 5, 2015 7:56:06 GMT -5
Carl - public health is my field. Health Agents/directors for local health departments can make decent money. Does she have any experience in local public health or any desire to get any? Being a director can sometimes be all office, and sometimes be more field stuff. PM me if you want to talk shop or connect me with her! Also I know DPH is usually hiring for different things, she should check out the job postings on mass.gov, they may have more research based things available. Thank you, I will PM you
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NomoreDramaQ1015
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Post by NomoreDramaQ1015 on Aug 5, 2015 8:04:43 GMT -5
Drama old job in the lab working by herself and the PI popping in from time to time would be in my wife world her DREAM job!
The grass ain't greener on the other side. There is still bullshit you have to deal with. I had a merry romp with Surgery Research and the pharmacy company we were working with on several occassions. And there is still the possibility of the PI stealing your paper and putting themselves down as first author when it really should be you. That happened to a friend of mine multiple times when getting her PhD. It's extremely common and almost expected since the PI is "in charge" and you "simply could not have done it without them". Then when it's just you EVERYTHING rolls down hill back to you. There is no one else to take the heat, there is no one else to help shoulder the responsbility. One mistake can land you in deeper water than it can when there are multiple people involved since you created the mess solo and now have to fix it solo. I do enjoy being independent and not having a PI who micromanages but at the same time I am getting REALLY sick of being the sole person in the lab responsible for everything. It makes having a life very difficult and it can be a challenge to shoulder the entire workload of a lab alone. Right now I don't get out of my new lab till 5:30-6:00 b/c all the animal work, all the experimental work, all the paperwork falls on my shoulders. I had several weeks of not getting out of my former lab till 7:00 pm b/c the pharmacy company wasn't going to accept I didn't want to work late and I'm only one human being as an excuse for missing their timeline So working solo isn't all it's cracked up to be. In some ways it's almost worse. While I enjoy the "no drama" from co-workers every day at the same time it'd be nice to have someone here so I could go home or not have to schedule my pee breaks down to the minute.
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HoneyBBQ
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Post by HoneyBBQ on Aug 5, 2015 10:04:02 GMT -5
There's no jobs without "bullshit". She needs to get used to it.
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NomoreDramaQ1015
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Post by NomoreDramaQ1015 on Aug 5, 2015 10:19:46 GMT -5
I also wanted to say that part of the reason I am so good at working alone is b/c I am an aggressive bitch. When you are alone you HAVE to be b/c there is no one else to advocate for yourself or the lab. You have to be the main channel of communication to your PI. Which sometimes means butting heads with them on something b/c they aren't in the lab everyday while you are.
I'm new here so I am keeping a low profile for the moment till I get the lay of the land. Overtime in my other labs though as I became the sole experienced employee I had no problems speaking my mind. My bosses trusted me to know what I was talking about and responded accordingly. They counted on me to speak up when needed otherwise how could they do their job?
You deal with EVERYONE. I've butted heads with just about every type of person you can encounter in a lab over the past decade. If your wife cannot be assertive then she won't do well working alone in a lab.
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Post by The Walk of the Penguin Mich on Aug 5, 2015 11:01:01 GMT -5
Ex: she worked her ass off on a presentation and basically did most of the work. Her name should have been the first one on there or the least second (academia: publish or perish).... It was Third or fourth with other people taking credit for her work. She doesn't say nothing....
That's the way it works, Carl. The PI is always the first author because they get the money and most of it is their idea. I have about 3 pages of publications where I am author (after 35 years of work). I didn't get my name on a publication until I had worked for about 5 years. And honestly, I see why. It wasn't until then that I had the experience to be able to contribute more than do what my PI told me to do. About 3 of my journal publications I am first author on. I did not get the money, but I had the idea, did the work, did the statistics, wrote the paper and submitted it (with my PI's approval/discussion as to where to submit it). BUT it was MY idea. All of my publications where I am first author were method papers, where I developed new processes.
For research presentations in the field where I work, the presenter is ALWAYS first author. The PI is normally last author in this case. So when I presented, I was first author. Even if I did the work, wrote the abstract (I normally wrote about 3-5 abstracts each year for other people), and put together most of the other presentations that others published, I was 2,3,4th author - mainly because you could only present one abstract each research meeting. There are papers where I did ALL the work and am buried in a long laundry list of authors - many of who had no idea which end of the pipet to use. Thems the breaks and if she can't deal, then she had better look elsewhere. There are politics and many times
Finally, Drama is right. You DO have to be an aggressive bitch to work in research. No one gets anything unless they stand up for themselves. If your wife thinks that someone's going to automatically reward her for the stuff she's being paid to do (and honestly, while being authored on a paper is a good perk, publish and parish in her position isn't really as important as it is if she is a faculty member). Every single raise I got outside of COL, I had to be a pain in the butt. I also went WAAAAY beyond my job description from the beginning. When I first started my doctorate, I started taking over the statistics from the lab. My boss was backed up and so was the statistician so I asked him if he was ok if I took a stab at it. He was, I did good and this became my job on top of everything else.
Unless you are proactive, you don't get anywhere. Unless you can walk a fine line between students, other faculty and various other departments, you don't get anywhere. Unless you can speak up, propose a study, tell your idea (or hell, just do it and present it afterwards if it works - lord knows, I spent a buttload of time in the lab doing studies for ideas that I had OUTSIDE of my normal job. Some it worked well - and I got a publication out of it, some was a bust), you just don't get anywhere.
Another place I was very good was negotiation. So I got the responsibility for making large purchases for the lab. I had a network of people I had established who knew me, and I made sure that they knew me. If I had a large purchase I needed to make, they bent over backwards to get my business. We had one rep that tried a bait and switch on me, I had an order for an incubator that was backordered for several months. The rep took it upon himself to change the incubator to one I did not want (I had looked at it, it was a lot cheaper and not have a feature I needed). He called me to tell me that they had this incubator in stock that they could deliver, but I didn't want it and I told him that. The incubator I didn't want wound up on our loading dock and I denied shipment (and boy was the rep pissed). I went with another company, and that was the last order he got from me.
Like Drama - I worked alone at times. I also worked with others in the lab, and worked with others in other institutions/countries. Working alone is not always good, as I don't think you learn new things quite as quickly as you do if you work with a group. Some of my best work was done where I collaborated with people where we could have brainstorming sessions. Not just PIs, but other techs, statisticians, etc.
If this bothers your wife so much, IMO she needs to either figure out a way to deal with it emotionally or open up her mouth and speak. You can't fight her battles for her, and as academia IS a battleground, playing (AND UNDERSTANDING) the politics is part of the game. Last month when I was in KY, I had dinner with my old boss and he was telling me of the politics that he had to deal with. Not everyone has the personality to deal with this, hell - I don't. I played the politics that help me do my job and do it well but there was no way I wanted to play those sort of politics as it was of a whole 'nuther magnitude. I respect him for it and respect him for the skills that he has in getting people to do the things he needs. But he's had nearly 50 years of playing these politics.
Your wife has some serious soul searching she needs to do. But there are politics played everywhere and expecting someone to automatically award her acclaims for work she does is not going to help her there either.
JMHO
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Post by The Walk of the Penguin Mich on Aug 5, 2015 11:13:41 GMT -5
Carl - public health is my field. Health Agents/directors for local health departments can make decent money. Does she have any experience in local public health or any desire to get any? Being a director can sometimes be all office, and sometimes be more field stuff. PM me if you want to talk shop or connect me with her! Also I know DPH is usually hiring for different things, she should check out the job postings on mass.gov, they may have more research based things available. This is really an interesting idea - but be aware that politics are being played here too. Several years ago, I needed to do a practicum and contacted the local health department in WA to see if they needed free help for 4 weeks. They were DESPERATE for help. They had done a large study that they needed someone to collate the date from, and I had collated tons of data from other studies, I could do this with one hand tied behind my back. It was an interesting study and I told them that I was sure I could help them. I was making arrangements as to when to start and start getting the data and I told them (and this is where I screwed the pooch) I had just taken a data mining course and still had the SAS modules on my laptop - so I could do some statistics for them too. OMG! It was like a glacier formed over the head of the health department. They did a 180° and I lost my practicum. They had absolutely NO interest in my skills (collating or otherwise). I was utterly clueless as to what the hell had happened. How was it that they were sooooo anxious for me to start and get their data for them, but the minute I mentioned that I had other skills that they might find useful that it lost me the job? I replayed this to my boss, and his best guess was that the fact that I had these skills was threatening to the head of the public health department. If she didn't understand it, she didn't want anyone working for her who did, or who could do this. It was no skin off of my nose, but I did have to scramble for another practicum (this is when I went out in the dental van when I came back) so I could complete the hours as I had already paid for the credits.
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NomoreDramaQ1015
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Post by NomoreDramaQ1015 on Aug 5, 2015 11:15:17 GMT -5
Working alone is not always good, as I don't think you learn new things quite as quickly as you do if you work with a group.
Agree and disagree. If you are going to learn quickly solo you have to be highly motivated self learner. I taught myself solid phase extraction by reading articles, talking in length with the tech people at Phenomenex/Waters and hitting up another lab I knew exclusively did SPE.
So it can be done but you have to be able to speak up and be willing to be a serious "pest".
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Post by The Walk of the Penguin Mich on Aug 5, 2015 11:15:54 GMT -5
My sister has a MPH, but she got it en route to her MD. I'm guessing your wife doesn't want to do that. So does my cousin that is a DO... But no that shipped has sailed. She doesn't want to be an MD or DO anymore, something happened during college and she 100% just changed her mind. ---> but she has been considering PA as a probable options. Carl.....why not nursing? There are a lot of PH nurses too, and some are used to do clinical research.
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