I’ve actually been doing some thinking about degrees, now that I’ve graduated and everything. Story of my life – come up with great ideas right after they could have been useful. Blargh.
Since I seem to be giving (or trying to give) a lot of advice about undergraduate direction, I decided to just write up the ideas I have. A good deal of my non-acquaintance friends are still stuck in college for a few years, and won’t get kicked out a semester early for having too many credits for at least a bit longer. … *Cough.*
Three C’s – careers, companies, and cities
In my graduate school Career Management class, they gave region, function, and industry as factors you want to look into to focus your job search into a reasonable number of firms. I’m going to be more specific and say when you think about majors, you should think about career, company, and city, and make a short list of all three, ones that you would definitely choose over randomly generated items. (Careers should also be the smallest list, and cities the largest.) And try to narrow it down as far as possible by logic or by feel – it’s not like they won’t hire you if you cross off their name today. I pinky swear. Promise.
After you have a decently short list, think about organizing the list into similar categories. Think critically. Do your cities fall into a certain region where a certain language is important? What is the common link between these companies? What does this job require of its worker? Etcetera. Do some research, take a few of those useless career tests – they work much better when you’re focused and don’t need them as much, ironically, and stupidly – and talk to people within the industry and function. You might end up adding to the list, but hopefully it’ll still be taking you in a very specific direction that can be applied to everything on there.
Let’s say one of the things you want to do is work for Shiseido (Japanese beauty products company), in their skin products R&D division, in Tokyo. Admittedly, if all three pan out you’re very lucky. (Bastard.) You can probably expect only two, or maybe even just one of the items may pan out. (Sucker.) However, if you were seriously aiming and gearing up for that specific concept the whole time, you’ll know a lot about the cosmetics industry, have a degree that suits you for very specialized lab work in that industry, and know a good deal about Tokyo and at least some Japanese before graduation. And maybe amidst all that research about why you do want to work at Shiseido, you know of competitors or other companies which might be just as nice and where your skills are just as applicable (L’Oreal for example). It might be disappointing not to work for your top-choice, but at that point it’s their loss – you have a highly focused skill set that others would love to have.
If you say you really don’t have at least places, companies, or jobs in mind, I’ll say you’re a terrible liar, to show some nerve, and to use your brain a little for once in your miserable lifetime. Or to go work minimum wage. A few months at McDonald’s will get you motivated to do something, if anything will.
One-size-fits-all-nothing degrees
Another reason to create focus in selecting your major is to avoid majors that lack any focus whatsoever. I have an undergraduate degree in East Asian Languages and Literature, otherwise known as “Japanese Studies.” I heard, “Oh you can do anything with that degree!” so many times during undergrad studies that I actually believed it at face value. Could I? One… Two… Three… …NOT. Wish someone told me beforehand that “anything” in that sentence means “damn near nothing… suck-er, puwahaha!”
Any degree that people say “you can really do anything with that” about – get far away from it, don’t touch it, don’t look at it, don’t think about it unless you want to be unemployed or enter graduate school soon after. And even then I’m pretty sure there are better choices, like degrees with multiple branches that are actually still under the same freaking subject. (Here, I roll my eyes.) As a rule of thumb, I’d personally avoid anything with the word “general” or “studies,” or that can be rephrased as such, and would run screaming from anything with both.
Think about it this way. Would you want to hire anyone that majored in my (dear God, hopefully…) made-up degree of “General Studies?” Wait, what the hell does that even mean? They’d get called into interview just so the recruiter could ask what the hell they were doing at school the whole time. Er, don’t try that tactic.
Niching it up… on purpose
Instead of getting general studied into unemployment, you should concentrate on what you focused on waaaay up there, thinking about what major would provide the most skills and make you the most intelligent and logical choice for the recruiters you want to impress. It might seem backward to say this, but I think the more specific your degree is and the more it caters to a specific role, the more likely it is for you to get hired. There just isn’t an undergraduate degree that employers say “nope… can’t hire, too focused” to, simply because it would be too expensive for schools to do degrees like that. You have to go to the graduate level and waste a lot more money for that sort of stuff like me (lawls!).
If you’re niching on purpose, because you want to be well-qualified for a kind of city, a type of career, and a group of companies, then their recruiters will think you stand out over more generalized applicants. And you’ll know what you want, more than your nincompoop peers, floating around aimlessly. I mean, people go to graduate school to specialize. Why not do it now, retard? I’m paying $1,221 per credit hour here, y’all. It’s stupid. Do in undergrad instead and flaunt it in my face.
For example, Chris is getting a degree in biomedical engineering, I think, a specific outgrowth of typical engineering and typical biological sciences. At the same time, this is a degree with wide appeal; there are still plenty of companies interested in hiring someone with a specific background like that. I’m not sure if it was a conscious decision, considering how much he parties, but I guarantee you he’ll find a job easier in his chosen companies than other engineers or biologists with more generalist backgrounds and get paid more than most of them. I admit they might get more job offers if they’re exceptional within their class, but this is also because they are able to apply to more companies. Remember – you can only take one job offer, and you only need a single good one.
Take classes, not minors
So what about minors? The overachievers among us may want to double major to make yourself more appealing to their choice companies, but screw minors, and screw them hard; the only ones I know of that have any weight whatsoever tend to have the word “business” in them (mostly because I’m at a business school), and even that’s debatable because they tend to have the words “general” and “studies” in them too. A good position at a club looks far better on a resume; it shows more initiative, and the possibility to apply your skills to real-life work.
Instead of minors, just take courses that add relevant skills to your qualifications. You want to learn a language for an international job? Take language classes. You want some programming background? Take programming courses. Don’t take the bloody minor; it’s a waste of time and money, it’s a scheme to leech your cash, and you end up having to deal with crap you’re not interested in. You don’t need to take a bloody “General Asian Studies” minor to “generally study Asia,” and you’ll inevitably run into a class you “have to take to finish the minor” despite hating the content, the professor, or both. Wryyy?
Most importantly, employers won’t give a damn if your degree says you generally studied Asia. They care about what skills you’ve got for them, and I tell you, generally studying Asia gave shit to no one. Write what you go out of those courses you took, instead of useless minor. Take that, useless resume fillers! Fooey!
Starting over – because you can
Anyway, now that you’ve done all this crap and you are going for a Bachelor’s degree in Food and Resource Economics, that’s what you’re going to do for the rest of your life.
Aaaa-hahahahahaha! Good one, huh? I think this is the major problem for people lost on careers, especially in undergrad studies. “What if I don’t like this choice? I’ll just pick a floaty degree! Weee! I like the words ‘general’ and ’studies!’ I also like the word ‘unemployed!’”
All right. You may indeed, despite your best efforts, end up in a place you realize you detest. But what do you think people attend graduate school for? Focusing their career? Psssh, that’s what boring people do.
Graduate school, for those of us silly enough to want to do that much school, is life’s equivalent of New Game +. (I am incredibly proud of myself for making this metaphor, by the way.) Remember the first time you totally owned that freaking Blue Imp with Crono’s 70% crit Rainbow Sword? Kershing! Kashing! 1400 damage, pwnerized! The first time I did that, couldn’t help but stand up and flex my puny white arms, atrophied and pasty from too much video gaming.
Back to the topic… now you can do the real life equivalent. You keep your experience, you keep your qualifications, you keep your powered-up stats and levels, and now you can add a degree that better suits what you think your new interests may be. Masters programs are actually becoming a lot more widespread, as Bachelor degrees have become the new High School Diplomas. (If you want to know why, think about the trend of average intelligence on Facebook from inception till today.) Chances are there is something at a premium brand school that will provide you with an excellent background, regardless of your current one.
After actually entering it myself to meet qualifications for what I want to do, I’ve realized that many people use graduate school it to switch career paths entirely, even – or probably “especially” – at the MBA level. At graduate schools, you re-get access to career resources, are capable of forming new networks, and companies actually come to you on many campuses for career fairs. Lots of schools seek diversity within their graduate ranks, since business and law (is there such a thing?) majors are – zomg! NUWAI - not the only people seeking business and law degrees, and companies like graduate degrees holders with diverse and strong backgrounds, experience, and skills. 50% of the people here at Thunderbird – a business school – have engineering/comp-sci degrees, and I’ll bet they get hired into great companies faster than me, at great positions, despite the fact I spent 5 years learning a new language to one-up all of them. Hey guys! Screw you!
Graduate school is also an eventual destination for many careers – you hit a degree cap, sort of, and have to return to school to qualify yourself for the next advancement. For those people, it’s not a possible investment; it’s pretty much semi-inevitable. Sure, if you love what you do – go ahead! Get even more specialized and qualified for your line of work. You boring fogey. But there’s no rule that says you can use the chance to switch direction instead, if you need to. That’s what the cool people do, I hear.
Stop floating, start walking
Even with all my amazing, genius-level wisdom and advice, there’s probably someone out there that would read this (ha-ha, people reading my blog, ha-ha) and think, “Well, that was shit. Didn’t help a dime. Freaking squinty-eyed Asian bastard.” My response is, first of all, screw you, and secondly, you can’t really tell if you will love or hate something until you step out to see what it’s like; it tends to happen very little just going through regular university life, and even less if you have no direction and sit there dicking around, being emo about your lack thereof (direction, that is, but feel free to misinterpret). That, by the way, was not derived from personal experience. Definitely not.
So stop floating around and pick a direction. Start walking. Change direction if you see a cliff, obviously. But don’t stop. Pretend you’re going somewhere focused. You’ll find yourself not pretending a lot quicker that way and much more likely to get employed.
