u/mama-elf

Anyone who applied for the Sept cohort in Mesa hear anything yet?

Or

If you aren’t accepted to you get any kind of decline? Or do you only hear back with acceptances?

Or

If you are a past PMI student, how far in advance of your class did you get notified if you were accepted?

A number of years, I had my tragus and lip professionally pierced without issue. In the meantime I've never been able to wear earrings in my ear lobes because I am so sensitive.

So a million years later I finally had the bright idea that I should get the same metal that pros use since I never had any reactions to those other piercings. Google suggests it was most likely ASTM F136, so I went off to amazon and searched for that. A lot of results come up with gold jewelry... but is that negating the titanium to coat the metal? Like I said this might be a stupid question, sorry, be kind. I'm kind of clueless on this stuff.

I know that no one can answer this for me, but I'm going back and forth between pursuing Rad Tech or Respiratory Therapy. They both have pro's and cons that I have to weigh, but I'm just really curious for the folks to have no regerts, what about the career makes it "the" career for you and your personality?

To elaborate a little bit more, I have heard people say that variety in Respiratory is perfect for their ADHD, and then I've seen others say "if you get overstimulated, then stay far away". On the flip side, I'm a bit of an extroverted introvert. I don't mind chatting up strangers, but my people battery charges with quite moments. I do get overstimulated by my feral children, but I also tend to remain calm in emergencies.

I'm coming out of a corporate career that had a lot of ambiguity, kind of a "pull a good idea out of your butt and run with it" position and I hated that, so the more "task oriented" aspect of radiology seems to appeal there, but I'm not even sure if my perception is accurate there?

Also because this always seems to come up, it appears that some of the modalities I might be interested in beyond MRI or CT don't really have programs super accessible to me. There is no radiation therapy program in my state, nuclear med I would have to find an online option. So the "career growth" argument that usually puts Rad Tech ahead or respiratory doesn't seem so straight forward here.

This is kind of my one unexpected chance to find a career that satisfies me while still allowing me to support my family and I don't want to make the wrong choice.

(On the off chance you are in the respiratory sub, I will be posting a similar but not directly cross posted inquiry there, just FYI.)

I know that no one can answer this for me, but I'm going back and forth between pursuing Rad Tech or Respiratory Therapy. They both have pros and cons that I have to weigh, but I'm just really curious for the folks to have no regerts, what about the career makes it "the" career for you and your personality.

To elaborate a little bit more, I have heard people say that variety in Respiratory is perfect for their ADHD, and then I've seen others say "if you get overstimulated, then stay far away". I do get overstimulated by my feral children, but I also tend to remain calm in emergencies.

I'm coming out of a corporate career that had a lot of ambiguity, kind of a "pull a good idea out of your butt and run with it" position and I hated that, so the more "task oriented" aspect of radiology seems to appeal there, but I don't know enough about the science of how decisions are made in respiratory. How much of the calls you make are "go with your gut" vs "the guidelines say if these criteria are met do that"?

This is kind of my one unexpected chance to find a career that satisfies me while still allowing me to support my family and I don't want to make the wrong choice.

(On the off chance you are in the Radiology sub, I will be posting a similar but not directly cross posted inquiry there, just FYI.)

I’m preparing to apply by August for the May ‘27 RT starting class at Pima. On my tour they made me take Wonderlic because interest is so high, that’s their first way of weeding folks out. I got a 26 which the admissions counselor seemed pleased with for a first try but went on to say that the lowest scores in the May 26 start had a wonderlic of 27, so obviously I intended to retake (you can do a max of 3 attempts in an application cycle and they average them, not drop the lowest scores). I went this week and took the math exam (100) and retook the Wonderlic getting 34, so avg of 30 now.

Do you guys think I should take the risk and repeat the Wonderlic my 3rd and last time, or is 30 good enough for an application?

Also, the counselor was supposed to email me the next steps in the application process. She’s been so overwhelmed the two times I’ve met her so I’m not surprised I haven’t gotten an email yet, and will follow up soon, but anyone willing/able to spoil what I should expect to need to accomplish next?

Does anyone know of anywhere I can do practice tests similar to the test Pima makes you do to apply? I know it’s not the hardest levels of math but it’s been about 20 years since I’ve taken a math course. 🥲

Background: I was recently laid off from a corporate strategy & project management role at a company that I spent almost 21 years at. I was never great at project management and I was burnt out just trying to fake it till I make it, so I pretty quickly decided I would not be looking for something similar and would like to finally go back to school for a healthcare field.

Current: I am leaning towards going to school to be a radiology tech (or another sub modality in this field such as MRI tech or Nuclear Med Tech). However I have quickly learned that you don’t get to just show up to a career school and say “sign me up for the next session” and I could be waiting months to years to get into a program. Due to my long tenure at my corporate job I do have about a year of severance, but my hope is to start working somewhere as soon as possible so I can stockpile as much funds as possible to keep me afloat until I finally get into a program.

The Actual Question: Seeing as I have zero background in healthcare, I would like to try and get my foot in the door asap since even like Transporter jobs seem to require experience. So what is my best bet to get my new career path started. I found that uscareerinstitute has a few self paced fully online certificate programs and was thinking about doing one or two of those - such as medical assistant, ekg, or phlebotomy (though I’m nervous about practical experience there), but I guess I just wanted to see what thoughts others have on how to start my new career field sooner rather than later?

From the time you said “I think I’m going to pursue this career now” how long before you were accepted into a program and/or began training?

If I do a program for rad tech first and later decide I would like to certify in nuclear medicine, do I have to do an entire degree/cert in that as if I was brand new or does having the first ARRT cert make anything about pursuing nuclear medicine fast tracked? I guess I’m just confused about how all the primary pathway, post primary stuff works.

The only nuclear med program I can find near me supposedly has a several years long waiting list so just trying to figure out my best option to enter the career field and then furthering my education and thus salary potential.

(This will be a second career for me in my 40s, and entry level xray tech will be a salary cut until I can advance my career a bit.)

If I pursue becoming a Respiratory Therapist, this will be a second career for me in my early/mid 40s. One thing I’ve noticed in reading different posts is a lot of discontent over lack of career growth and people saying they wish they’d chosen something like nursing.

Is there also a sub population of folks that are 10+ years into the field and still find themselves content with this career? At this point I’m so burnt out by my corporate America career that I don’t feel like I want or need “upward growth”, as long as I can manage to pay the bills. I just want to find something that feels like I’m providing value to the world and is a little less ambiguous than corporate strategy 🤣

I fell into corporate America in my very early 20s and stayed at the same company for 20 years. Despite my “role” being Project Manager, I’ve never felt like one, ultimately it was my paycheck and not much more. Found out last week that I was being “restructured” out of a job and am standing at the fork in the road asking if I try and find another corporate position where my eyes glaze over at the position requirements, or take this opportunity to start a second career, one I hopefully can love.

I’ve spent a lot of time with a family member in and out of healthcare settings in the last few months and it put in my head that maybe I should look for something in the healthcare field and I keep coming back to surgical tech as a possibility. I just don’t know if I’m already “past my prime” for something like this. Ultimately I’m looking for a position where I feel like I contribute to something valuable, maybe a bit more “black and white” (with less ambiguous objectives) than what I currently do.

Any thoughts on starting something like in your early 40s?