Category: Cram Session
Media has lamented the slumped economy, the lack of available jobs, the soaring number of college grads on all levels that are unable to find jobs that are related to their degrees, and the equally soaring student loan debts that are being piled up in this rat race.
What say all of you who have gone through at least undergraduate study, and any higher schooling? If it's difficult for fully sighted graduates to find work in their field (or any field) while paying off the massive debt that they'd hoped would land them a good job (or any job), what of us? There are plenty of teenagers on this site who are looking ahead to college, and should they be?
I am disillusioned. I finished undergraduate study in a rural area, moved to an urban area, and almost a year and a billion applications later I've found no paid work, from fast food to formal offices. I've barely found any volunteerism that could keep my resume active. Now I've got the option to go to grad school if I want to take on somewhere between $20,000 and $50,000 worth of debt, but it seems a poor investment.
I'm glad I have my college degree but honestly, I wish I would have gone to some sort of trade school or something. I would love to have an actual marketable skill rather than a degree in Social Work. I did Social Work because it was something I knew I could do but after practicing in the Rehabilitation field for 5 years, discovered that it was indeed not the degree best suited for me, or perhaps I should say, I'm not suited for social work.
I have a son who is 8 and honestly, if he decides not to go to college in 10 years, but rather join the police force, fire department, or go to school to learn a particular trade, I will be just as pleased. The patriot in me would love it if he joined the military but the mother in me cringes at the thought.
All that to say, I think people should look at all of their options rather than just blindly following the college trail.
As for all the kids on the news complaining about their student loan debts, perhaps they should consider going to less expensive schools. That's what we did. College isn't free and if people started attending lower priced schools, perhaps the big expensive ones would get the hent and become more financially competitive. I realize you weren't looking for a rant about that but I had to say it.
Here's my take, having a daughter who will start college in a couple years:
Go to college for a degree that will earn you money. That's the only way you're gong to make it. Mine wants social work and really thinks she'll be good at it, doesn't want to follow the old man into the bowels of industry but I've just been realistic about avoiding all those Winers' Anonymous degrees which mean something to academia but to the rest of us mean nothing at all.
Students should be concerned if they graduate college with no relevant experience or skills. A college degree is not the magical ticket to money or success. Experience and a personable, likable demeanor are just as important.
I know art and sociology majors with jobs because they understood what it took to make their degrees relevant and realized that internships and skills were essential complements for their degrees. I also know technology and engineering majors struggling to find jobs because they have low GPAs and absolutely no work experience.
Likewise, I know computer science and accounting majors with jobs because they understood what it took to make their degrees relevant and realized that internships and skills were essential complements for their degrees. I also know history and philosophy majors struggling to find jobs because they have no work experience.
A college degree is still important today and should not be devalued. Experience is more important and should directly supplement the college experience.
Still, stories like Miss M's make me feel disillusioned. I graduated Saturday with a PR degree and relevant internship and volunteer experience outside the disability field, and I'm desperately hoping I'm not in her same position a year from now. But the stories, especially among blind students who graduate college, are not at all encouraging. Let's be honest: there's a reason most visually impaired people go into the blindness field or graduate school. Welcome to reality. It's terrifying.
Yes, tell me about it. Story of my life. I graduated with a creative writing degree and I might as well go live in a cardboard box. I pay three hundred dollars a month in student loans, $625 in rent, $300 in utilities, and about $200 a month for formula and diapers for my newborn. Good god. It's a wonder I stay afloat. lol. And where's my awesome job in the publishing industry? MIA, that's where. And yes, I have tons of experience, internships, etc. under my belt. Am I sorry for attending a $40000 undergrad school? In some ways, Yep, you bet. My only hope is that I score big with some more sweet freelance ghostwriting deals along the way.
These posts are making me feel a little anxious lol.. I just graduated last week with a degree in business administration/marketing. I have little work experience and haven't started looking for anything yet but I hope I find something even if it's not related to my degree. At least I'll be able to add more to my resume and get a better idea of what I want to do in the long run.
Post 4 is quite right.
Ambition, ambition, ambition!
So, what is ambition? It's not the big talker hard pusher, or even the hardest worker.
It's the person who works the hardest to make their efforts actually count for something.
I know people, and I was one when I was younger, who were not afraid of 16-hour workdays, sweat and elbow grease. But what many of us missed is the machinery of civilization runs on the backs of such people. The people who really make it are those who know how to make every hour count for something: something for them. Nobody gives a rat's ass about you in the workplace except you. Don't give in to the illusion that if you just work hard enough people will notice and pay you more and give you higher standing.
What really happens is if you work hard enough, without making sure that work in large part benefits you specifically (not just the project you're on), everyone will notice: notice that you are a sucker who they can pay less and expect more from.
If you ever saw the movie "Ice Age," - a kids' movie my daughter liked when she was about 9, there was a funny, but telling, line: The female sloths were talking and one of them said: "It's just that, well, the sensitive ones always get eaten."
That's true of sensitive ones, ones who give their all for the project without making sure they are personally taking something away from it, ones of all types. Any ones who don't realize nobody is going to give them anything no matter how hard they work or what they deliver, unless they step up and take it out of the others' hand.
Now after talking of things I may regret, here's some things I can say I've done and am glad:
Any time a chance comes up at work for you to be involved in something outside your skill set, take it.
Leadership opportunity? Take it. Balance the department budget? Take it. Minimize costs to the department? Be the best at it. People always talk about developing your vocational skills, but I am forever glad that for whatever reason early on in my working life I realized the value of developing non-vocational-related general skills like management, bookkeeping, basic understanding of markets, a few other things. All of which have saved my ass more than once in my career.
In the work place, you are expendable. All of us are. There is a reason they refer to us as resources and not assets. I have seen amazingly valuable people dropped like hot rocks because of management decisions: it can happen to any of us.
The good thing about any of us that have been to college since the early 90s and later, all of us have seen layoffs since our youth, none of us operate with any illusions about how corporate actually works.
The reason that's an asset for us - Generation X and younger - is that there are no surprises and we know the reality that we individually are the only ones that actually give a rat's ass about us individually.
Those of you young people running your own businesses, freelancing, doing whatever entrepreneurial efforts you do, are really setting yourselves up to succeed, in my opinion. Just read every single thing you can get your hands on, as it relates to business, management, finance, bookkeeping, product branding, markets,and the like. We were absolute FOOLS! to call all of that boring or make fun of the business majors like we did the philosophy majors. Business skills are absolutely universal. Academia should unilaterally be ashamed of itself for not making these skills a priority in every level of education. But then again, academia and social service are paid for by the rest of us, meaning they've never had to learn it by fire like many of us have.
The terror of this is not in lack of ambition, alas. In my case I've got plenty of relevant work experience and I made it out of undergrad with no debt, but grad school does not offer one the same duty-free financial aid. You are at the mercy of merit scholarships and schools, and perhaps a scholarship, but undergraduates get preference.
There are very few jobs out there, regardless of your degree. The market wants experience that you just can't gain at 21-25 unless you never went to school and have worked full time, and then they want a diploma to back you up anyway. This is a game of age and networking, and I fear my generation is going to lose.