I wasn't exactly down on my luck, but I wasn't doing great either. Basically, I was making enough money, but I was not happy in my chosen career field. I was wandering around a career fair listlessly, looking for new ideas when I decided to take a free career test at one of the booths. It told me something that I had never heard before – I have the perfect personality for a career in psychology. I was a little bit skeptical at first. I have never even thought about psychology careers, and I did not know why I should start now. I am a pretty practical person, and something as abstract as the study of the mind doesn't really appeal to me. Nonetheless, I took out a psychology career book and took a look at it. I figured that I had nothing to lose. As it turned out, I had quite a bit to gain.
When most people think of psychologist jobs, their first association is clinical psychology careers. That is the classic image of the psychologist – someone helping other people sort through their problems, analyzing their psyche and picking through for the intimate, uncomfortable details. This is why careers in psychology has never appealed to me before, but apparently there is much more to the field than that. There are research psychology careers, jobs in forensic psychology – the possibilities are endless. I was already enrolled in school as part of my continuing education in business. I decided to take a psychology course.
As I said before, I am a pretty practical person. From the very beginning, I was taking my psychology course with an eye towards what type of psychology career I might want. I was talking to the professor about psychology careers from the second week. I wasn't quite sure that I wanted to go through with it, but I thought the course was the best time to examine my options. I felt like a research psychology job might be pretty cool, but it wasn't quite practical enough for me. The more I thought about it, the more I was being drawn towards forensic psychology careers.
Now I am enrolled in a psychology degree program. I am not positive that I'm going to spend my life as a psychologist, but I certainly want to give it a try. Psychology careers are much better than the business management program that has occupied my life for the past few years!
Friday, May 2, 2008
Biotech Research
One of my friends, a former community college student at the school at the same time I was working there, has decided to go into biotech research. She is technologically savvy and at the same time is fascinated with and good at working with the environment, and hopes to make some important contributions to our area (Northern California). So what does it mean to do biotech research? What does it take to get into the field of biotechnology? And how much dough can you make?
Biotech research can involve anything in the life sciences, from “human health and computational disease mapping to crop and tree improvements,” as those studies are done by students at the Biotech Research Center at Michigan Tech, from “forensics, [the] testing of biotoxins, and management of the nation’s organ transplantation process” to “drug development, medical diagnostics, biomedical engineering, and environmental analysis,” such as those done at Virginia Biotechnology Research Park, or from biogenetic engineering, farming, or nutritional assessment and engineering to toxicology, biomedical imaging and engineering, or food, drug, and environmental technologies, as conducted by University of California Biotechnology Research and Education Program (UC BREP).
How much a person in biotech research makes depends on what funding the biotech research facilities are backed by. At the Biotech Research Center at Michigan Tech, for instance, funding is at $8.3 million, provided by such organizations as the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE),the National Science Foundation (NSF), the National Institute of Health (NIH), and the U.S. Drug Administration (USDA). At the same time, according to the U.S. Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics, the biotech research engineer (as well as the biomedical engineer) make an average of $48,503 with a bachelor’s degree and around $59,667 with a master’s degree.
But will the jobs in biotech research be there when my friend and you finish your degrees? Well, again according to the U.S. Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics, the projection for job growth in the field of biotech research in particular but biotechnological engineering in general looks good through 2014, with the growth “much faster than average. This, BLS asserts, will be attributed to the aging of the population, the increased focus on health issues, and the demand for “better medical biomedical engineers.” Because of the heightened interest in biotech research and biomedicine, more degrees are granted in these fields/areas…and hopefully, more grants are awarded!
Biotech research can involve anything in the life sciences, from “human health and computational disease mapping to crop and tree improvements,” as those studies are done by students at the Biotech Research Center at Michigan Tech, from “forensics, [the] testing of biotoxins, and management of the nation’s organ transplantation process” to “drug development, medical diagnostics, biomedical engineering, and environmental analysis,” such as those done at Virginia Biotechnology Research Park, or from biogenetic engineering, farming, or nutritional assessment and engineering to toxicology, biomedical imaging and engineering, or food, drug, and environmental technologies, as conducted by University of California Biotechnology Research and Education Program (UC BREP).
How much a person in biotech research makes depends on what funding the biotech research facilities are backed by. At the Biotech Research Center at Michigan Tech, for instance, funding is at $8.3 million, provided by such organizations as the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE),the National Science Foundation (NSF), the National Institute of Health (NIH), and the U.S. Drug Administration (USDA). At the same time, according to the U.S. Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics, the biotech research engineer (as well as the biomedical engineer) make an average of $48,503 with a bachelor’s degree and around $59,667 with a master’s degree.
But will the jobs in biotech research be there when my friend and you finish your degrees? Well, again according to the U.S. Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics, the projection for job growth in the field of biotech research in particular but biotechnological engineering in general looks good through 2014, with the growth “much faster than average. This, BLS asserts, will be attributed to the aging of the population, the increased focus on health issues, and the demand for “better medical biomedical engineers.” Because of the heightened interest in biotech research and biomedicine, more degrees are granted in these fields/areas…and hopefully, more grants are awarded!
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