Spouse careers

Hello! I have recently found this forum and am so happy to have done so! My SO is currently a 3rd year med student & we are not married yet, but we live together. I am currious about what all of the spouses here do for a living? What are your degrees in/what kind of job do you do? How hard was it to find a position post-match?

I have a MPA & work in Higher Education. I am a little worried about finding a position wherever we end up going after match, so I'd like to hear about some of your experiences with that.

Thanks!

[DCJenn]

We have three main career paths:

Lawyers
Nurses
Stay at Home Parent

Rounding things out are teachers and social workers.

If you're licensed or in the case of the lawyers, need to take the bar exam in a different state, it can be a pain.

Jenn

[scarlett09]

Welcome!

I also work in Higher Ed, although I'm currently taking time off to be a full-time student and finish my Master's in Higher Ed Admin.

My suggestion is that once your SO starts to make his list this time next year of where he wants to apply, start to research schools in the area of the hospitals he's looking at. Then, you can begin to discuss with him places that are of interest to both of you. Don't forget to consider COL, distance from family/friends, etc. - whatever things BOTH of you need in order to call a location home for the next 3+ years. Once his rank list is complete, you could begin to check out the HR websites of colleges/universities and higheredjobs.com.

I don't have any experience with how to find a job post-match; we actually moved closer to my grad school (through the power of the match) and we decided that we could hang in there for the next year on only one income while I work on my degree and plan our wedding. I will be looking for a job next summer, as I need an internship to complete my degree program.

I know that some of the other SOs/spouses here have had a little bit more experience with finding jobs post-match and I'm sure they will chime in with advice on this process. Good luck to you!

[weeniegeniewife]

Jenn is pretty much right!

I have my masters in counseling, and am ABD for my PsyD. I am a therapist in private practice and I also own a multidisciplinary health and wellness clinic.

Welcome to the iMSN! You'll love it here.

[Chrisada]

Master's in Education, another master's in Administration, but I stay at home and actually have a licensed daycare so I can be with my little ones. I watch two brothers a couple times a week.

[SuzySunshine]

Welcome! I have a BS and an MBA in Business with an emphasis in Marketing. I worked throughout medical school and the first 3 1/2 years of residency. In this economy however marketing jobs are usually the first cut so I've been a Stay at Home Mom since our daughter was born almost 1 1/2 years ago.

I plan to go back to work part time or become a part time volunteer once they're both in school. Its just easier for one of us to have a very flexible schedule with kids around.

Good luck!

[DCJenn]

Oh yeah- I didn't answer the first part-

BA in Social Work, MS in Counseling Education currently doing none of the above for a Health Care services company. (I'm assigned to the Quality Services department and I work for the substance abuse and long term care [services to people with intellectual disabilities] departments. I'm the geek who knows the rules and screams and yells until people follow them.

Jenn

Welcome! I haven't tried to find a new job post-match as my husband is also MS3, but I very much share your concerns. I'm an attorney, love my job, and have a great deal of flexibility and opportunity at my current firm. Recently we've started talking about trying to stay close to our current location (which is also home, close to family) for residency. We've got a good thing going and think it seems silly to walk away; but maybe it's even more foolish to try to match in one city. We're going to wait and see what DH wants to go into so we can evaluate how strong and/or competitive the programs are here vs. elsewhere. In the meantime I'm trying to develop my career in ways that may facilitate finding a good position in another state. I'm trying to look at match as a good chance for me to reevaluate what I'm doing and think critically about what I want out of my career. It's just hard not having much control over the outcome.

[TulipsAndSunscreen]

Welcome!

I am one of the non-lawyer, nurse, teacher, social worker folks. I'm a consultant for the life sciences industry (pharma, biotech, med device, etc.). Because of this, I'm in a commuter relationship because my job is in one location and my DF (soon to be DH) is in another. It will be like this for the next 2 years at least. I'll give it up when we can afford a gap in our income, likely when he starts residency, and we can start a family.

[alison]

I'm not currently working, but I'm ABD in a field (foreign language literature) that I will likely never actually work in. I may use the language for a job in the private sector, but I don't think I'll work in academia.

I'm waiting for a baby to arrive in 2 weeks (please come early, please come early), but I think I'll definitely go back to work. When that will be, I don't know. I need to exercise that part of my brain on a regular basis, otherwise I go nuts. Like right now, I basically have no idea what day of the week it is.

[Deebs]

I have a BS in Community Health Education/ Health care Administration and an MPH in Health Policy. I am a SAHM currently, and while I love being home with my kids, a big influence in my decision was because of DH's career. I was the primary breadwinner until DH finished residency. At that time, I was pregnant, and by the time I would have been able to look for a job post-baby, DH had decided that he was not staying here forever. Now that we're moving, I'm pregnant again. Once this baby is in preschool, I may go back, at least part time. The biggest advantage to me being home is that DH and I actually see each other. Emergency physicians have fairly random schedules and if I was working the 60+hour weeks that I worked prior to my "retirement", DH would not see each other. Okay, I think pregnancy makes me ramble...sorry...I'm done.

[ladymoreta]

Welcome! I'm also a non-conformist around here - I work in IT for an insurance company. I was pretty stressed about finding a new job after the match, but it worked out really nicely for me. As soon as I moved here, I updated my resume on monster, and I got several recruiter calls. One of them set me up with an interview, and I got the job within about three weeks of moving. I'm not sure how the job market is for your field, but I would highly recommend finding a recruiting firm in your new area, and let them know when you are planning to move. In IT at least, they have a good relationship with local companies, and they can find out about job openings before they are officially posted, and some that aren't even posted at all.

[Auspicious]

I work in book publishing, which I'd been doing for about eight years when med school graduation rolled around. (In NYC, where the industry is heavily based.) I started in that with a BA in English.

After we moved here for residency I started freelancing, working at home, with plans to have children ASAP. Three years later we now have a toddler, a fetus, and plans to move twice within the next two years, so I'm planning to continue WAH for the next couple of years, and then we'll see where we are.

Good luck with your search!

[radwife]

I have a BA in Business Administration, a Masters in Accounting, and I'm a CPA. My husband just matched last March and we relocated to our new city just a few months ago. One of the considerations when DH was applying for residency was obviously locations where I could potentially be employed. As soon as we found out where he matched I immediately started applying for jobs and was so lucky to get one within less than a month after the match...especially in this current economy! I ended up moving early to our new city while DH finished up med school.

It was pretty stressful worrying about where and if I was going to be employed. I applied to lots of places and worked with a few recruiters and had very few leads. I think the current economy had a lot to do with that...most companies had recently laid people off! I also worried about how potential employers would interpret my resume showing my job hopping due to relocation for med school and now for residency. Basically I was a big worry wart, but it all worked out!

[Thirteen]

I'm a BA in English & Philosophy, finishing my last semester in my MA program (English Literature, circa 1000-1500 [Old English/Medieval Lit]).
Right now, I'm a full-time student, looking for a part-time job (with 11% unemployment rate in CA).
...Since the ED budget crisis is horrible here, I've been looking for something else to do as a career that I can live with.

After the fall, I will be enrolling to take pre-reqs for an Accelerated BSN program, then applying to several. The goal is to be done with pre-reqs around the time DH is done with residency, and already accepted into a program.

(I used to be fun, I swear)

I work at school for a living, I guess