I'm currently unemployed as we just uprooted from my home state of MI and moved to TN. It's driving me CRAZY but we've only been here a week so I guess I need to work on my patience.
What I do: I'm a Medical Laboratory Scientist/Med Tech/Medical Technologist/MT/Clinical Laboratory Scientist - yeah, all those names have been applied since I got my degree 3+ years ago. I started working in a hospital as a generalist running testing on 3rd shift so mostly really, really sick people in ER or the cancer unit kids. Then I switched to an autoimmune/allergy testing reference lab where we did a variety of testing but mainly focused on testing kids for life threatening peanut allergies.
Do I like it?: I do. I love helping people without having to do the whole patient contact thing. The pay is good...the hard part is finding a job with good hours.
Do you need a degree for it?: Yup, need a Bachelor's, to pass a certification test, and then some states require a state license. That's my hang up right now - MI does not require a state license but TN does so I'm waiting the 6-8 weeks while they process my information. I sent it in in plenty of time but the paperwork to be sent by my school was sent incorrectly so I had to re-ask them to send it again....
How I ended up here: I started as pre-vet but hated the large animal sciences (cows in particular, and pigs), switched to zoology but wasn't very happy with the potential pay scale and wasn't sure where I would end up living would have a zoo, then to nursing, which I *hated* before I found a field that combined the sciences I loved, with helping others, with no patient contact and good pay.
I have taught pet performance classes and hated it. I loved the people and dogs but it was so time consuming and the owner of the facility micromanaged which is one of my *biggest* pet peeves...there is a bomb detection facility here that has expressed interest numerous times in hiring me for a K-9 handler or facility trainer but they haven't followed through so I don't know if that will happen or not. I'm also very seriously pursuing trying to get into the crime scene forensics lab testing - that would be 100% ideal and I'm hoping that will happen for me...but, honestly, I'm a workaholic and any job that pops up first will be what I take. If I don't have something in one month, I'm going to scoop a third shift job and deal with the fact that it makes me miserably sick. I can't NOT work for this long!
ETA: OMG the blog, it's amazing, I've forwarded it to my teaching friends
I've been reading it since I saw this thread - love!