I pretty much fit the stereotype of the kid who went to college for all the wrong reasons. Got a bachelor of arts and a huge load of debt and not much of a steady career to pay for it all.
Yes I moved back in with my parents and I am still dependent on them. I’m pretty much broke myself and I read all of the stories here of kids with huge debt they can’t pay off and honestly it’s pretty scary.
Yes the best advice would be to not put yourself in that position, but that’s too late. So what’s the answer? Going back to school is just not an option and finding a decent job is also quite difficult. What should someone in my position do? I’d like to have some hope that I’m not screwed for the rest of my life
Well, it used to be that if you had a degree in something wordy, like Comp. Lit. or English, you could get a job as a technical writer or similar in a corporation, since they’re often looking for people who can communicate well. You don’t say what your degree is actually in, so it’s hard to say–if you were a Theater major it’s different than if you were a Rhetoric major.
My brother, a German major, finally decided to go to nursing school after several years of things like ‘assistant manager at the drugstore.’ There are lots of practical, fairly short-term things like that (respiratory therapy, etc.) that are in high demand and pay decently. You could get a job as a home health aide or similar while you go.
I was a comp. lit. major and went to library school. But these days there are more librarians than job openings, so I don’t really advise it, even though I love my field.
Often, such a degree will count as a “language-related” degree, which opens doors in fields such as translation, interpreting, technical writing, language teaching, and so forth.
If all you are looking for is a job; take -anything- at first, in order to pay bills and such. Then go to tech school or a community college and take some courses in some technical or trade area that interests you even a little. (Helps if there are job openings for this occupation)
Oh, I have a B.A. ; majored in Philosophy. my occupation is a computer systems administrator. Having a degree in -anything- helps open doors; having a certificate or other training keeps the door open long enough to get comfortably inside.
What is your goal? What is your dream job? What was your plan when you started?
If you can figure that out, talk to people who are currently working the jobs you’d like to have in ten years. People love to talk about themselves, so you shouldn’t have too much trouble setting up 20 minute informational interviews- just send people an email introducing yourself and asking if you can schedule a brief appointment with them.
Ask them how they got where they are today. No doubt plenty of them have “useless” degrees, and you can get a better idea of how they got around that.
Consider something organized, either Americor, the military or Peace Corps (though I don’t recommend Peace Corps for people who don’t have a burning desire to do it.) These can leapfrog you out of the entry level, and give you valuable on-the-job experience in a field. They also help build up a career network.
Honestly, you sound like you are missing direction more than anything else. I bet once you get a clearer picture of what you are looking for, you’ll suddenly start seeing the paths to get there. It’s tough those first years out of school, but don’t give up hope.
After a job for 11.5 years in manufacturing I got laid off and was able to get two years training from the federal government. So I got an Associate’s degree in Network Technology because IT and medical work were the two best fields to get jobs in. After graduating last year no-one will hire me. I should have taken medical related classes, but I can’t afford to go back now.
In a previous life, my husband got a degree from a Bible college. Since he didn’t go on to seminary or become a career missionary, it’s pretty much the definition of useless.
He worked on a factory line for seven years. In this time he paid for his then-wife to go to nursing school… they also had their own house and cars. I think they didn’t have much else, but they had those things.
The next step for him was to network. Make friends everywhere. Talk to everybody. Eventually, he was offered a job at a small electronics firm. Now he does every day what a lot of people with electrical engineering degrees wish they were doing.
You didn’t say whether your loans were private, or government-backed.
I’m going to assume the latter. If that’s the case, the answer is as it always is…get the government out of the business of subsidizing non value-creating activity. The fact that the government is subsidizing billions of dollars of student loans for degrees that have no real-world application affects us all. Since if you default, we’re going to have to help you pay them back.
Employers are screaming for engineering, technical and analytic hires - as they always have, and as they always will. I need to hire 2 engineers right now…and would love to offer the job to two recent college grads. Can’t find them.
I was in the OP’s position 3 years ago, and although things are certainly very different now (particularly in the availability of jobs), some of this may still be pertinent.
Firstly, I don’t know what kind of loans you have, but in the UK you don’t have to start paying back your student loan until you earn more than a certain amount each year. After I graduated (with a BA in Philisophy, pretty much the definition of a “useless” arts degree) I moved back in with my parents - there’s no shame in that, a lot of people do it and it makes very sound financial sense, even if you have a job. I took a job which was white-collar but not a graduate job as such, intending to do it for a year while I decided whether or not to go and do some more studying. I have now been there three years and it seems to be turning into a career - I am lucky enough to enjoy what I do.
You may not be as lucky as me, but I agree with meanoldman - take any job you can get, you would be surprised how many seemingly unpromising starts can lead you to working your way up the career ladder. And if you don’t like the job, at least you are earning something (and saving something - don’t make the mistake of spending all your disposable income on, say, a car, just because you are living at home and can afford it). You can always move on and do something else later on.
This :nodding: My undergrad degree, as much as I loved it, was essentially useless when it came to the real world. It did, however, get me into the door and into my first “grown up” job. A few years into that I returned to school to get my master’s, couldn’t find a FT position to save my life afterward (truth be told there were a lot of budget cuts going around, similar to what’s happening now), so I grabbed whatever job I could find.
I’m no longer with that same company. I’ve worked my way up the ranks. I now make more than I would have made with the master’s degree.
Was it what I thought I’d be doing after university? Hell no. But that’s the way life works sometime.
My degree has served no professional purpose other than to get me an interview with companies looking for someone with a degree. Even though they advertise that they’re looking for someone with a degree in a specific field, that’s often just smoke and mirrors to weed out the idiots. Most companies want experience, the more the better. The degree is a plus, as it shows you have some work ethic. I’ve gotten various jobs that had requirements of degrees in engineering and construction management, and was not even asked about it. When I brought up the fact that I was missing that requirement, I was told “Oh, that’s okay.”
So the advice is: find work. Any work. Get yourself into management or supervisory positions as soon as is humanly possible and make yourself invaluable in any way you can. A degree is just a degree, but work builds a resume. I have two sons without degrees of any kind and both are rising rapidly in their companies.
I have a useless degree in Art History - my husband’s is Anthropology.
Both of us worked “dead end” jobs that weren’t dead ends - file clerk, data entry, coffee shop staff, temporary clerical work - those eventually turned into bookkeeping, systems administration, desktop publishing, direct mail manager. Those turned into management and staff management jobs, process analyst and business analyst jobs, and IT architecture and engineering. But its taken twenty five years. It really took a good three to five to get from dead end jobs into something with potential, but we graduated from college during the late 80s recession. It took another five or ten before those jobs looked like career jobs. And then we were helped by the dot com boom.
How does a person go from the coffee shop to marketing - you get to know your customers until one says “hey, you might be interested in this job.”
I have a degree in history from a no-name college. Well, it’s not so no-name for teachers, pilots and business managers, but for history? No-name. So, not only is my degree useless, but it’s not even from a school with a name that might get me an interview.
But, that was many years ago.
When I graduated from college I answered ads for “College Graduates”. My first job was in retail management in a department store. I did customer service at a medical supply company and then placed temps. All sucky jobs. The temp thing was my career for years and, indirectly, it led to me having this job, which is the office manager of a specific service at a prestigious college and is, at times, the greatest job in the world (for me). How did the temp thing lead me here? 13 years ago I started as a temp, which is something I never would have thought of or considered before.
Basically, I’m saying that you never know where you’re going to find your opportunities and inspiration and everything is a learning experience.
That being said, I wish I had never done what I did for college.
BTW, most of my “useless degreed” friends followed similar career paths - and most of them are doing fine now, although I remember those ‘we are bound to be losers forever’ days right out of college. A friend sold cars. Another installed cable TV. Another worked in a thrift store.
A common misperception is that you leave college and you go to a recruitment fair and you get offered a job that has something to do with your field, or doesn’t, but some company wants you for your liberal arts degree. It was common back in the 1980s and it doesn’t really look like its changed.
The reality of a liberal arts degree is that you learn to make a mean moccachino while networking your ass off. Eventually you get some job that is beneath your stellar intelligence and college degree - that a shaved monkey could do if the idiots running the company would bother to train a shaved monkey. But you do it, with a good attitude, and anything else that comes your way - always looking for the next opportunity - either where you are or somewhere else. I’m sure somewhere, someplace, people have gotten out of school with liberal arts degrees and fallen into wonderful careers and their dad or uncle hasn’t even owned the company - but no one I know was that lucky.
I know someone who was a Jewish Studies major in college and who now is a Compliance specialist at a pharmaceutical company. (She deals with the mountains of paperwork that go to the FDA.)
As others have said, she got her foot in the door at the bottom as an office manager and started learning the business from the people around her. And networked like crazy when opportunities arose.