If you posess a degree – or any alternative qualification – then you’ll already be in advace of of the crowd when it comes to looking for professions. My friend has a degree and he wasn’t sure what direction to go with it, but he unearthed some great tips on the site in the resource box below which guided him to decide that he wanted to be a lab assistant. There is a lot of guidance on the site regarding alternative professions.

I’m in sort of the same position as you except I’m holding a degree that’s unrelated to teaching but I’ve been researching and looking into getting a teaching degree for the past two years. For the past two years, I saw the climate for teachers go from somewhat hopeful to a downright disaster thanks to this terrible economy. Two years ago, in my local area (I’m in Canada), they were steadily hiring a stream of high school teachers to teach Math, Science, English, Health and Fitness, Music and Art. Very recently over 300 veteran teachers were laid off their jobs because the province couldn’t afford them anymore. So now I’m stuck in a bad job that I hate and I can’t go back to school because of the uncertain job prospects after graduating.

I cannot comment directly on the Health teacher angle but I was looking into teaching general elementary school. As far as I can see, Canada’s economy is slowly rebounding but one of the last places we see funding up here is into public education. A very sad state of our society’s priorities, but things will probably look up for prospective teachers in 2 to 3 years up here. Down there in the US, you guys have it really bad with your economy going up and down all the time. I know the job situation there is bad for everyone all around but you have 3 years left for your degree. That’s 3 years to wait it out and see how it goes. That’s 3 years that you can work hard and do your best to make yourself the best possible candidate to be hired.

Employers are so picky these days because they get to pick the cream of the crop due to how many people are out of a job. Remember that even if a job posting sometimes says you require this degree, doesn’t mean that you’re automatically cut if you don’t acquire it. I would apply to those anyway, play up your experience and how good of a candidate you are for those positions and you might be surprised when they waive the nursing degree because you sound like a better person for the job. I don’t want to completely rule out the nursing degree, as nurses have very stable jobs so it’s an option if you’re really nervous about your education degree.

Anyway, you have 3 years to wait it out with the economy. What I would suggest is you keep an eye on things but don’t worry about it now. You have time and you always have options. Just because Texas doesn’t value your subject matter, doesn’t mean another state or even another country won’t.