Reader Dominic writes in to share his thoughts on nurse anesthesiology. Six figures to work six months out of the year? Not bad.

Great job on the blog!  Since it sounds like you've transitioned from advising mainly law and business school applicants to the broader role of career counselor, I thought I'd share with you some career information that might be of interest to your clients and blog readers.

I was wondering if you've looked at or advised clients to consider nursing, particularly nurse anesthesiology.  Several family members of mine are in the healthcare field, and they're always nagging me, my siblings, and cousins to pursue nursing so I thought I'd pass along the information. I know I don't want (and can't handle) a job in the healthcare field, but for someone looking for a combination of job security, ease of entry, flexible work hours, the opportunity to help others, and money (although the base salary is modest, if willing, a nurse can more than make up for it in overtime hours) I can't think of a job out there that can match nursing.

With regards to nurse anesthesiology, it's the highest paid nursing specialty.  According to a 2005 study by the American Medical Group Association, the average mid-level salary for a Certified Registered Nurse Anesthetist (CRNA) is $140,396.

I know it's only anecdotal evidence, but for what's it worth I have an uncle who's a nurse anesthetist in McAllen, TX and his base salary is $200,000 a year.  The payscale can get this high if you're willing to relocate to more remote areas or to non-major cities.

The best part about it in my opinion is that he only works the equivalent of 6 months out of the year.  He has a lot of flexibility over his schedule.  For instance, he might work 7 days straight for 12 hours a day and then take the entire next week off, or he'll work 3 days a week for 12 hours and schedule some on-call duties during another day.

With all the time my uncle has, he spends it running a CRNA staffing agency, traveling, and dabbling in other businesses like real estate and retail.  For him though, the best part about nursing is that the demand is so great he knows he can get a job pretty much anywhere there are hospitals.

Of course, like any job there are some drawbacks:  1) it lacks prestige (there's still some stigma against male nurses) and 2) you need to have thick skin when doctors are yellling at you.

Overall, I think it's a great career for the right person though.

Thanks Dominic!

It takes about seven years to become a Certified Registered Nurse Anesthetist (CRNA). The certification requires (among other things) a bachelor of science degree in nursing (BSN) as well as a masters in nurse anesthesia. Here is a list of schools that offer Nurse Anesthetist programs. For more information, see the American Association of Nurse Anesthetists.

"Getting hired" seems like a low bar to be setting, but their little blurb adds language about receiving "lots of job offers," getting hired "quickly," and earning "big paychecks."

Here's the list, with Wharton, Harvard, and Sloan leading the pack.

Generation Y's transition from college and grad school into the working world has been a bumpy one, to put it politely.

Some moron tried to buy an advance copy of the LSAT exam from two LSAC employees by leaving a hundred dollar bill under their windshield wipers in the employee parking lot. How profoundly stupid on so many levels, not least: did he really think they'd be tempted to compromise their ethics and jeopardize their jobs for a hundred bucks? What planet does he live on? (In the sting, he upped the amount to $5,000, which changed hands in a McDonald's parking lot. Classy.) He is now being charged with four felonies.

As an admissions officer I once busted a guy after I suspected that his LSAT report looked phony. Indeed it was, although I have to give him props for the quality of his forgery. It turns out he had broken into our offices to doctor his file, and things proceeded to their sad conclusion from there. Even sadder: he likely would have gotten in without the fraud, breaking and entering, etc.

It's depressing that people do such stupid things, with such alarming consequences, all just to get into law school. Law school!

Note to would-be cheaters: If you get busted, no legitimate law school or state bar will touch you with a ten-foot pole. Your career will be over before it even starts.

I'll put this one in the "what was he thinking" file...

Cnn.com profiles an exciting trend -- an upswing in undergraduates conducting original research. I have long encouraged college students to create their own senior research projects, even if their colleges don't require them, and even if they don't plan on becoming academics. Grad schools and employers love to see senior projects, because they demonstrate those students' initiative, self-discipline, intellectual curiosity, ability to manage large projects, and skill at interacting with professors and senior colleagues on a more professional level.

In today's New York Times, Jodi Kantor profiles Barack Obama's days as a Harvard Law School student. (I guess today is my Write About Harvard People Day -- appropriate, given that I'm currently working out of Cambridge, MA.)

Interesting nuggets:

The peers who elected Barack Obama as the first black president of the Harvard Law Review say he was a natural leader, an impressive student, a nice guy.

. . . .

He proved deft at navigating an institution scorched with ideological battles, many of which revolved around race. He developed a leadership style based more on furthering consensus than on imposing his own ideas. Surrounded by students who enjoyed the sound of their own voices, Mr. Obama cast himself as an eager listener, sometimes giving warring classmates the impression that he agreed with all of them at once.

. . . .

Many of his former professors and classmates say they are cheering on Mr. Obama, 45, in his candidacy. But the skills he displayed in law school may not serve him as well in American presidential politics, which sometimes rewards other qualities — like delivering sound bites instead of deliberateness or fidelity to a base of supporters instead of compromise.

. . . .

Along with 40-odd classmates, he won a precious spot on the law review at the end of his first year through grades and a writing competition.... “Whatever his politics, we felt he would give us a fair shake,” said Bradford Berenson, a former associate White House counsel in the Bush administration.... “I have worked in the Supreme Court and the White House and I never saw politics as bitter as at Harvard Law Review in the early ’90s,” Mr. Berenson said. “The law school was populated by a bunch of would-be Daniel Websters harnessed to extreme political ideologies.” They were so ardent that they would boo and hiss one another in class.

The article goes on to discuss the racial politics Obama navigated at HLS. Fascinating reading.

Guess law firms are hoping that throwing more money at associates will encourage them to stay (until they're up for partner, of course). This just in: Simpson Thatcher in NYC has broken from the pack and raised salaries...announced this afternoon.  See email below.

>  The Firm has been very busy and we expect the high level of
> activity to
>  continue. We are proud of the results we are helping our
> clients achieve.
>
>
>  We believe we have the finest legal team of any global law firm. In
>  appreciation of your efforts, we are pleased to increase
> associate base
>  salaries as follows, effective January 1, 2007:
>
>
>  Class of 2006 - $160,000
>
>
>  Class of 2005 - $170,000
>
>
>  Class of 2004 - $185,000
>
>
>  Class of 2003 - $210,000
>
>
>  Class of 2002 - $230,000
>
>
>  Class of 2001 - $250,000
>
>
>  Class of 2000 - $265,000
>
>
>  Class of 1999 - $280,000
>
>
>  Class of 1998 - $290,000
>
>
>  We are also raising the base salary for the members of the
> Class of 2007,
>  who will arrive in the fall, to $160,000.
>
>
>  Counsel and classes senior to 1998 will be addressed on an individual
>  basis.
>
>
>  Again, on behalf of the Firm, thank you for your commitment
> and hard work.
>
>
>  January 22, 2007
>
>
>  Pete Ruegger

I had started writing a reply to the comment Michael (the law school professor) wrote in my original "Law Firm Brain Drain" posting, and my response morphed into another long posting, so I’ll start a new thread here instead.

First of all, thanks for your insight, Michael. I'm honored that my "Brain Drain" post has worked its way into a law school classroom discussion.

One clarification: Perhaps I’m not interpreting your comment correctly, but I never meant to suggest that graduating from law school with a lot of debt and going to Big Firm compromises or undermines ethical lawyering, or that one can practice ethical lawyering only by going into non-profit work.

Hat tip to the blog "Paragon to Pieces," which drew my attention to this recent article in the New York Post about the flight of Gen Xers from top New York law firms:

Young, Gen-X lawyers in their third to fifth year in the business are walking away from their $200,000-a-year positions in record numbers -- at times without another job in view.

The reason?

It's that time of year when 1Ls are either celebrating or cursing their first set of law school grades. Because it's also a time of profound mystification and earnest reading of the tea leaves, let me share with you the only guide to law school grading that makes sense to me.

Stanford business school recently released its 2006 employment report, and only 16% of the class of 2006 were business majors in college. A majority (52%) were humanities/social sciences majors, and 32% were engineering/math/natural sciences majors. I've always encouraged liberal arts majors to consider MBAs, even though they suspect that they are at a disadvantage as applicants because of their lack of undergraduate business education. This report suggests otherwise.

Here’s a little secret that law admissions officers don’t want you to know. If you go up to them at a law school forum and ask, “Should I write an addendum about [insert blemish on record here]?” they will almost always say, “Yes, that’s a fabulous idea, I really want to hear about that sad tale in your application,” even if they complain bitterly to themselves about all the many stupid, whiny, zero-value-adding addenda they receive year after year after year.

Why?

"Whether geared toward helping you figure out what you should be doing, could be doing, what you want to do, or how to do it better, the books have this in common: They're tools that you can use to help build a better life—personal, professional, or both." See the list here.

Nobody becomes a librarian for the money, but the Wall Street Journal reports that the prospects for librarians are looking especially bleak right now:

Although library-school enrollment is healthy, low salaries and limited opportunities for advancement as baby boomers put off retirement have helped push 44% of librarians with master’s degrees under age 45 – who make up just a third of the library work force in the U.S. – to leave for more lucrative jobs in finance, academia and the government…. “The Federal Bureau of Investigation, Google, and engineering firms all hire librarians,” notes Jennifer Inglis, 33, a children’s librarian at Marlborough Public Library in Marlborough, Mass.

The article goes on to point out that “a number of her classmates struggled to find jobs, while others had to piece together two part-time jobs.”

…as long as salaries remain low, public libraries may have a hard time recruiting. Salaries start at around $39,000 a year, according to the ALA [American Library Association], while library science degree holders in other fields – such as law librarians, digital librarians and librarians for research firms – start at around $47,600. And education is expensive. Annual tuition for the two-year library and information-science master’s program at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champagne is $19,260 for out-of-state residents and $8,864 for Illinois students.

This article presents another opportunity for me to remind people contemplating graduate degrees to be brutally honest with themselves about the math involved and the realities of the program's job market.

I discovered a great podcast interview called "Who Manages Your Career" with Marshall Goldsmith, a leading executive coach. The interview is part of a BusinessWeek podcast series by John Byrne called "Climbing the Ladder" and is available at iTunes.

Key take-aways from the interview:

• No one is going to manage your career except you.
• In the old days, you could show up at a big company at 5 p.m. on a Friday and the place would be deserted. Those days are over. Today, professionals work 60 or 80 hours a week, so if you want to be one (or are one), you better love what you do.
• Don't talk about your career goals in vague generalities ("I want to do something in non-profit"). Go out and get real offers, so you can make real choices.
• Marketing yourself -- managing your own brand -- is a key part of managing your career. You won't learn how to do that in school (even business school). School won't teach you how to sell yourself, how to figure out what you want to do with your life, or how to establish your market identity. You need to figure out what you're good at, what you enjoy, and how that matches up with what the market needs.

That's all great advice, although it can be hard for my audience -- typically in college or recently graduated -- to know what it is they want to do, or even what they're good at. College students are good at school, and that's it. My advice to college students is to treat every summer and part-time job as an opportunity to discover a new industry or professional track and network with all sorts of professionals, because by the time you get out of school, you don't want to stand there scratching your head and run off to law school for lack of any better ideas.

Interesting blurb in today's New York Times Magazine on empty-stomach intelligence:

Hunger makes the best sauce, goes the maxim. According to researchers at Yale Medical School, it may make quadratic equations and Kant’s categorical imperative go down easier too. The stimulation of hunger, the researchers announced in the March issue of Nature Neuroscience, causes mice to take in information more quickly, and to retain it better — basically, it makes them smarter. And that’s very likely to be true for humans as well.... [Researcher] Horvath says we can use the hormonal discoveries to our cognitive advantage. Facing the LSAT, a final exam or a half-day job interview? Go in mildly hungry, not carbo-loaded for endurance, and snack to maintain that edgy state.

The next time some small-minded and undereducated nincompoop asks, "So what on God's green earth are you going to do with your English/Classics/History/fill-in-the-blank degree??" you'll be in good shape if you can defend the merits of a liberal arts education as forcefully as this gal. An excerpt:

Being an English major means you can write grammatically correct and half-coherent sentences without overusing exclamation marks. Being an English major means you are cognizant of the difference between "your" and "you're"; "their," "there," and "they're"; and "discrete" and "discreet.