Maybe I should go to nursing school.
It would certainly be a hell of a lot easier to find work, and nursing’s a transportable and flexible career. It pays decently, and it would only require two years of additional schooling once I take a couple of science prerequisites. I could do humanitarian work. It’s a caring profession. Schools in Canada are pretty cheap (as is, actually, CUNY). I wouldn’t be sitting at a desk all day.
Hm.
Downsides: grossness and doctors, who are probably the only people on the planet with a bigger entitlement complex than equity partners at law firms.
Don’t forget the astronomical burnout rate for nurses. Being burnt-out from two careers may possibly be worse than just for one.
I have a friend who (sort of) did that. She lives in Silicon Valley and when the bottom fell out of the computer industry, she went back to school to become a nurse.
She seems to like it fine so far, and since she had a baby halfway through nursing school, it gives her a lot of flexibility. But she’s also (and always has been) a very outgoing, extroverted person, which helps a LOT when you have to deal with stressed-out people all day long.
Personally, I get burned out just having to interact with the two dozen or so people I interact with at my job. I can’t even imagine having to have the level of personal interaction you need to have as a nurse.
Then there’s library school.
Or plumbing.
Hey, I found a video of one of my favorite Avenue Q songs online:
“I Wish I Could Go Back to College”
The video part sucks, but the audio is fine.
I would think that a nursing degree would also allow one greater flexibility with law practice in dealing with health insurance companies, upper level PI work, malpractice cases, Medicare/Medicaid litigation, disability claims, etc. It might put you in a greater position to bargain which, in the end, is the only thing that asshole partners respect. If the goal is to escape law practice, rather than abusive partners, that’s another matter.
Another possibility is hospital administration; hard to imagine a better candidate for hospital administration than the holder of both a law license and a nursing license.
Or you could become a zoo-keeper. That’s my back up plan.
I can relate, zuzu. My first chosen career didn’t end well, so I tried another. And that one’s not looking too great now, either.
>>Downsides: grossness and doctors, who are probably the only people on the planet with a bigger entitlement complex than equity partners at law firms.
Um, I goofed up the HTML trying to do a quote. Let’s try that again.
zuzu: Downsides: grossness and doctors, who are probably the only people on the planet with a bigger entitlement complex than equity partners at law firms.
Jay: Hey, I resent that entitlement part! But I also agree with it. Which gets complicated.
And grossness is one of the reasons I became a doctor and not a nurse. I don’t mind blood, but I hate pus. One other thing: smart and/or ambitious nurses get promoted quickly out of patient care and into administration, which is gross in its own way and not what I wanted to do. So maybe plumbing sounds good. Except still potentially gross.
I seriously considered that career switch after we spent so much time in the hospital with Mom. But with a baby in the house, that got shelved. I liked the idea of being in a caring profession that paid well (or at least better than what I was making) and allowed flexibility. But I’m not sure I have it in me to deal effectively with things like death, dismemberment, child abuse, mental illness, neglect, chronic illness, etc., etc., etc., on a daily basis. I have the utmost respect for those who do. Tough stuff.
I still think you would enjoy working in business development as a proposal developer/writer. Its creative, involves good project management skills and writing, and there are deadlines enough to give you an adrenaline rush, but they’d be cake next to the stress you deal with now.
As someone has commented already, don’t forget the job stress and long hours. If you don’t believe ask my s.o. — 13-14 hour days with a 20 min break drain the hell out of her.
If it weren’t for the part about having people’s lives in my hands, I think I would make a great nurse.
Your law degree is portable, easily to about a third of the states, and less easily to a few others, and with a bar exam (not so hard after you’ve been practising awhile, unless you’ve been very specialized)to the rest. And provate practice is not the only means of practicing law. C’mon, get resourceful!
But I’m not sure I have it in me to deal effectively with things like death, dismemberment, child abuse, mental illness, neglect, chronic illness, etc., etc., etc., on a daily basis. I have the utmost respect for those who do. Tough stuff.
I have a friend whose husband moved from being a psychiatric nurse to working in the cardiac intensive care unit of a major teaching hospital here in Los Angeles.
He says the cardiac ICU is much less stressful than working psych.
Now that I think about it, I know a lot of nurses. One got his MBA and became management — now he’s managing a large practice. His wife is a geriatric nurse practitioner, also very tough work.
“Your law degree is portable, easily to about a third of the states, and less easily to a few others, and with a bar exam”
I agree. I think maybe you should just get the hell out of New York. Life really truly does not have to be as stressful as it is here. (I really sympathize with the escape scenario thing — I get it every time I see the trade school ads on the subway. “I could do that …”)
Is there any way you could talk to nurses, get a frank view on what it’s like, and then consider it from there?
(or do people not do that so much in post-schooling years?)
Good luck with whatever you decide, zuzu!
I screamed when I saw this post and read it aloud to Mr. Janis because I am a burned out big firm associate who has all but decided to do a year of science prerequisites and then apply to nursing school after I quit my job next spring.
Law firm practice for me has been as empty as it is soul sucking and stressfull. Your reasons for thinking about pursing nursing have run through my mind so many times over the past few months. And for those who say that a law degree is portable if you’re not too specialized, there’s a bit of a catch 22 there. Generalists are practically extinct nowadays and it’s almost impossible to make yourself worth the billing rate they charge for your time, i.e. to justify your continued employment, as you become more senior without specializing. Even if you manage to develop more than one area of expertise, it will still be within one area of law. And even if you’re the one in a million lawyer these days who has managed never to specialize, you’ll still be considered with and measured against the other people (real and hypothetical) who graduated from law school the year you did. This makes starting over so much harder because people form set ideas about how much you will cost, etc. even if you’re willing to be flexible.
Zuzu, if you ever want to email about this, I would LOVE to.
Janis, I think you missed my point. The law degree is portable, regardless of specialization. I meant to say that bar exams are not particularly difficult after you’ve been in actual practice, unless you’ve been highly specialized and have no recollection of other areas of law. As for your point about specialization, I agree, which is why I pointed out that there are more ways to use the license than private practice. I’ve practiced in 3 jurisdictions now, and left private practice behind with the first state in which I was licensed (after a dozen years), and am much happier at work now than when I was in the billing machine. You and Zuzu are too well educated to let yourselves be limited to what you are currently doing. So don’t, if you don’t like it.
AD, I’m not sure why you’re assuming that I haven’t considered a change outside of private practice. All of the non-legal job changes that I’ve considered have felt so much more interesting and attractive than any non-private practice job I’ve considered. I’m not going to ignore that. There’s no reason that anyone should. Also, don’t you think that you might have been missing something when you responded to Zuzu’s thoughts about going back to school for prerequisites and a nursing program with “c’mon, get resourseful!”?
In any event, if I leave New York, I’ll be going to Vancouver, and it’s a real pain in the ass to get barred as a foreign attorney there.
Janis, I didn’t assume you hadn’t considered a change outside of private practice, I just wanted to respond to your statements on specialization and how it pigeonholes lawyers. In my experience, leaving private practice provides an opportunity to break out of those pigeonholes. As for pursuing non-legal career paths, that’s great if it makes you happy. I didn’t mean to suggest that going back to school wasn’t resourceful; I meant to suggest that a license to practice in NY does not limit one to practing law in NY (admittedly, I inferred from Zuzu’s comment on the portability of a nursing career the suggestion that a legal career was not, which might not have been an intended inference).
Zuzu, you’re right about getting admitted in Canada being a pain in the ass; I looked into licensure in New Zealand, a similar jurisdiction, and ultimately chose not to go through the hassle. Fewer hassles getting licensed in Washington, which is at least within striking distance of Vancouver…
Hey Zuzu, first of all, congratulations for leaving your job and I say, go to nursing school! I got my BA in Anthropology many moons ago and now currently have a life suck job at a business office in a hospital. I decided to go back to school for nursing and this is my first semester back and I love it so far (except for my douchebag Anatomy and Physiology professor who is a doctor), oh well, might as well get used to it now, right?
In any event, if I leave New York, I’ll be going to Vancouver, and it’s a real pain in the ass to get barred as a foreign attorney there.
I would think that there would be work for a US attorney in a country that borders the US, even if you weren’t admitted to the Canadian bar. Though as a New York attorney it would probably be a lot easier to find work in, say, Ottowa or Toronto. Vancouver probably wants either Washington state or entertainment law (since they have so much US film and TV production up there).
I don’t have any actual knowledge, of course — it just seems logical.
My wife graduated from law school in the mid-70s and worked for the state court administrator’s office and then for the DOL Wage and Hour Division. In 1980 she quit DOL and went back to school for a Ph.D. in international relations, then taught for two years at a Baptist school in South Carolina. Between the culture shock and the situational depression, she ended up back at her parents’ house for a year and then working at the print shop her father had started, learning to do digital imaging (which became a huge part of their business). She and her brother inherited the print shop when their father died. She quit two years ago due to management differences (intensified by family stuff), and now she has two part-time jobs, in law and marketing, plus the money she gets from her brother for her share in the business. She still wonders what she wants to be when she grows up (she’s pretty sure it will involve computers).
I suspect her kind of story is a lot more common than it seems. But it’s not one that sounds much like “success” to most people–not like the one where you end up at the top of the same ladder you started on. She’s not anywhere near as comfortable telling it as I am–I think it’s cool to have done all that stuff, and also to have been able to get out of something when it stopped meeting your needs and into something else.
Best of luck, and let me know if you start thinking seriously about library school.
Hogan, I have been thinking about library school for quite a while now. I loved working in the law library during law school.
If anyone wants to discuss their nursing or library experience, email me at kindlypogmothoin (at) gmail (dot) (com). Thanks!
How funny - the two places my mind wanders to when I have a particularly boring day at work are law school and library school. Ultimately, I’m too afraid of amassing additional school debt to actually do anything about either of them. But nursing school … I’m sure that will pop up in my daydreams now too.
I laughed my head off when I saw your subject heading and “maybe I should go to nursing school”. I am in the same situation right now (minus the lawyer part). I have been in various businesses, currently real estate, and just don’t have the passion for business. I have been tossing up the nursing thing for years, actually took a year once (and may I add was on the dean’s list), but then the fates that be changed all of that. The whole, dirty bum thing sort of grosses me out, but it can’t be worse than the assholes I deal with on a daily basis that suck all of the goodness out of me. At least people in the hospital really want your help, and are in a vulnerable enough position to appreciate it. Yes there is grossness and doctors, but it depends on the hospital you work at. If you don’t want to deal with the God Syndrome, then go to a teaching hospital with doctors in residence…they’re always nice and know that nurses know a heck of a lot more than they think they do!!!
Also, if you are planning to move/work in Vancouver BC, you had best get your schooling in Canada. Canadians are very particular about who they hire, especially in medicine. If you don’t want trouble, you should graduate from a Canadian school, and write the Canadian exams. I can say that, I’m Canadian…and it’s true. Our employers are snobs when it comes to medical, dental…well, everything really!
Good luck with your career choice…who knows, I may see you in class!
Plumbing is one of the worst jobs ever. No respect, damaging to your health, terrible hours and the only ones getting rich are the business owners who would love to hire nothing but complacent illegal immigrants.