Of employment after a PhD.

Some articles have been coming up lately, and I realize that I was even more screwed after a Ph.D. then I thought, in terms of employment.

Basically, the articles say that you have to simultaneously build a parallel resume that tells a narrative that qualify you for a senior-level "expertise" slot in a sector related to your Ph.D., since otherwise HR people won't take a risk on you, and there's no way in heck that you'll get an entry-level slot that you're qualified for because you're too old.

In my own case, I could have gotten a union organizer job, but those jobs are overworked and underpaid and stressful, and you get burnt out, and anything else I applied for that looked plausible didn't "pop" until after more than a year-and-a-half of applying for jobs, until I finally got into home healthcare, from which I now have two (part-time) jobs that give me a regular 40 hours a week at minimum wage and near-minimum wage.

Because of a little money from a great uncle, I can pay off student loans, otherwise I'd have $400 a month payments that I couldn't meet since expenses are so high and wages are so low.

And, effectively, I'm using a third of my inheritance, to pay off student loans on a professional "dead end."

So, overall, not only is my entire family falling out of the middle class, but bad career advice that I got from head-up-their-ass tenure-track professors over a decade ago has eaten up a large portion of what (meager) wealth my family was able to accumulate.

When you get down to it, it's really appalling how reckless tenure-track profs are with recommending their profession to students, though less and less are now.

They get to preen themselves on sending students onward, and all the negative consequences fall elsewhere.