Are friends/family shocked at your salary?

Perhaps one of the more sobering moment in my life was while I was in graduate school. I was visiting an old friend who lives in the mountains and does construction-type work. He asked what I might expect to earn with my updated degree.

When I told him he said that a trained backhoe operator could earn more.

 

Waylon, I've agreed with pretty much 90 percent of the things you've said on various boards related to this topic. And it sounds like you're going to a great school, and should be very proud of that. I do have a slight problem though with you making it sound as if going to a school that isn't in the top 10 nation wide is a death sentence. I'm going to grad school to pursue and MBA...I got good scores on my GMAT and even had a perfect score on one of the three portions. Yet I'm going to a medium-sized state school because it's where my girlfriend, my family and all my friends are. Maybe thats cowardly, but it's nice to know I have a suuport system in case something goes wrong. I'm also not comfortable dropping 100K into my education given the fact there is no guarantee the economy will be any better 2-3 years from now when I'm done. I may not get a degree from Stanford, but I will have an MBA from an accredited businees school. I feel quite confident that I will have some decent career choices, particulaly if I bust ass again and graduate with a 3.7 GPA like I did as an undergrad. Will I make 100K a year? No. Do I need to? No. If I come out making 50K a year it's worth it to me, because that will still smoke the type of wages I'll probably ever make in journlism. I know guys that are CEOs at profitable companies that got their MBAs online. I'd say what I'm doing is at least a step up from that, but I feel comfortable. I would venture a guess that you aren't really trying to insult anybody with your comments. But I am still proud of the decision I am making. And I know I will have a much better chance for success when I'm done. I won't have a fancy name on my degree, but I will have a pretty damn good degree. And I will have worked my ass of to do it.

 

I'll take exception to that statement. The fact is, the newspaper business is dying right now, even as we speak. Many of us who have worked in it all our adult lives and managed to work our way up to jobs with big papers at a decent salary are being thrown out the door -- more every day. And check the job listings these days and let me know how many papers are hiring for jobs paying $50,000 or more. I'm thinking it's a very short list.

There will still be newspapers tomorrow, next week and next year, but make no mistake, the death of the business has already begun. Those planning to make a living working for a newspaper for the long term -- or even the short term -- had better start working on a backup plan.

 

Write, you're reading something that isn't there. I've emphasized that a high score is also important because it can get you a hefty scholarship at a very good school. That can actually be more freeing, because you don't have the loans to pay back afterward.

The biggest difference, as I understand it, between a higher ranked school and a lower ranked school, is how deep into the class the big law or consulting firms (if we're talking MBA) will go when it comes to hiring. At Yale and Harvard, they probably would hire every graduate. At Columbia or NYU or Chicago, the top 80 percent. At Michigan, Berkeley, Duke and Georgetown, maybe the top 60-70 percent. At Notre Dame, Boston College, etc., maybe the top 30 percent and on down the line.

If that's what you're interested in, of course.

My friend's wife went to Indiana University Law School, a very good if not elite, top-10-ish school. She got a six-figure job at a St. Louis firm upon graduation with minimal debt.

 

Write - I think my main point is that I want people to understand exactly what they're getting into, and exactly what the odds are. Obviously family situations and so forth play into decision making when you aren't 22 and unattached. But that doesn't mean people shouldn't figure out how to best navigate the situations available to them.

Too many times, on here and elsewhere, I read something along the lines of, "If I'm smart enough, it won't matter where I went ..." Which I guess is true to an extent, but again, why do you expect to finish in the top 10 percent of your law or business class (general you, here, not you specifically) if you can't be expected to put in the time to prepare for an entrance exam that could save you tens of thousands of dollars in tuition? If you can't be expected to research what you're getting into and what challenges may lie ahead? What light bulb do you expect to turn on in the meantime?

As an MBA student, you clearly understand that a JD or MBA isn't a golden ticket - you have to work your ass off once you're there, and keep knocking on doors. I don't think everyone realizes that.

 

Plans change spnited. I applaud those who are going back for a master's. If I go back to school, i'm going to concentrate in one of two fields, medicine or mortuary science. There will always be sick people and there will always be death.

 

WFW. Not even close.

 

Mark,

Nice to know someone else is in the EXACT same position as me. I couldn't have said it better myself.

Sports journalism or at least being a part of the media in general has always been what I wanted to do, or at least the one thing that I was good enough at to make a career of.

It's pretty fucking clear, though, that I need to make a change, and I wonder every day what the hell I'm gonna do. I'm thinking seriously about law school or going back for some type of education, but the whole grind of going back to school and starting a new career in something that might be just as terrible in this horseshit economy scares the fuck out of me.

As I've said, I work in a frozen-foods warehouse a couple times a week, and this business is the rare one that hasn't lost a step in this economy. In fact, they're getting more product coming into the warehouse than they have room for, and every day I work there I'm busy as hell. As much as I would hate to get up every day and work the hours that the full-timers there do, it pays well, OT is compensated for and they don't punish you for working OT. I vacillate every day between actually having a career or just taking any kind of fucking job like the one in the warehouse.

 

Yeah, unanticipated things like my fiancee finding out that her salary might be cut in half, and she could laregly be working on commission (if she doesn't get let go altogether) in a month.

Once again, journalists aren't the only professionals getting fucked in the ass in this shitty economy.

Anyways, thanks for the well-wishes. All any of us can do right now is just roll with the punches and make the best of every situation. That's life.

 

Very good point.

It's advice I try to tell myself every day as I try to figure out what I'm gonna do next.

 

Yep, I'm finding that out more and more every day. There are no quick fixes in life, and anyone that thinks a career change is going to be a snap is sadly mistaken.

I think when people go with the "I figure I'll just..." attitude, though, perhaps they're thinking more along the lines of just finding a job and forgetting about a career. For example, it's ridiculous to say, "I figure I'll just be a doctor/lawyer/teacher," but it is somewhat practical to say, "I figure I'll just be a bartender." (No offense to bartenders, they're some of my best friends in life.)

I guess it just depends on what you want out of life. I applaud your hard work, gritty attitude and diligent planning, and I hope to have the same experience if I choose to go to law school. But I'm still not absolutely convinced if that's what I want to do, or if I just pull out the old "Help Wanted" ads in the paper and go from there.