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Career decision

I'm at a crossroads with jobs and am having a hard time deciding. I'm guessing a lot of people here have made similar decision so here it is..

I currently live in Grand Forks, ND and work hourly in the aviation field, specifically unmanned aviation. I've been graduated for about a year now but have been working the same job since before graduation so this will be my first "big" salaried gig.

I currently have two options as follows.

Option A -- stay in Grand Forks and get salaried for a decent amount. I'd be doing work that is not the most exciting but will be great networking for me. Other bonuses include cheap living, free tuition at UND (I could finish a degree or get a masters), and I'm part of a band that gigs around town once in a while. Drawbacks are Grand Forks sucks is small and doesn't have much to offer..

Option B -- move to Hood River, OR for an internship at an aircraft manufacturer. I'd be getting paid less hourly than I do now and won't be guaranteed a job afterwards. Bonuses include getting out and exploring my career field a little more and a much more beautiful area of the country to live in.

So basically I can get paid more or get a new exciting experience in a beautiful area of the country is the way I see it.
Option A.
Get a masters, especially if the tuition is free. You never know if that will come in handy. Opens doors and get a higher salary where job opportunities will be more plentiful.
 
With an existing BS, take a one year accelerated nursing program (RN). Then, make $60k/year working only 3 days a week. You'll never want for a job, and can move anywhere in the country you want and easily get employment. did i mention most of your co-workers will be female?

I guess I'm partial having two semesters until I finish my nursing degree.

I need to move to the US and study to be a nurse :p
 
I need to move to the US and study to be a nurse :p

Yes, you do. I think it's the most stable job left in these ridiculous economic times and the pay/education ratio is good. A bachelors of nursing has pretty much become the standard anymore. Your job can't be outsourced, and more and more people are getting old and sick.

Starting pay is about $26/hr and you can work (3) 12hr shifts a week. Some hospitals will even let you work every weekend (12 hrs both sat and sun) and get paid 40hrs. So you work every weekend but have the ENTIRE week off. Not too handy for us gigging blokes, but works out well for others. After a few years pay increases are good, and hospitals are always short so overtime is plentiful. Some places get desperate and pay overtime +$10/hr. You can make almost $50/hr on your off day, and you're still only working 4 days a week. Just gotta be able to handle blood and guts, poop, barf, horrible sights and smells, crabby family, etc. All in a day's work after a while though.

Even if society and the economy completely collapses; nuclear or biological attack kills almost everyone; or (for those who believe) a zombie apocalypse occurs... nurses will STILL be in high demand and people will barter just about anything to save their sick loved one or themselves.
 
Oh, then screw that! North Dakota is nice sometime, isn't it?

Yeah for about 3-4 months :hmm:

I was born and raised North Dakota so it's not like I hate it here, in fact I probably appreciate it more than most people that come. I'm just looking for a change of scenery is all.

And just to clarify for everyone, I already graduated with a B.S. in Aeronautics and a minor in engineering sciences. The extra schooling would be for an additional B.S. or a masters.

But thanks for everyone's input so far. I'm sort of leaning towards Option A as well but Option B is sort of that "exciting new start to life" option that is appealing no matter how bad it looks on paper.
 
I've been flight instructing for the past 2 years and have the hour minimums to go the airline route.

So yeah I could become a commercial pilot. However.. The starting salary is AWFUL.. You go to a regional airline and the first year you're looking at a salary somewhere in the upper 20K and even after a couple years you might make high 30s..

There is more money to be had in the unmanned industry and more job security.
 
I've been flight instructing for the past 2 years and have the hour minimums to go the airline route.

So yeah I could become a commercial pilot. However.. The starting salary is AWFUL.. You go to a regional airline and the first year you're looking at a salary somewhere in the upper 20K and even after a couple years you might make high 30s..

There is more money to be had in the unmanned industry and more job security.

Sometimes you need to look beyond starting salary.

Not sure I'd agree with there being more job security in the unmanned sector, it's a booming industry, but also one under a fair bit of scrutiny in some ways. Also, being a booming industry, it has a lot of people getting into it.

Manned commercial flights have been around for decades and it's a fairly stable market at present.

My $0.02.
 
I've been flight instructing for the past 2 years and have the hour minimums to go the airline route.

So yeah I could become a commercial pilot. However.. The starting salary is AWFUL.. You go to a regional airline and the first year you're looking at a salary somewhere in the upper 20K and even after a couple years you might make high 30s..

There is more money to be had in the unmanned industry and more job security.
I agree with you about the low starting pay but that may change as they say there is going to be a pilot shortage coming real soon. I do have some friends that fly for the major airlines and they are making over $150K a year. But they also have a passion for flying and love what they are doing. In other words, I guess you got to have the passion to go the airline route.
 
Here is my "two-cents" and you'll get change back from that. Hang in two more years, take advantage of th tuition subsidy. You have some gigs to give you a break plus there are a whole lot of places you can take a vacation with the better money you will make. With that masters in hand fire out a few resumes. The ecomomy is tough right now so I would play it safe but not stay too comfy. Hope that helps.
 
Well, I'm not sure what to tell you, but I'll share my story. I went to college to be a high school teacher (social studies). I did fairly well and liked being in a classroom, however once I graduated I was unable to find a job, or even get an interview. I was engaged at the time but we could have planned to move anywhere within a few months as my future wife was just finishing up her internship. I wanted us to explore a few places and have some fun. We could have gone to other parts of the country where I could have gotten a job teaching, probably, or we would have had to find a way to carve out a niche for ourselves somehow, which could be scary. But I took the safe route. I grew up in a family HVAC business that my father sold when I was in school, but I had all of the licenses and certifications to go back if I wanted to. So I did. It was logical at the time; steady work, health insurance and benefits, an income of roughly double or triple what my college buddies were making as teachers, etc. We were able to buy a house before our friends, along with new cars, etc. None of them were able to. And I told myself that it was only temporary until a teaching job came along, but now I was a "big boy" and had to do the responsible thing. And it made sense to stay local because we both had job offers/career opportunities that were pretty darn good for our ages.

Temporary has a way of becoming permanent, unintentionally. It's 17 years later and I'm still doing what I did then, although I have moved up into the ranks of "management". I still make decent money, and I have job security. And being tied down with a $350K house, a couple kids, and a lot of responsibility. I really can't complain about my life, I have an awesome wife and I've got it pretty good, although my life did not turn out the way I expected or truly wanted it to in some ways. But there are lots of times that I have regrets about taking "the safe route". At 40 years old, with the responsibilities I have, my options for change are limited due to finances, kids, etc. For me, my life is the result of my choices, and while they were certainly good ones by most people's standards, there is always this little part of me that is sad because I've lived my entire life within 50 miles of where I was born, and the likelihood is that I'll die here, too. Never really got to go out and see anything else, or how the rest of the world works.

I guess for me the question would be.....how much are you going to regret NOT going later on in life? Time has a way of creeping up on you and those plans that you made to do "later"...sometimes never come. You do only live once, and it seems the older you get, the faster things move.

Just a thought.
 
Yeah for about 3-4 months :hmm:

I was born and raised North Dakota so it's not like I hate it here, in fact I probably appreciate it more than most people that come. I'm just looking for a change of scenery is all.

And just to clarify for everyone, I already graduated with a B.S. in Aeronautics and a minor in engineering sciences. The extra schooling would be for an additional B.S. or a masters.

But thanks for everyone's input so far. I'm sort of leaning towards Option A as well but Option B is sort of that "exciting new start to life" option that is appealing no matter how bad it looks on paper.
Option A is like walking ten miles through a blizzard and ending up finding a bag of gold on the ground. Option B is like sky jumping on a clear day. It's great, but then a sudden burst of wind blows your parachute into the middle of the San Quentin maximum security prison yard where a gang drags you into a secluded corner and run a train on you for 5 hours.