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Ask HN: 200k student debt, degrees not very useful. What to do?
Situation:
About to graduate top 10 law school.
Top 10 undergrad, BA in random dumb social sciences junk I regret studying (high GPA).
roughly 200k student loans by the time I graduate.
Performed mediocrely in law school (put in serious effort, but, it's tough, at least for me. Lots of other excellent students here. Did well in some classes, but not most.)
As a result, didn't get one of the big law firm jobs I was expecting to justify the investment
Best current law job prospects pay 50k and stay pretty flat (public interest). I've applied to just about every legal position, clerkship, fellowship etc. out there. I've got a gig right for right after I graduate but that's pretty short-term, and I want to think about the future here.
Not that into law. Its not as interesting as i thought. Also the opportunities suck -- its status/prestige-obsessed if you want to make good money doing something besides personal injury and hoping to get lucky, and I failed in that competition, top 10 JD aside. Oh well.
I am around 30.
Wishing i'd studied a serious subject. i was scared about getting a low GPA, but having useful knowledge would have been way better.
I think i have the aptitude to learn stuff and do well in some career, but not sure what to do.
More school seems pointless and financially infeasible besides, plus i am burned out on academia. plus i'll be working full time to support myself -- can't take out any more student loans, especially for a second bachelor's.
Interested possibly in programming, comp sci, electrical engineering, but don't know enough about those fields to know whether i like them or just the idea of knowing a "hard subject". Also while I know you can self-teach programming and have friends who've done so, not sure how you'd go about self-teaching say engineering.
I don't really want to find something "safe" and ride it out till I retire. I want to figure out a way I can make a real contribution and do something interesting while making good money. Maybe that sounds weird for someone who went to law school, but I had something of a perspective shift mid-law school. So advice along the lines of "most work sucks, just learn to deal with it" isn't really helping me solve my problem.
What should I do HN?
Also as far as legal career options, before anyone asks:
1) Yes I've applied to government law jobs. Those are really hard to get, some even way harder than private sector firm jobs, which i failed to swing.
2) i have nothing against public interest law. i may even do it for a while to pay the bills. but having some experience in it already through law school stuff, it just wasn't something I could see myself doing indefinitely and enjoying very much. Plus the pay is really quite terrible.
3) working in-house at big companies is a route that's pretty much closed unless you're lateraling over from BIGLAW (a route now closed to me due to the way legal hiring works) or have some kinda nepotistic connection (which I don't have).
4) I'm not too much of an outlier in my situation. Lots of people in my class that I talk to privately are looking for work. The school tries to put a smiley face on the situation, but privately they'll tell you in your second year that if you miss the boat getting a job at on campus interview with a big firm, your short term private sector prospects are in the $20/hr range, which wouldn't be bad if you were coming straight out of college, but, with law school debt, it's pretty awful. It's bad out there, even near the top of the law school pyramid.
- steventruong 15y agoDon't worry about self-teaching engineering right now. You're planning too far ahead like you did with all the years spent in college pursuing law only to find out you don't like it (something you could have learned in a significantly shorter amount of time had you just interviewed, volunteered, and intern for a couple weeks/months prior to studying for it). Point being, same thing here. Find something interesting but relatively simple you may want to code out. Ask your friends for some help, if needed, but work through it. Read books and websites where applicable and get a feel for whether you even like it or not. If not, you'll save yourself a lot of time rather than worry about all the other junk and move onto the next thing. Same thing with hardware. If it all works out, you can figure it out step by step once you're pass the basics.
- throwawaylaw 15y agoyeah this is a good point, thanks.
- pilom 15y agoIt isn't exactly the most popular option for a lot of reasons, but one possibility is going on an income based repayment plan for as much of the debt as you can. The debt sticks around for 25 years but it allows you not to worry about not having enough money. Also, what are your interest rates? If they are in the 3-4% range, you may be able to do better taking your extra money and saving with it rather than paying off the loan.
- throwawaylaw 15y agoYeah I'm going to be on IBR no matter what, it's the only way I won't go into default. My loans are all mixed but a good chunk of them are at the GradPLUS rate which is 8.5%.
- teyc 15y agoPatent law is becoming a serious issue in I.T. Don't worry about low paying jobs initially, as long as it is in the right area. The debt is already going to kill you, so don't sweat it anymore. It is irrelevant to the discussion. Just don't take on further debt.