Let's play, Who wants to be a Career Advisor?!
What career path/masters degree should I pursue?
Alright y'all, I need some major career advice! I know it may be frowned upon to ask for life advice from strangers on the internet, but I am a first gen college student and I don't personally know anyone (not even family) who has even gone to college and google is driving me crazy! So here I am, calling on all you smarty pants out there to put your wisdom and worldliness to use! :)
Some Background:
I've been pre-med all my life, 4.5 GPA in high-school, straight A's until my junior year of college at the University of California, San Diego. My GPA started to slip because I was working 70+ hours a week as an EMT, while attending school full time, and surprise, burn-out is real and idk if y'all know how intense it can be to be a pre-med at UCSD, but lets just say I should have focused on my education and not my workaholic "willing to do whatever it takes not to be poor like my childhood" mindset. On top of already having and being treated for depression, I absolutely wrecked my mental health and my confidence that I had what it takes to get into Med School (definitely imposter syndrome, but hey hindsight is 20/20 right?)
SO; my junior year I switch gears to PA school, because hey, my GPA is no longer competitive (spoiler, it is 3.1) and "I'm not good enough". Fast forward to my first PA school application cycle after graduation...apply to 8 schools, and get rejected to all of them, because I didn't have the right anatomy (I needed the lab too, but for whatever reason UCSD literally doesn't have an anatomy lab). I should have taken it at the local community college, but I was naive enough to think my EMT I and EMT II classes would cover it, since it contained an anatomy lab portion ( I was wrong). Not only was this a gut punch, I had wasted $1200 I DIDN'T have on application fees FOR NOTHING.
During my application process and subsequent rejections, I was working as a Medical Assistant at a Pain Clinic in my deep country, meth infested, home town. Turns out it was a front for massive fraud and for lack of a better term, a pill mill (opioids/narcotics). So what's a gal to do when uncovering such blatant fraud? Collect the evidence, lawyer up, and blow the whistle.
Meanwhile, I am mentally wrecked yet again because the profession I've dedicated my life to entering has been tainted (these MDs, PAs, MAs, etc, were supposed to be HELPING people but they were just lining their pockets and actually HURTING them). They had been getting away with it for more than a decade, and the research I did on the ASTOUNDING amount of similar cases disgusted me.
So now Im a whistleblower trying to get another job...news flash, no one wants to hire a tattle-tale, and in a small town word travels fast (They fired me for looking into the fraud, I was asking to many questions) so I was Blacklisted.
After 6 months of unemployment, I finally get a job at Walmart. Say hello to my friends: more depression, self-doubt and self-hate for "wasting my degree" and my potential. After working fast-food and retail through high school and college, It was gut wrenching to be back after promising myself I'd never have to work minimum wage again if I work hard enough, put myself through college etc. But there I was.
After about 4 months at Walmart I couldn't take it anymore. I wasn't in PA school like I planned, and I had all but given up on the medical field. I was letting myself down and wasting my potential. Luckily, I had gotten my depression & anxiety under control enough and to dip my toes back into medicine and hope not to get burned again.
Enter my most recent job: Medical Assistant at a Primary Care office. (DURING COVID)
Family owned practice, poor management, understaffed, under paid. (Its worth mentioning I live in a very poor, medically under-serviced community, you you can imagine the quality of healthcare was very LOW, something I was uncomfortable with accepting.) I ended up learning and growing as a leader, advocating for us employees and eventually became the office supervisor, and mastered every position they'd teach me, from billing and coding to reception and insurance verification.
Long story short, went "ok" for about 10 months, I was in constant meetings with management advocating for changes to better the patient care, etc. They were receptive to a lot of my ideas and after gaining confidence in managerial concepts, it was clear my performance was outshining and pointing out the many downfalls of the current manager. This just made my job harder, since the manager was very intimidated by this and it was becoming visible in the way she was treating me. The last straw was when I was instructed to commit fraud by this incompetent manager, even after immediately pointing it out was illegal (I was told to do it anyway). I reported it to HR and I was given some PTO days off so they could think of the solution, since the active manager was now aware I had reported her and now blatantly hated me. They called me in 2 days later to fire me (after they of course said, Thank you for bringing this to our attention, and assured me they claims would not be submitted and they will make sure it never happens again, manager will be handled blah blah blah). I was even given severance pay and a bonus. Once again, standing my ground and doing whats right has gotten me fired. They knew what they did was wrong (hence the severance pay), and if I didn't already have a current case in the works, I'd take them to court for retaliation and wrongful termination.
Yikes, I didn't realize how much I wrote. I'll wrap it up soon I promise!
THE BRIGHT SIDE:
I have learned A LOT and because of these experiences, I am a stronger and more confident person.
What these experiences (and intense research on fraud/whistleblowing etc) have made realize:
- I have an intense hate for fraud period, especially in healthcare.
- Im pretty passionate about stopping it (and brave enough too apparently!)
- I refuse to tolerate incompetency in healthcare and greedy management controlling and harming quality of patient care
- I really like to investigate, solve problems, make things better/more efficient
- I am not good at drinking the company "Kool-Aid", I find it easy to see through a fake company culture.
- I cannot mentally handle mistreatment of patients, small or not, there is just no excuse for cutting corners when it comes to a persons health.
- I much prefer natural and holistic medicine, and REALLY hate Big Pharma and how out of control for-profit healthcare has gotten.
- I want to be in a career that I will be able to make large scale CHANGE in healthcare. Expanding on this, I don't see myself doing anything clinical, seeing patients in a hospital setting, etc. The way I see it is I could spend an 8 hour shift helping 8 people in a very small scope, (No more than 10 because I am fundamentally against practitioners seeing patients in such high quantities because it not only leads to burn out in the medical provider, but it makes the QUALITY of the care suffer and therefore the HEALTH of the patient suffer.)
- I have a passion for educating people about the importance of treating employees right and their own rights when it comes to crooked employer practices.
- I don't want to be a PA..or MD..
TLDR;; I have no idea what my calling is, but I do know I need to get back to academia. Any and all advice so greatly appreciated!
THE LOOMING QUESTION: What should I be when I grow up?
aka What should I get my masters degree in!?
I am a lifelong learner CRAVING to go back to school and never stop learning. I put all my eggs in the Medical school basket and burnt myself out, but I've finally recovered, and opened my eyes to what I need to do. GET THE HECK BACK IN SCHOOL, and for christ sakes stop dwelling on my PA school rejections, because I realize now that they were a blessing in disguise!
Resume Snapshot:
- A.S. Social and Behavioral Health (psychology concentration)
- B.S. Public Health w/Biology Minor (all the Pre-Med classes) from UCSD
- Certified EMT-B and CCMA
- GPA: 3.1
- GRE: Verbal: 154, Quantitative: 149, Analytical Writing: 4.0
My brainstorming list so far, in no particular order:
Public Health law/ Public Health policy OR Law school and work in the public health field?
(protect populations from big business hurting community health with pollution, creating food swamps, labor laws, investigating fraudulent relationships between harmful companies and government (kick backs etc)
-Protecting whistleblowers, investigating fraud or malpractice. (Dream would be a medical Dr. who practices law, prosecuting malpractice and large scale fraud/abuse)
-I am VERY logical and strategic when creating an argument, and I will fight my point to the death. I like PROOF, FACTS, and LOGIC. I am very critical of sources and double checking data, ensuring it isn't being presented in a bias/deceptive way.
I/O psychology (make the workplace better for the employee, consult corporations on best practices when it comes to everything from work life balance, perks, managerial support, ensuring a healthy workforce (ergonomics, healthy foods in break rooms, even nap time or on site chiropractor/masseuse/Fitness & Health coach/therapist and lunch time meditation and yoga)
Clinical Research (coordinator? I have SO many ideas I would love to see studied in the psychology and medical field. Would love to design experiments and conduct them with teams of researchers. I could see myself leading the project or at least heading a major arm of the project.
College Professor (public health, psychology?) Fun fact: my first dream job was to be a high school teacher. I used to "play school" and force my siblings to be my students, for fun! I switched to pre-med around 6th grade after learning about the terrible pay and seeing how miserable my teachers where (they sure didn't hide their misery from us students :( very sad when you consider so many students turned off from teaching because of miserable teachers! I only recently realized that I only threw that aspiration away for monetary reasons, and life has shown me that money isn't everything. It's much more important to feel fulfilled by your work. So therefore, I have put teaching back on the table. (Plus, being a professor is WILDLY different than the poor public school system I was in!)
Dual Master of Business Administration/Master of Public Health?
NON-Profit management?
Global Health? (I love to travel and have always wanted to conduct public health initiatives world wide, or represent the US in global public health affairs. Very apt to seeing the big picture and how small change can create mass effects.
Desirable traits in a Career:
- Innovation, a forward thinking/purposeful
- To be in a leadership/impactful/respected position (will naturally strive to be the best in my field)
- A field with high integrity/standards/no room for cutting corners or at-least encourages discrepancies to be found and corrected. For example, in the research field, sure there will be certain studies falsified/skewed for nefarious financial reasons, but the profession as a whole is based on maintaining credibility and rigorously checking each others work to better the integrity of ALL research) checks and balances I guess?
- To help or protect people, or even our planet. Help keep powerful corporations in check from exploiting population health/employees/the environment.
P.S. If what I am asking here would be better posted else where let me know! or If some type of career advising would be helpful that you might recommend? I am unemployed at the moment so I really didn't want to have to pay for advice, but I do want to make an informed decision.
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