I do believe that new professionals can find jobs in our field right now. I graduated from a museum studies graduate program in May with 14 other individuals. I believe there are only 2 still looking for jobs, and one is looking at 2 offers. As long as one is willing to move the distance and be flexible, there are jobs to be found. Maybe I'm young and optimistic, but I'm employed and will soon be eligible for a retirement package. I would not discourage people entering the field, but only caution that it's not going to make you rich and you don't necessarily get to choose the city you want to live in. -----Original Message----- From: Museum discussion list [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Pamela Silvestri Sent: Tuesday, August 23, 2005 2:36 AM To: [log in to unmask] Subject: Re: [MUSEUM-L] public history grad program Good points you make. But, there are so many babyboomers that even if 3/4 stay on working, enough jobs are going to be able to open up. At the same time there are new positions being created. I am a babyboomer btw, though at the tail end. I should have pointed out that most of the museum jobs I was referring to and have applied to are at the state and federal level. My immediate supervisor is set to retire in 2 years (she'll be 54). A friend of my who worked at a state university (not a museum job) was offered a 'golden handshake' and couldn't resist. She was 45 and started working there when she was 19. At 80% of her salary and full bennies! - no need to look for other work or plenty opportunity to start a new career. So not everyone is going to have to depend on SS benefits, though many of us still will. Everyday, I am online looking for museum work. I check about 10 different websites daily. There ARE a lot of museum jobs. The 'new museology', a direct result of the phenomena of post-nationalism, is truly amazing. We are at, or close to the 'hey-day' for museums. Maintaining interest with the younger generation is vital, and I think all of us are doing a great job with this. Renewed patriotism in more recent times has been a great boost. For a book pertaining to this subject I highly recommend: Zulaika, Joseba. Guggenheim Bilbao Museoa. Museums, Architecture, and City Renewal. Center for Basque Studies, University of Nevada, Reno 2003. It is true that the low paying, volunteer, etc., work is soooo difficult and hurts the SS earnings and quarters. I am VERY aware of SS earnings as two years ago I had to go on SS Disability in order to have Medicare to pay for eye surgery that I have had to put off for 15 years. I simply could not put this off any longer. As I mentioned before, many of the issues I have faced with securing employment in a museum have been my own doing (or not doing). Being out of the workforce for 2 years has hurt too. It kills me when I see people who are applying for jobs that I am trying to get, that already have good jobs and they are just simply doing lateral transfers, etc. But I can't be bitter over that because they are certainly entitled, etc., and have their own circumstances. But I did once find myself wanting to scream, 'Wait, look over here, hello I am making nothing'. Thanks to the internet, I can keep track of what's going on. For many of these jobs I've applied for, I have gone onto the museum's website and have found the names of the people who were hired for jobs I applied for. Then I can do a search for their names and find out more information. I do this to assist in my job search. So for one, the person's name came up so many times in the search. Tons of newspaper articles and clearly, this person had done a lot of wonderful work and was well qualified. I'm not looking to see whether the person is well-qualified to see if I was considered fairly or not, but I'm comparing their background to mine and I'm looking to see what else I would need to be competitive. All the people I have found so far who are getting these jobs, are not unemployed. And often I can find what job they left, and as far as I can tell that they were doing related (non-museum) work, and are moving into full-fledged museum work (was interesting to note). But they do have related MA's and it looks like they may have had to accept other types of related work (perhaps at the time they were looking for museum work, there was nothing much available). Whenever I can find what position they have held before, interestingly enough I discovered that the jobs these people are leaving, are jobs that I do not qualify for and they are high-profiling, good paying positions. So I do think this is really curious. But also, this clearly indicates that you have a better chance of getting a job if you already have a (paying) job. One of the last jobs I applied for was a museum at a state university. I searched the internet and found all the 2004 salaries (from professors to maintenance workers) for every employee at that university. I found the salary for the person that held the position that I was applying for. Based on that (and in another search I determined that this person had worked there for 8 years) I was able to figure a salary I could negotiate for if I were offered the job. So I went up just a tad from the starting salary for the position, but went lower than that of the person vested 8 years. Once again, I never got to the point of salary negotiations. I'll be ready though when the opportunity arises. I was trying to stay 'calm' during my recent job searches but it hasn't been easy to do so. Not only am I very anxious to get back to work in general, but it looked like I wasn't going to be able to send my son to college this year if I didn't get a job and quick. I'd have to say that this broke my heart like never before. Of course I could foresee this occurrence years earlier and tried to prevent the possibility, but to have it become a realization was something I never felt before and really can't put into words. Without any of these jobs materializing, I quickly got my motherly instincts refocused and went right over to the college and calmly asked for more financial aid for my son. Although I still have to pay a bit, I managed an extra 10k! After the FA counselor made the offer, I broke down and finally cried over all this. Back to my point about my job search - I'm sure my anxiety and desperation showed through during my interviews...I was sooo nervous. People who are already in a job or otherwise not in a desperate situation have a far better chance of getting these jobs. Often, they don't have the stress to be out of work, may be going for a higher salary, etc., and simply give a 2-week notice. Now that I am calm and my son is entering college, I am focusing on what I need to do to get a full-time, permanent museum job (not the volunteer, small grant, possible seasonal funding which is down from possible full-time to, 'maybe' 3k). I have a whole different perspective now. If I have to volunteer and/or do an internship to update my skills, I'll do it. Then I'll start applying for museum work again (and keep trying to calm down already). I know I am not the only one out there in this situation. And I will certainly have to work beyond retirement age just to pay off my once dinky student loan. I have suffered through a lot. Five years of being a full-fledged (waitressing,and working at a hospital too) shovel bum had left me with everything from lumbar spinal stenosis to Lyme disease. I went several years undiagnosed with the spine condition because not too many people in their 30's get that. So now you know, Micki that I AM one of the people you are referring to! I have experienced the occupational effects from this work. But I'm all patched up and ready to go! I have to disagree with you about doing volunteer work though. I have faithfully volunteered for one museum for 10 years now. Every year - a used book sale and X-Mas craft show fundraisers -I inventoried all their Indian artifacts, among other projects. Unfortunately, all volunteer work does is quite the opposite of what you might think. It tells a potential employer that you are willing to work for free (so why should they pay you 40k+ a year) and that you perhaps aren't 'good' enough to do paid work. If you are looking for museum work and want to volunteer your time, you are far better off with a short-term internship, even if it's unpaid. The reason for this is that potential employers know that an established internship usually requires that the intern work under the supervision of a professional with at least an MA. In small, all-volunteer museums, you are less likely to work in a state-of-the art, professional environment. There are exceptions, of course and I have spent a lot of the last 10 years learning from a Museum Director (and town historian) who has a Ph.D. She's in her 80's and retired. I do make sure I properly use her title when I list her as a reference. I volunteer for my own personal benefit (something productive) and those who benefit from my much needed work. So on one hand, I may express my need to volunteer in order to maintain my skills but I it is not the way to go for museum employment. And being a research junkie, I have studied volunteerism while I was a VISTA volunteer and when I worked on my social services degree. While I was a VISTA volunteer -is where I learned about grant writing and many other skills that I have been able to apply to museum work. People volunteer for many reasons, but it does not aid in an effort to pursue professional work. It did get me a nice barrister bookcase that the museum no longer needed. Now you see that perhaps the reason I can't get the 'right' job is because I am seriously a total research junkie, maniac employee that none of you out there in their right mind would consider hiring (no sah, just kiddin' I'm not that bad) . But I am taking a leap of faith with sharing my personal experiences here to get some points across, and I would like to hope that my name hasn't ended up alongside the word 'Delete' on your keyboard! And besides, I know that many of you are also really totally serious research junkies that are working like maniacs on dozens of projects! Pam In a message dated 8/22/2005 9:12:49 P.M. Eastern Daylight Time, [log in to unmask] writes: Oh dear, Pamela. You anticipate older baby boomers on the brink of retirement to move out of their jobs? They, but obviously not you, are all too keenly aware that Social Security moves further and further from their grasp, now requiring people to work until they are nearly 70. When Social Security does kick in, the payment does not begin to replace earned income, due primarily to the part-time, low wage and employed/not employed insecurity of museum work. Retirement plan? A great idea, but not one that museums tend to think is worth the trouble. Nest egg? When property taxes rise to skyscraper height, when aging brings not only the comfort of a life much enjoyed but the expenses of medical crises-- replacement knees from carrying those heavy boxes of archives, for example, and dealing with cancer or diabetes complications-- or the loss of spousal retirement plans and retired employee health insurance, absence of domestic partner recognition for benefits, the expense of helping your grown kids out when they lose their high-tech jobs, then their unemployment and health insurance, then their house... the nest empties its eggs pretty rapidly. No, all of these things have not happened to me (yet), but I've seen all of them in the lives of colleagues all around me, and I'm pretty sure I will be lying in a pine box before I can consider quitting work. This phenomenon of hard to find jobs is not limited to the museum or public history world, and not limited to recent graduates or ambitious youth. Times have changed, big time, and we are all caught in the world we created, one that pours money into wasteful war, looks the other way at executive stealing, and tolerates a "me and only me" attitude throughout every layer of society around the world. We're not approaching an economic crisis, we are smack in the middle of it, and losing more daily. I see money out there, cruelly used in many cases and simply insensibly used in others. But I don't see it being used to solve the acute economic problems we face at this moment. However, I do agree with you on one important point: it is indeed rare for a job to go to the best qualified person. I think it is that "me and only me" phenomenon that puts incompetent people in places of leadership and relative high income; people reward their friends in return for something for themselves. It is cruel for those with the power to hire and fire to withhold a job from someone who upsets the status quo by working to her best capacity! And, it perpetuates both this lopsided, unfair system of rewards and growing acceptance of incompetence. At this moment in time, I don't know what to advise a young person seeking museum or public history work. The museums are not all going to close, so there will be work there. There is benefit in doing any kind of paid work (or volunteer for that matter, but volunteering puts nothing on the dinner table); you learn the discipline of working to someone else's line, you build a network. I've been surprised at the growth of museum studies programs in recent years, and just as surprised when I see how little the graduates have learned. I think there are as many well qualified, competent grads as there have always been-- but because there are more grads there are more average and below average grads, and fewer non-profit museums too (but a huge increase in industry supported ones). Anyone have other thoughts? How can we encourage good students, excellent teachers and competent grads, because we do need them to carry museums into the future. Has there been a sea change in museum expectations, favoring less competence, or favoring for-profit sensibilities? Where are the models for dealing with a surplus of graduates in such a specialized field? Does there need to be a big change in the way Museum Studies and Public History are taught? Uh oh, where is Pogo when we need him? Micki Ryan Museum & Archival Services Pamela Silvestri, Museum Assistant Northeast States Civilian Conservation Corps Museum Shenipsit State Forest 166 Chestnut Hill Road Stafford Springs, Connecticut 06076 (860) 684-3430 ========================================================= Important Subscriber Information: The Museum-L FAQ file is located at http://www.finalchapter.com/museum-l-faq/ . You may obtain detailed information about the listserv commands by sending a one line e-mail message to [log in to unmask] . 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