Thanks so much for your insight! My partner would be going back to college shortly after we move so I would have more credentials than him, but either way he would split costs with me using financial aid from school or working an entry-level job. In any case I would probably be contributing a bit more in the meantime while we make the transition---do you think $50k would be doable if the other person is making around $30k? Anticipating the worst-case scenario. I mentioned $50k because that's just under the starting salary I've recently seen for those holding only a BA at places like the MFA which are well-endowed, but naturally it makes sense that smaller nonprofit museums would have less to offer salary-wise.

I'm doing two part-time jobs---one working in a rare book and manuscript library where I'm getting some professional development experience with conservation and curation as well as working with researchers---"the kind of thing many people do for summer internships but instead year-round", according to what my boss has told me anyway. I've been doing that for 3 years. The other is working as a historical manuscript transcriptionist/paleographer for a local cemetery's digitization project, which I've been doing for 2 years. I almost secured an internship at an art museum before the pandemic happened and they were forced to close, and I'd be trying for that again after graduation if no other opportunities materialize in order to boost my resume.

Definitely heard curatorial assistant take a lot more credentials---meant that as more of a placeholder for museum/library jobs in general like collections, archives, museum education etc. (I should probably go edit that!) As for PR that's because my Media Production/Communication degree would technically qualify me to do that as well content creation. Definitely a totally different path from History or Classics but I wanted those hard skills to offer to the museum space or even if I needed to pivot to a totally different industry.