More About Career Mistakes

by Alanna Shaikh · 2009-05-06 10:42:00 UTC
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(photo credit: texas_mustang)

I was asked by a couple of people to elaborate on my five career mistakes from last week. I figured, why not? I can self-flagellate for your benefit.

So let's talk about career mistake number one - my graduate degree. Now, I do not regret my degree one bit. I loved grad school with a passion I could never have anticipated. Getting to learn about global health every day was wonderful. It was like I'd been a fish my whole life and finally discovered water.

However, an international health concentration is about as non-specific as you can be and still be in graduate school. When you study for an MPH, there are at least a semester's worth of required courses that everyone in the program has to take regardless of major. Once you've completed those courses, you then take the ones that relate to your major. Considering that it is a two-year degree, that doesn't leave a time for a lot of specifics.

In my case, with an international health focus, my concentration courses were all introductory classes. Intro to maternal and child health. Intro to social marketing. Intro to health financing.  It was a great survey of the major topics in international health. It was a great credential, and it grounded me in systems-level thinking. It taught me the vocabulary I needed. And I could handle a job interview or a conversation, but it didn't really ready me for work in anything specific.

If I could do things over, I think I'd double major, and add epidemiology or biostatistics. It wouldn't take that much longer, and it would give me a solid skill to leave school with.

Alanna Shaikh
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