Speaking of engineering - I have a rising high school senior nephew who thought he wanted to major in engineering. Smart parents signed him up for an engineering summer camp-type program at a major university. The kiddo is miserable. Not only is the camp “all work and no play” (a good indication of what the major would be) he’s also discovered that engineering isn’t what he thought it would be.
Good thing he discovered this now, and not as a miserable college freshman.
I have worked in healthcare as an Occupational Therapist for 30 years. I can’t tell you how many times a student has come to me for observation hours to apply to therapy school who are under the impression that they will " make
A lot of money " or " Never be without a job." Healthcare is ever changing and there are no guarantees of employment , let alone fulltime employment . I have worked at least 5 years without a raise, in fact I have experienced several pay cuts over my career. Healthcare is a 24/7 , 365 day a year proposition . We work holidays to provide coverage necessary for reimbursement. Nurses and Drs are not the only professionals who provide holiday coverage. Another major point, I’d like to make is admission to therapy programs is VERY COMPETITIVE . Apply to more than one program and don’t put all of your eggs in one basket .
I suspect architecture camp would also be a good idea. Architecture school is not for the faint hearted. I worked ten times as hard there as I did at Harvard.
^^ My son found out the hard way, mathmom, that architecture school was not for him. What made me chuckle later was speaking to an architect who was complaining about the poor work ethic of newly graduated architects. Really? The architecture students I know hardly slept for 4+ years of school!
“Yes, most Engineering programs entail at least one “English for Engineer” (Technical Writing?) course, often times taught by someone from an the English Department who has no clue about “Technical Writing”. As a young Engineer, I struggled with writing Technical Memorandums, Letters to other departments, etc. Public speaking is also very critical part of career success within an Engineering environment. Maybe things have changed in Engineering Programs, but Technical Writing and Public Speaking was pretty much non-existent when I went to Engineering School.”
I noticed you capitalize things that are not proper nouns, which isn’t grammatically correct. I’ve noticed that among several engineers I know. Why is that?
iPad problem.
@katliamom It may be that, at least for those who go to big firms, they spend their first years doing things like drawing bathroom plans for skyscrapers. I worked for a small guy, so my experience was a lot of bemoaning how little useful stuff I knew, but he was a very sweet boss who wouldn’t let me work more than 40 hours a week, and regularly gave me raises before I thought to ask.
My architecture friend during the recession was stuck designing H&M after H&M after H&M at probably a draftsman’s rate.
It appears that what will be most useful here is identifying a general process for finding out what each occupation really entails. If you know someone who does it, obviously that’s a good source. Will the internet serve? I googled “life as an accountant” & straight away got an article “Here’s What An Accountant Does All Day,” where an accountant describes her typical day. Also, I remember Stud Terkel’s great book “Working: People Talk About What They Do All Day and How They Feel About What They Do” wherein individuals in various occupations describe their work; a 1997 edition is available. Unfortunately, there is a lot of dialogue one encounters about what an occupation entails from people who haven’t done it (school guidance counselors and occupations profiles websites come to mind), and this material can be incomplete or wrong. I haven’t yet succeeded in finding an internet version of Studs Terkel’s book (personal accounts, with an aim to cover a wide array of occupations), but it would be easy to create.
I remember in high school, they brought in people working in various types of jobs to describe what they do at work (students chose which ones that they may be interested in). I remember one who basically only talked about how the only goal was to make money, and said little or nothing about anything else about the job and its features that could cause one to like or not like the job (the job was not in finance).
“A (STEM) BS degree does not get you a job in the field.”
In my experience, and in what I see available now, chemistry and microbiology BS degrees definitely do get jobs in laboratories. In fact, an AS often does. If you want to be VERY desirable, do a clinical laboratory technologist BS.
You have a lot more opportunities if you don’t have to feel elite.
But there do seem to be a lot of people griping that chemistry and biology major associated jobs tend to be low pay, short term contract/temporary, and with poor career advancement prospects; career surveys at universities indicate that pay levels for those majors do not seem to be that good.
UCB, can you be more specific?
Wow, engineering school wasn’t like that for me. We worked hard, but we had a blast, too. Occasionally had parties loud enough that the cops were called. 
Go to the science majors section to read the griping.
Go to the internships, careers, and employment section to find the sticky thread with the career surveys.
One can see a large repository of diverse inputs on the subject of jobs with a chemistry bachelor’s degree upon googling “chemistry terrible profession that ruined my life.”
I was able to enjoy a career in chemistry that I might not have had I had a hankering for money beyond my beloved ascetic lifestyle. I did have a struggle, though, finding work that didn’t bore me with unintellectual routine. I had no difficulty finding jobs that - per the employer (if not me) - were permanent.
For the strongest job opportunities in chemistry, get much experience working on one or more of the common sophisticated analytical instruments - GCMS, HPLC, ICP-MS, etc. Most jobs are in analytical. Very few entail synthesis.
It is very true that people who have a low cost lifestyle have more job and career options than those who have a high cost lifestyle. The former can go into lower paying fields, or choose lower paying jobs that are better in other ways (potential for career advancement, on-the-job learning/experience, etc.), while the latter are more likely to “need” the higher paying job even if it is otherwise the less desirable one.