help a confused undergrad :)

In My Humble Opinion
1

Hey,

I’m an undergrad student at the University at Buffalo, and I’m going into my 3rd year. I’m a political science major with a minor in business, and like tons of college students I have no idea what I want to do.

I chose my major because I’m a news junky, and love learning about history/politics/law, and at one point was obsessed about law school. I’ve been sticking with polysci because it seems reasonably applicable to business if I decide not to go to law school, and I made it a little more structured/adaptable (I think)by taking a minor in business.

I’m also considering peace corps after undergrad because I love the entire concept (I’ve researched it heavily). I think peacecorps might also be something good to bring to an employer (am I right?).

I think I will most definitely be doing graduate school of some time (be it JD or MBA), but I’m really unsure.

My friends have told me to just major in the school of management, but the whole process really bores me to be honest. All of this powerpoint spreadsheet BS (if you know what I mean). I love business (if it’s one I can be passionate about), but the money couldn’t be the only force driving me to work for a given company.

I’ve thought about law school, consulting, pharmaceutical sales, etc. I really have no idea. I need to find jobs that require passion, give something back to the world, or something. Anything interesting, challenging, etc.

I know I’m terrible with math, can argue, can sell, love to help solve problems, and really want to travel internationally if possible.

What advice do you have for someone with so many random questions? Where would you start if you were this confused? Have you ever been this confused? Any advice on where to look for some clarity, etc would be great. Force me to clarify my questions/statements if you are confused.

2

CeeNT, questions seeking advice, opinions and recommendations belong in IMHO. I’ll move this for you.

Please read the FAQ and forum descriptions carefully before asking your next question. Thank you.

-xash
General Questions Moderator

3

I think we’ve probably all been that confused. Don’t sweat it – totally normal at your age and stage in life.

My recommendation would be internships. Or temp for a summer at some firm that features the sort of jobs you think you might be interested in. This way, you’ll get a taste of what the different fields are like, and will probably lose a little of your idealism along the way. This will help you make a decision later on down the road.

Know that just about all decisions you’ll make will be reversible or at the very least, modifiable. Just because you decide, “I’m going into the peacecorps.” doesn’t mean you can’t change your mind later. Or follow through with that but take a completely different track on the back end.

My pointless anecdote: A journalism major, I’ve found myself in leadership/management positions where the money was and discovered I was basically miserable. For me, I do much better in a position where I just go to work, do my thing, mind my own business and go home. I don’t need to be in charge, and don’t want to be and I don’t care about becoming rich or making tons of money. There is enough for me and I’m not constantly striving for more, more, more. There’s food in my fridge, a roof over my head and a reliable car in the driveway. I don’t need much more in life.

So my important message to you is: none of the answers to your questions matter in the long run because you can change your mind any time you want. The important thing to learn and remember is: happiness comes from within. Happiness has nothing to do with where you live, what job you have or which significant other is in your life.

4

One bit of advice: get out of school for a while.
I suggest that you don’t go to grad school right away.(But don’t hesitate to take the GED exam or whatever, maybe even go through the application process, to keep your options open for later)

But , since you are so unsure of yourself(and that’s not unusual)–get out in the real world for a bit.(Dave Barry’s humor column last week was a mock commencement speech: “now that you college grads are about to begin your lives out there–you may have noticed that your professors aren’t joining you. Because the real world isn’t always fun”)
Playing student is a game–you talk about what you will do, but don’t actually do it.
Theory is nice–but it is only theory.
Do something PRACTICAL .Any “real” job (or internship) . Real, hands-on experience, will give you a solid base to judge for yourself wheter it was the right directiion to go.

Example: sitting in law classrooms talking about makes a contract binding is just theory. Working (even as just a file clerk ) in a law office,is practical.Seeing how much pressure the lawyers work under every day, how many phone calls they handle, what actually happens when a contract isn’t signed on time-- may help you decide if law is something you want to do 8 hours a day.

Running off in the peace corps to help sick children in Africa may be a fine way to help humanity.(Do it if you can!) But it won’t help you decide whether you prefer to be a contract lawyer or would rather be a spreadsheet power point manager

5

If you’re unsure, try working for a couple of years afterwards. I graduated in 2000 and worked for 2 years in a number of jobs-a political consultancy (election time), marketing for a B2B consultancy, teaching the LSATs & SAT for Kaplan and doing sales and research for an Indian outsourcing company. Oh and that’s not because I skipped jobs every 6 months but my political consultancy job was terminal, my B2B had massive layoffs and then I quit Kaplan & the sales job to go to lawschool. Anyway, I had the College Overload Blues and wasn’t terribly motivated when I graduated undergrad. Working helped bring back my focus and desire to immerse myself in school again. It also got me some great work experience, recommendations and money.

I would suggest taking your LSATs before you start working (if you decide to take that route).

6

To begin with Peace Corps is two words, both capitalized.

Yes it can help with some employers. The see someone who has worked at something for two full years under less than desirable circumstances for less than great monetary profit can be a definite plus for many people hiring. It has pushed jobs in my favor in more than a couple cases.

There are some others, however, that will see you as a liberal fruit loop who is a died-in-the-wool do-gooder and in those cases the experience will actually hurt your job chances.

The one thing about going into the Peace Corps is that it is extremely challenging and 1.) If you don’t want to be there you won’t do a good job and you will probably drop out. 2.) It will change you an incredible amount. Anything you wanted to do before you went in will probably not interest you too much when you come out. 3. Hi Opal! (I haven’t done that in a very long time). 4.) The world will pass you by somewhat and if you have technical interests you’ll be back at square one when you get out (if you stay the whole time).

TV

7

That should begin with “To see” not “The see”.

I should never post in the morning before caffine.

8

Let’s see–junior in college, starting to wonder what the heck to do with the rest of your life? Sounds to me like you are right on schedule!

I went through the same thing and I decided to go immediately into grad school (I was offered a full ride so it was no harm for me to go). It worked well for me, though at the end of it I was in the same position I was before, just two years older. It’s not a bad option if you have an idea of what you want to study and if you can get it paid for.

Not sure if my husband will post to this thread, but I can tell you what he tells folks about law school: don’t go if you’re really not sure. Work for a year as a paralegal, or even an intern if you can afford it. It will give you at least a general idea of what to expect as life as a lawyer (though some paralegals are treated more as secretaries than anything so it might not). You might try that is any field you are thinking of getting into, though keep in mind in most cases your actual job will be a crappy one that will bore you to tears. (In fact, a lot of times a crappy job is what makes folks go to grad school in the first place!)

Things like the Peace Corps are good for a resume, but you might try also programs like Americorps, which is a domestic program. (There are several Americorps members on this Board; I am sure you can do a search.) But of course you want the international travel, so that wouldn’t get it.

May I suggest study abroad if you haven’t already? Winter semester of your junior year is the perfect time for it and it is an amazing experience. You never know what will come of it but at the very least, you will have the overseas adventure but on a shorter, less intense scale than the Peace Corps. Instead of Europe, try to find a program in Africa or Latin American or something that would give you an experience more like the Peace Corps so you can see what it would sort of be like. Of course, then you would wind up missing what is I’m sure a lovely winter in Buffalo. :slight_smile:

Most importantly, don’t feel like you have to have your life completely planned out at age 20. I’m 32 and still working on it and I am pretty sure I’m not the only one. Making the ‘wrong’ decision now will not set you on a path for failure; do what you love to do and eventually something will click and you’ll say “this is what I want to do forever.” So don’t panic!

9

I totally agree with jeevwoman (Hi, jeevwoman!) I actually think you may be farther ahead than most of your cohort. You have a sense of what you do like, what you value, and what you don’t like. To me, these are the three most important components of developing a career/life. It’s not so much your title, your firm, or your paycheck, but how you spend your day.

I say do the Peace Corps. Do what you love and what you value. Pay attention to those things that make you go “zing”! When do you feel happy and in the zone? When do you feel stressed and unhappy? What’s happening during those times? What are you doing at that moment? What are the aspects of those experiences that contribute to your enjoyment or lack of enjoyment? These things will lead you to the kind of environment and tasks that will make you most happy.

For example, I’m happiest when I can work in solitude on a quantifiable task, but I also need doses of human interaction and occassional bursts of creativity. I use my knowledge of myself as my guide to how I earn a paycheck. (I’m now 35. When I was where you are now, I wasted a decade plus trying to become okay with being a Butcher, Baker, or Candlestick Maker, and it made me very unhappy. The standard paths don’t work for me.) Look for opportunities that match your personality and goals, I say. This can work, as others have said, because there are very few things in life that you can’t modify or undo.

10

[hijack] Hi niblet_head! Great meeting you at the ChiDope! [/hijack]

11

Yes, I find there are a lot of people at my school who sort of floated into lawschool for lack of something better to do or because they wanted to make money and didn’t have the background to go to medical school yadda yadda yadda. Some are miserable, some aren’t. I chose lawschool sort of randomly-my dad put his foot down and said GET THEE TO GRADUATE SCHOOL OR ELSE! + I was bored with working so I just sort of woke up one September morning and said “today I’m going to apply to lawschool.” So I guess I’m one of those aimless individuals that sort of floated in and is doing fine. I don’t think working in a lawfirm would have helped me any as I’m doing really well academically-but I’m really glad I had general work experience in a non-administrative capacity because it clued me in to stuff like office politics, team work, getting along with people I despise, sucking up to clients etc. etc… My mom is a banker with a bunch of lawyer-clients and she would incessantly make me chat to them before lawschool and they would always manage to tell me how HARD it was, how many people do REALLY badly, how they were geniuses in undergrad but were mediocre in lawschool blah blah blah-almost all of them would kindly finish by telling me a) Not to go (this despite the fact that I had already paid my deposit) and b) To expect not to do well. So much negativity! It all ended by me having Tony Soprano hallucination fits at the Indian Outsourcing company in the middle of a meeting and I had to spend the 3 months before lawschool going to see a therapist about all my lawyer induced anxiety. So even though I appreciated talking to practicing lawyers, I now sort of take their melodrama with a bit of salt.

12

Fainting fit, I mean.

Also to qualify on the administrative thing: I had always done administrative work to make money during summers in college but found it extremely tedious and I harboured a secret hope that a so-called “good job” would mean having to deal with less odiously arrogant people and would be more mentally stimulating. Then I got a bunch of “good jobs” and I realised all that stuff never goes away so I think it sort of stripped away this false illusion I had that a professional graduate degree would equal more exciting stuff to do + more respect. Of course, I only got said “good jobs” because of the boom years.

13

Guys,

Thanks for all of this great advice. I think I will take a peak at Americorps, consider not jumping into grad school right away (but take the lsat/whatever), and probably need to spend some serious time down in the career center at school.

Answer me one final question, are all jobs that payout tedious, boring, etc? It seems this way. I’m just wondering. So many of my friends are going for jobs that sound absolutely deadly (on the boredom meter) just because they pay.

14

Yeah, right! If only! :slight_smile: CeeNT, you will probably always deal with idiots in some capacity and wonder how they got ahead of you. It has nothing to do with your OP, but it’s a good rule to learn in life.

Oh, and anu, I’m curious now. “Get thee to graduate school or else”—or else what? (If you don’t mind me asking.) Most parents, at least in the US, are more “get thee to a job or else.”

15

Not all of them, no. Some people absolutely love their jobs. But you should be prepared to have to deal with boredom and tediousness (and hey, they might not even be well-paying!); that way you won’t take it as a personal failure should this happen. I don’t mean to crush your idealism, but you sound a lot like me at that age and it came as a BIG SURPRISE to me that a lot of jobs suck. I thought I did something wrong; in most cases, it’s not you, but the nature of the beast.

Don’t be afraid to quit a sucky job as soon as you have another lined up. And don’t ever take a job just because you like the pay. There are 1000 things more important in life than the size of your bank account.

Consider teaching as a career. (I am only throwing that in because that is what my parents always say.) It’s bad pay and you’re not always treated with the respect you’ll deserve, but it’s not boring or tedious (usually).

16

Remember that “work” consists of doing something that somebody else would rather not do (either because they can’t or won’t do it themselves), and getting paid for it. The harder it is to find someone who can do that well, the better it pays. Boring? Yes – to you.

Find something you love to do, and then find someone who will pay you to do it well.

17

Yeah, and I think that’s what working/working a lawfirm job really does (at least it did for me) rather than helping you with stuff in your chosen graduate profession (law or otherwise). It sucks a little bit of the idealism out of you so you’re not flabbergasted about how Nothing Is as it Should BE after your education is done. You have to get out before you become a soulless drone-or worse, you morph into a pre-MBA. Just kidding. I think working really develops important office-handy social skills like sucking up and hanging out with people you can’t stand.

Oh, I don’t know if there would have been anything particular to the “or ELSE!” There were some fights about throwing me out of the house unless I got a grad degree or made a movement towards applying and a lot of histrionic blowouts on both my part and my dad’s part but in retrospect I doubt my parents would have done anything. Just issued more idle threats, I suppose.

18

Just pimping Peace Corps and its domestic cousin, AmeriCorps. I’m in AmeriCorps right now, taking a year off from college, and its been a truly incredble experience.

See new places, meet new people, save the world, find yourself, and get some sexy new uniforms – go in Corps!

19

You know, my sister expressed interest in doing fund-raising for non-profits as something she’d like to do. Coincidentally, I saw an ad in the paper for, I believe it was Northwestern here in Chicago, graduate-level seminars for philanthropy, fund-raising, that kind of thing right around then.

I just tried to Google it, and got some other graduate programs in philanthropy. I imagine that if you become a high-up in a powerful charity, whether national or local, or non-profit org, you might be able to fufill both your goals.

And I’d have to agree with the other posters and what I’ve learned in real life and the real life of my friends: The More They Pay You, The More They Own You. As you move thru life you’ll come to have a better defined idea of just how much money you need and what your time means to you. You may realize that you don’t need six figures (or even high five figures), but that $40k is plenty.

Looking back at your quote, there are lots of things you could do with those goals. Keep yourself open to unconventional ideas or the unconventional application of some standard ideas. And for law school, I hear Northeastern in Boston (?) has a program more directed toward social justice/leftist ideas.