What's a young person to do? (College and Careers)

In My Humble Opinion
1

I could really use some advice. Basically, I am a community college student. I am almost done with my Associate of Arts degree. So far, I have a 4.0.

It’s about time to start applying for colleges to transfer to*, and I am faced with the reality that I have no idea what to do with my life. It’s not that I don’t have interests or talents. I love biology in general, but more specifically microbiology. I’ve taken all the classes I can at my community college on the topic (well, only three because that’s all there were) and finished with the top grade in all of them. I also read about it a lot in my spare time.

I’m also interested in foreign languages and have been studying Mandarin Chinese, although I don’t see how that realistically could lead to a job. Finally, despite all of the badly written message board posts you may be able to find from me, all of the English professors I’ve had in college have been impressed at my writing abilities. I’m just saying all of this to point out that I do have a few skills under my belt.

But that being said, I’m still at a dead end. Whenever I research majors, people are always talking about how there are no good jobs in every field. In microbiology, I’ve met people who have applied to over 3,000 jobs and still never gotten an interview. English is similarly horrible. I mean, English degrees are practically considered a joke, as unfortunate as that is.

So what am I supposed to do? What is the right choice to make? I can’t just drop out of school and be an entrepreneur or some Hollywood-inspired scenario like that. I’m not that bright. I also really can’t go into finance or computers, which apparently pay well. I know my abilities, and I have no skill in those fields. Finally, going to trade school is not really an option. Really the only thing I’m good at is academics. I have below-average spatial and mechanical intelligence.

So yeah, if you managed to read all of this, thank you. Please advise.

  • I have already been accepted into Washington University, but I don’t think I’ll go there because it costs so much. With an uncertain future, it seems stupid to go into so much debt.
2

I think that we can only tell you what we wish we’d done, in retrospect. So that’s what I’m going to do.

First, accumulate as little student debt as possible. Assuming you get a job, you don’t want to be saddled with it longer than necessary.

Second, get a degree that leads directly to a JOB, not a field. I mean, get a degree in accounting, nursing, engineering, physical therapy etc. Degrees in liberal arts and sciences lead to nebulous career opportunities and often require graduate degrees to be worth much of anything. So saith the person with dual degrees in English and Biology.

Third, once you get out of college, recognize that having “a degree” is the most important aspect of what you’ve just done. There are a ton of jobs that will not seem to have much to do with the degree you just finished, but just having the degree turns them from dead-end jobs into careers. If you can do what you’ve studied to do, great, but if things look lean then be open-minded.

3

I fear you’re right about that second point.

The sad part is I really can’t think of anything I want to do in particular. :frowning:
Accounting, nursing, engineering, physical therapy, bleh. I guess I’ll keep looking into it and see if there’s anything specific I want to do.

One thing I forgot to mention is that I used to tutor ESL (English as a second language) and I absolutely loved that. But again, whenever people talk about being a teacher, it seems like they only have negative things to say. And a lot of people who try to go into teaching are chronically unemployed.

So . . .

Well, I am encouraged a bit by the third point, though. I am pretty open-minded and, being from a very poor family, I’m able to deal with situations that don’t turn out how I expected them to.
So if I end up getting my heart set on a particular field and it doesn’t work out, I doubt I will be crushed. I’m sure I could adapt.

Well, thanks for posting, Sattua. I’ll think about your advice more.

4

Regarding ESL, I went on to get a Ph.D. in another branch of linguistics, and have always wished I’d done ESL instead. It is a booming area and teaching jobs shouldn’t be hard to find, though you have to realize that you might go through the Ph.D. and then have to “settle” for a non-academic job, or a job at a small teaching university.

Regarding graduate degrees, the thing I wish I’d known is that you don’t have to get a job at a big research university!

5

Well, that is encouraging to hear, I guess. It does make sense that ESL will always be a necessary field.

I’ve also thought about maybe doing something that crazy young people like me do these days: teaching English abroad. I know, it’s a bit stereotypical.

I actually have my eyes set on China. Partially because I like learning Chinese, and partially because I’m super cheap. I just think China fits my life philosophy better than many other Asian countries, too. I don’t mind the risks. Most of the “horror stories” I’ve read online about China have been shit I’m used to dealing with on a daily basis where I’m from.

The problem is, I understand that it’s pretty much impossible to do something like that as a career. So if I spend my 20s doing that, what will I do when I return home? Also, I can imagine surviving on the typical wage for an English teacher in China, but I will inevitably have some student loans. So that’s a problem.

I thought I would get further in this thread before explaining my more kooky ideas, but oh well. :stuck_out_tongue:

About graduate school:
I’ve thought of the idea. It scares me though.
One of my professors said to me, “You definitely won’t be the smartest person in your class in graduate school.” For some reason, that resonated a lot.
It makes me nervous. I’m used to coasting by. I think a lot of people have the same problem in the transition between high school and college, but I’ve managed to avoid it.

I don’t want to get stuck in a field where I have to go to graduate school, because I’m not sure I’d be able to succeed, and then what?

6

Have you thought about becoming a professional Chinese translator (text) or realtime interpreter (speech)?

A college friend of mine took up Arabic on a lark, then joined ROTC to help pay for school.

Last I heard, he was an Arabic translator for the defense department, and a Major.

7

I have, but the problem is that there are a lot of people who have two native languages, essentially.

Their families are Chinese but they were raised in an English speaking country.

It’s very difficult to compete with those people. And frankly, it makes sense. A native speaker knows so much more than a learner ever will about the nuances of a language.

If I wanted to be a translator, Chinese (or Spanish) definitely wouldn’t be the language to pick for that reason.

I have even thought about learning something like Arabic just to pursue that sort of job. I think I am good at learning languages. But if I wanted to do that, I really should have started years ago.

8

Math, it might be good for you to take a year or 2 off from any more school (after you graduate from CC of course) and take some jobs or tasks that interest you and not worry for the moment about a “career”. It seems you are pretty negative about various options and it seems to be freezing you up. Perhaps some maturity and experience and doing some things that interest you will help guide you in a particular direction.

My feeling about college is, if the person doesn’t really have any idea what career path they want to go in, they shouldn’t go to college (or more college) and rack up debt until they have a better idea what they want to do.

9

Compelling idea, computergeek.

I’m not really sure how to feel about that. I mean, I feel like I’ve been stagnant in this same place in life for a long time. I really want to just get this whole college thing over with. I’m also afraid I might not go back if I leave. I don’t want to end up poor and working minimum wage jobs like the rest of my family.

Plus, it’s not really that I don’t know what I want to do. It’s that I’m afraid I won’t be able to get a job in the fields I want to (in a lab, teaching, etc). I guess delaying college probably won’t help with that.

But then again, you are right. It is nonsensical to enter my next college without knowing exactly what my goal is. I hope to avoid that by figuring it out in the next few months.
(!)

10

Agreed. As a Mandarin speaker, I can say it’s extremely useful for making people say “Oh wow, you speak Chinese,” but otherwise worthless career-wise. There are more English speakers in China than in the US, after all.

I know a hundred or so people who taught English in China (I was a Peace Corps volunteer there) and they’ve all gone on different paths. Some have married and stayed in China, often starting their own schools. It won’t ever make you rich, but you can live comfortably in China. Some have gone on to teach abroad, sometimes in quite lucrative places like the Middle East. Others returned to the US and taught in US schools. The rest of us mostly took jobs in the government or the nonprofit sector with an international focus.

Anyway, teaching in China is a good time and a not a bad way to spend a couple of years, assuming you can tie it in to some kind of career narrative. I do think it was better for me to do it with the Peace Corps, which carries it’s own cachet in some career circles, than on my own. I wouldn’t expect too much about some kind of mysterious Chinese philosophy-- I think you’ll find as soon as you get there you’ll realize you know next to nothing about the place, and the longer you stay the less and less you’ll feel like you know. But it’s still a lot of fun and pretty rewarding.

As for biology, it really depends on where you live. If you live near a biotech hub, it can be done. If you don’t, it’s slim pickings. And really, this goes for everything. Fields in this country can be extremely concentrated in particular cities. Are you willing to move to a new city or state? If so, you may open up different options.

I would do some serious reading on your student loan repayment options. Yes, it is better to not have debt than to have debt, but with income-based repayment and the numerous other plans (I think there are seven all together) you may have more options than you think. Get to really understand what you will be accountable for before you start making your decisions based on that.

Finally, try not to worry too much. There is no magic major that will automatically get you a job, and there is no major that will disqualify you from jobs (I should know- I was a film major.) If you do manage to develop that laser-like career focus early on, things will be much easier and more efficient for you, as it’s hard to get what you want if you don’t know what you want. But if you don’t develop it, it’s not the end of the world. As long as you work your ass off, stay intellectually curious, and keep up a generally-forward moving career progression, you can recover from some indecisiveness. In reality, most people’s careers these days involve a lot a few zig-zags. The fact that you are even thinking this way really shows that you are probably going to make it work one way or another.

Do know that grad school is probably in your future one way or another if you are as ambitious as you seem. It’s just the reality of education these days.

11

If your main concern is finding a job that pays well, you may want to check out some of the data on starting and mid-career salary by major here. (The figures are for people with a bachelor’s degree and no higher degrees.) A couple of points to note:

  1. If you are not going to become an engineer (and it sounds like you have already ruled that out), what you study matters less than you think. Most non-engineering, non-technical fields have average midcareer salaries that cluster somewhere around the $55,000 to $75,000 range. Obviously that’s a biggish range, and I don’t want to minimize the differences, but …

  2. The increase between starting and mid-career salaries tends to be higher for less-practical-sounding majors than for many more obviously vocational ones. The average history major, for example, starts off making $39,000 to a nursing major’s $54,100, but by mid-career they’re making exactly the same amount. English starts off a bit below human resources, but they’ve switched places by mid-career. Many other humanities fields – philosophy, literature, classics – show similar patterns, as do the less-applied branches of math and science. It may take graduates in these fields a bit longer to find their feet, but most of them do just fine in the end.

I’d add that writing well is a relatively rare skill, and you shouldn’t underestimate its value in the workplace.

Shorter answer: Study something that you’re good at and you care about, just be prepared to work harder at positioning yourself if it doesn’t lead to a single, obvious career path. (This means starting early – apply for those internships and summer jobs, find out what other graduates in your field are doing, get friendly with people who can write you letters of recommendation.)

Also, as a side note, find out what sort of financial aid package Washington University is offering you before you write them off; often the sticker price is very different from the real price, especially at expensive private universities.

12

Fretful has an interesting point. If there are some things that interest you, it might help, particularly if you decide to continue with schooling, to get an internship or summer job that involves that particular interest. It will help you to decide if that’s what you want to do, or not, and maybe get you some contacts.

13

Thanks very much for the post, even sven. It means a lot.

About China, I definitely agree I won’t likely find any hidden ancient Chinese wisdoms there or whatever. I mean that it fits into my philosophy in that I prefer frugality and low crime over freedom and clean air. This probably doesn’t reflect well on my character, but there you go.

I appreciate the thoughts. I definitely am a bit anxious about this whole thing because many people in my family have almost stopped the cycle of poverty but ultimately failed. My dad was a highly skilled mechanic and very successful until he became an alcoholic. My sister is also very bright but she dropped out of school and had a kid. There are a few more instances. So when I hear that no fields have jobs, federal student loan interest is doubling, and stuff like that, I start to panic. I guess I need to realize that I have already come a long way and I should believe that if other people can manage to become a happy and productive member of society, so can I.
(Sorry if I was oversharing in this paragraph, but I just wanted to let people know why I’m so worried.)

Well, back to the concrete issues, I definitely would be willing to move for a job. I have no love for my hometown and I’m not extremely close to my family. So maybe I do have that going for me. The main thing that disturbs me is the microbiology major I met who said he applied for thousands of jobs in labs across the country and never got one interview. But maybe he was just doing something wrong? I feel like if I applied for thousands of jobs, I’d find another path, I guess.

Well, regardless, I’ll save your post and refer back to it when I have a more clear mind. Thanks.

**Fretful Porpentine **
I guess my main concern is just living comfortably. I know what it’s like to live on food stamps and never be able to afford any entertainment at all. That’s not what I want. I don’t want to be unemployed or underemployed.

About the list of high paying majors, I see your point about engineering. Unfortunately I definitely know that’s not the path for me.

I guess my main concern is that I won’t be able to find a job. I don’t really need to make $75,000 a year. I wouldn’t know what to do with that. I feel like I could definitely live a comfortable life with the ~$56,000 starting salary of a Biology major or even the $40,000 salary of the English major. But what if I couldn’t find a job? I don’t want to be yet another 21-year-old schmuck with tons of debt and working at a burger joint.

I admit, I haven’t done any internships yet. My summer jobs have all been tutoring. I definitely need to get on that once I realize what I want to do.

14

Any interest in academia?

15

I really don’t know. It’s so hard to get unbiased accounts of what it’s like.

Are you a professor or something like that? How would you suggest someone decide if it’s right for them?

I love teaching, research, writing, and arguing. So maybe it would be good for me. I guess my main concern is that I couldn’t do it and that I’d waste time or money.

I read the account of a failed Ph.D candidate on Something Awful one time and it still haunts my nightmares. But maybe that wouldn’t happen to me; it’s so hard to say.

16

The exact major IMHO is less important than the ability to learn, to adapt, to write clearly and correctly, and to have a good work ethic. I’ll tell you my story as an illustration:

BA English, certified secondary school teacher. Taught 5 years.
SAHM 9 years. English teaching jobs vanished.

Got a temp job doing data entry, which led to full time in a data processing dept., back to school, earned Associates degree Computer Science.

Became programmer, systems analyst, programming team leader. Worked in 3 different companies, total over 20 years.

Got laid off at age 59. Couldn’t get any IT job whatsoever. (Yeah, there’s no age discrimination.)

Took temp job as a receptionist in a small international freight forwarding company. Impressed company with skills, hired full time doing customer service, preparing projects, quotes, arranging bookings, and various other miscellaneous tasks.

I’m now retired, with a tidy nest egg from these various jobs.

Lesson: The English degree was only required for that first job; after that it was work ethic, adaptability, being a quick learner, and of course communications skills.

17

Afraid not, I’m going into senior year of high school actually. I just threw it out as a possibility as I’m interested in academia.

18

Thanks for posting that. If anyone else wants to share their career history, please do.
Especially if you got a degree in one of the areas I mentioned I’m interested in.

It does bring home the point that I’m not necessarily stuck with whatever I decide on now, which is nice.

19

Have you considered food science? It would be a great outlet for your love of micro with real, tangible effects on the food supply. Your knowledge of Mandarin may also open up the possibility for you to either be employed by or consult for companies with processing plants in China.

20

I had a similar career history.

I did not quite graduate with a degree in Film Studies (minors in Women’s Studies and History). Went to work for my college employer who needed me full time in their marketing department doing odd jobs - one was what was then called data processing.

One day, up and quit (they’d hired an office manager who didn’t do a darn thing and was less qualified than I was, but was connected). Started temping.

Took a full time job with one of the clients doing miscellaneous office work. Ended up a systems administrator. Then a systems engineer. Then a Six Sigma Blackbelt. Then a project manager, than a program manager. Got a degree in Accounting and became the manager of a systems audit team. Now I’m the stay at home mom to teenagers. Or on a several year sabbatical. Or maybe I retired early. We will see.

If you are going to work in corporate America, once you get your foot in the door there will be plenty of opportunities regardless of your degree. I think the real issue for a lot of people is that a job like “Six Sigma Blackbelt” isn’t one that you know exists, you can’t go to school for, and is a trend thing anyway. As students, we tend to think in terms of academic subjects - not jobs. There aren’t a lot of jobs in academic subjects.