The new year is coming up, and I remember in high school wondering what careers in the future would hold. At the time, I was in a nursing program, and I had a hard time wrapping my brain around the concept of writing any year that started with “2000″. After all, that would mean I’d be in my FORTIES, which was totally incomprehensible. I also thought that once I made it through the nursing program, that’s what I’d be doing for the rest of my life.

Ah, youth. How ignorant and innocent! Little did I know at the time that a person will change careers over the course of a lifetime depending on circumstance and situation.

Still, it seems the hot jobs in the millennial years are still in the health care field. Baby boomers are aging fast (I should know) and according to an article in the Reader’s Digest, health care is expected to add over a million jobs in 2010, and the demand is outstripping the supply. That’s the good news. The bad news is, a lot of these jobs (but not all) require a higher skill set, which means more education.

The hot heath careers as cited by the Reader’s Digest include surgical technologist, health care administrator, RN, and medical records tech. All require some kind of college degree or accreditation course, but the investment in education in this situation may actually pay off, as opposed to a degree in Political Science or Liberal Arts.

I was in nursing for many years, but moved on to other things as life dictated. One good thing about education — once you have it, you always have it.

I think the thing that strikes me is how life continues to travel in full circles. I am, like many people in this economy, struggling to make ends meet. But it looks like my early education may play a part in helping me get out of the hole.

Who knew?