#college major
6. University of Connecticut - Puppet Arts
If you’re going to learn to be a puppeteer anywhere, do it in the most highly-celebrated puppetry program in the nation, right?
Advice for the young, ballsy, and indecisive.
I’ve received a lot of questions from readers lately about careers and jobs, mostly from those in high school, college, or recent graduates. The questions take many forms and specific topics, but the underlying panic is:
“What the hell should I do for a career?!”
Some people seem to know innately what they were born to do, and forge ahead accordingly. Meanwhile, others struggle with the big life decision of settling on a career path. I’ve been on both sides of this coin. I’m only in my late twenties and still figuring things out myself, so I don’t suggest that I have all the answers - but I have learned a few things along the way.
Here are my words of advice, along with a few tools and resources that might help if you’re feeling stuck, indecisive, or anxious about the pressure to Choose Your Perfect Career.
First of all, though, let’s agree on one thing:
The concept of a “perfect career” as we commonly think of it is bullshit. It contains the romantic, narrow, and dangerously incorrect notion that there’s only type of job, profession, or career that you will ever be happy in.
Throw away the fairy tale.
There are no such thing as soul mates, and there is no such thing as your one true perfect career. You can be happy doing a variety of things for love and money.(click to tweet)
I held onto this belief for way too long. From a very young age I believed with full conviction that the life of a gallery-represented painter was the only career that would make me happy, and my ability to achieve this was the only measure by which I could consider myself successful (I know, heavyright?). I drowned my creativity under waves of pressure and perfectionism, trying to live up to my own lofty expectations in an intensely competitive and completely nonsensical market. Thankfully, I was able to dig myself out of this, with my love of painting fragile but intact, and my sense of self sharpened.
Chances are you’ve been trained to think very singularly about “what you want to do for the rest of your life.” You’ve been (or will be) asked to choose a major in college, maybe even put through lessons and too many extracurricular activities and given aptitude tests. And yes, to get through a college education you will need to choose a major and place your bets on a particular course of action. But the truth is, you are a dynamic, multifaceted being with so many potential directions. You will do many things in life, go down many roads you can’t even foresee right now. And what specific topic you choose to study in college really, honestly, will not matter in the long run, in most cases.
What does matter is what you choose to do with your unique matrix of interests, useful skills, and knowledge. I believe firmly in the concept of designing your own career path. Not everyone has the same path towards the same job (I’m a former painting major now working in social strategy at an advertising agency, for example), and the landscape changes every day. When I was in school, and for even a few years after, the job I have now didn’t even exist.
An entrepreneurial attitude to your career and life is no longer optional. There is no longer a blueprint to follow. You’ve got to make your own way.
(Click to tweet)
“Great! Except… I have no idea where to start.”
If you weren’t blessed with a strong passion or career direction early on in life, please know that you are in fact, quite normal. You probably even hold the advantage - you’re open to many things early on (remember how my initial passion turned out to be quite narrow?). At this stage, it’s a good idea to do some research - about yourself. You are always changing and growing, so no matter where you are in your career, it’s always helpful to check in and get to know you a little better. In my experience, there’s no better way to do this than to put pen to paper.
1. If you want to know yourself, start writing.
Guided writing exercises and workbooks were most helpful to me when I broke free of the idea that there was One True Thing I was supposed to do in life. At that point, 3 years out of college, the girl who always knew what she wanted to do with her life found herself squarely on her ass, unemployed in a new city, wondering anxiously what was next.
Books can help you, and even give you a somewhat false sense of productivity, but nothing helped more than digging up my own words and arranging them on paper in a way that made sense. It’s totally a metaphor for what’s going on inside you - a jumble of confusion, the right parts are there somewhere but out of order. In a very real way, writing helps put the puzzle pieces together.
I spent a lot of time reading and poring through books, digital downloads, and countless articles online, but nothing helped guide me through this messy, transformative process like The Desire Map by Danielle Laporte.
Because of the writing exercises and guidebooks I found in The Desire Map, I came out on the other side a little clearer, and with a firmer understanding that how I want to feel every day should be at the core of these important life decisions. Once you know this, you have your very own proverbial North Star to guide you in countless ways.
(Full disclosure: if you click the link above and decide you want to try The Desire Map too, I’ll receive a small percentage of the sale - but please know I would never endorse something I didn’t use and love myself. In fact, I purchased The Desire Map years ago and still refer to the scribbled notes I took in it frequently.)
And if you already have a passion, and are sure you know what you want to do, great!
As you get older and more experienced, be open to letting that unfold and evolve. I clung desperately to this narrow idea of what I was supposed to do with my life mostly out of fear. Everyone my whole life expected me to become a successful artist, and I’d seen so many people give up along the way – the last thing I wanted was to be seen as giving up too. But after a while, I realized I’ll always be an artist so long as I keep painting, external recognition be damned - and anyone who thinks otherwise can jump in a lake. Plenty of successful artists hold down day jobs, and many even keep them when they don’t need the money because they like them and find them fulfilling. It doesn’t have to be so black and white.
Which leads me to my second piece of advice…
2. If you want to understand how others have done it, stalk people on LinkedIn.
When I was “squarely on my ass” and unemployed with no direction, the reason I figured out what kind of careers might be a good fit for me is I incessantly stalked people on LinkedIn.
Get on LinkedIn if you’re not, and search for people who started from similar places. It’s not hard to reverse-engineer their career paths. How did they move from one job to another? The more digital-savvy of them will have very complete profiles that easily allow you to examine how they got from A to B, or what traits or job responsibilities helped them pivot from one industry or role to another if something wasn’t working for them.
LinkedIn recently even launched a tool called Field of Study Explorer to make your stalking/reverse-engineering even easier. Check it out in their new blog post (well worth a read all on its own), “Does Studying Fine Art = Unemployment? Introducing LinkedIn’s Field of Study Explorer.”
A writer for Mashable also tested this idea, working with LinkedIn’s data science team to find his “future self” among other LinkedIn users with a similar background: “How LinkedIn Found My ‘Future’ Self.”
In my case, there were several people who unknowingly helped me understand what my possibilities were, but one in particular later became my friend. One day while searching for profiles and jobs on LinkedIn, I saw that a fun-looking woman around my age named Elysa had attended my university for a graphic design degree and worked her way from designer to well-known leader in the field of digital strategy (and a successful blogger to boot!). She was kind enough to meet me for coffee on her way to a speaking engagement at SXSW. I learned so much from that one conversation – as a jobless 25 year old, I understood at that point that the only thing separating me from progress was myself.
The only thing was, I still needed to figure out how to make money from what I’d discovered with The Desire Map.
Remember that unique matrix of useful skills, interests, and knowledge I mentioned earlier?
3. Well, here it is:
Click here to use this Google Sheet for yourself: http://bit.ly/gridtoolmv
It’s critical to remember that if you want to make money at something, it has to be useful to others. This very basic principle applies whether you’re someone’s assistant (no shame here, I’ve done it!) in which you are selling your organizational services in exchange for benefits and a salary, or you’re a gallery painter selling the product of artwork that brings real joy to its new owners.
To understand these transactions as anything else (I’m just an employee! I’m not selling anythingor,I’m not selling a product - how dare you, I’m an artist!) is to not fully understand business or the real world, or as Ramit Sethi calls it, the game being played around you. And the sooner you get on board with this concept, the better equipped you’ll be to find a career that both makes you happy and makes you money.
My very sincere advice would be to think long and hard about what you enjoy doing (even just hobbies - doesn’t have to be “job-like”) and what you’re naturally skilled at (things like “being a good listener” and “talking to people about their problems” totally count here, by the way) and compare that to what you think might actually be useful to random people you don’t know. Put more simply,
What are you good at or enjoy doing that solves other people’s problems?
Start there. With some soul searching, writing, and very realistic analysis, you’ll find yourself starting down a path to a long, lucrative career path that is uniquely yours, fun, exciting and never static.
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STOP TELLING COLLEGE EDUCATED PEOPLE AND THOSE STILL IN COLLEGE WHAT TO STUDY!
I keep seeing people on Twitter, Facebook and other social media whining about college students who go to school for majors such as philosophy, gender studies, English Lit., fine arts or any other major they deem “useless” in the job market. And I don’t see anyone else combating these ignorant people. So I will…
I’ve noticed that a lot of these people are Trump supporters, the same people who keep lying to everyone about how America is the best country in the world and about how we have the most freedoms and blah, blah, blah. Well the fact is, we’re not. We let tax paying citizens starve and die because they can’t afford to feed themselves or their families on their full-time salaries and/or they’re mired in debt from medical expenses. There are even people like this man who can’t afford to retire or when they do, they’re forced to go back to work and can’t find decent work. I can already hear you Trump supporters and conservatives saying “oh, that’s his fault, he deserves that, he should have thought ahead!” If that’s what you’re saying, watch this. It doesn’t matter if you have a well-paying job anymore and if you do “everything you’re supposed to do,” shit happens. You can spend your entire life saving money and all of a sudden, get into an accident that drains your savings because your insurance all of a sudden decides that they don’t want to cover your medical expenses for your hospital stay. You become screwed and there goes most of your savings. Suddenly, there’s barely enough money for you to retire with and you have to go back to work once you enter your senior years. The stock market also has an effect on people’s pensions and investments as well. If a company goes bankrupt, they can take their workers’ pensions down with them. There goes your retirement. Other first world countries don’t let this happen.
Another thing that these people often claim is how free we are as a society. Yet, they are the ones trying to control what people do with their lives such as who to marry, what women can do with their bodies, which people are allowed to live in this country and how much responsibility the government has to it’s tax payers. They love touting the words of the founding fathers and talking about the constitution and other such documents without even knowing what these documents entail. For example…
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.”
For anyone who doesn’t know where this quote originates, it was written in the Declaration of Independence.
“…that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness…”
Our declaration of Independence states that we, as American citizens have the right to pursue happiness. If a young adult wishes to pursue an education in a field that they are passionate about, be that gender studies or fine arts, do they not have that right? It is written in the Declaration of Independence, one of the most important documents in American history. As an American, it is un-American for anyone to question one’s right to pursue happiness if it does not cause harm to another human being and their right to pursue happiness.
“…That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it,…”
We live in a nation whose government denies tax payers, the people who pay the government to keep us safe, healthcare. In other first-world countries such as those in Scandinavia, healthcare is a basic human right for their citizens. Why should any American citizen who has worked hard all their life have to suffer the rest of their retirement mired in medical debt? Why should any parent have to watch their child die because their job’s insurance refuses to cover their medical expenses? If our government isn’t taking care of working citizens, as the Declaration of Independence states, we have the right to alter the government to assure that it is working for us and not against us. Health care should be a right, not a privilege. We should have single-payer health care like the rest of the modern world.
State and City colleges should also be free–just like they are in other developed countries. If a student is going to spend tens of thousands of dollars on their education, they should be able to study a field that they’re passionate about and have an acuity for. Another thing that most non-college educated people don’t know is that schools can only admit a certain amount of students per year, meaning that not everyone even gains admission into college. Going to college, for many people is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity and is a privilege. Some people can’t even afford to go to college because it simply costs too much money.
For the people who might be saying “well, if it’s that difficult to attend college, wouldn’t you want to study in a field that’s in high demand so that you stand a better chance of getting a job when you graduate?” Well, it becomes a problem when too many people want to enter a certain field just because it’s in high demand. So many people apply for certain programs that wait-lists are created for the people that didn’t get in. I know someone who is currently on a wait-list for a medical program that trains students for a field that is in high demand. Not everyone can enter that field and not everyone is going to enter that field because they’re are just too little spots open for admissions. The job market then becomes saturated because of this and soon there won’t be any jobs left in that particular field because too many people have taken jobs in that field.
Not everyone can be doctor, or an engineer, or a lawyer, or a scientist or any other high-paying college degree requiring position.
WE NEED ARTISTS AND DESIGNERS
Question: Did you grow up reading picture books, comics or prose? Did those books not have illustrations or other art inside or on the cover? Who do you think created those images? Fine Arts and Illustration Majors. Or sometimes, these artists didn’t even attend college, they were self-taught and they made connections with writers–people who majored in Literature or other liberal arts. Illustration Majors and Graphic Designers also illustrate important and useful things like instruction manuals, signs, warning labels and visual aids for children and the disabled. Designers, people who attend art and design schools design literally everything around you; your house or apartment (architects and interior designers), your laptop (CAD drafters who work with engineers and Tech majors), the posters on your walls (Illustrators and Graphic Designers) your linens (textile designers), your clothes (fashion designers) the packaging for your food and all the items you buy (Illustrators and Graphic Designers as well), your game station, lotion containers, your car, your shoes (product designers). Where in the hell would our country be if we didn’t have artist and designers creating all of these things? Most engineers can’t even draw. They can’t build bridges if there’s no one to design them. Also, those Fine-Arts majors who create paintings and sculptures–these artworks don’t just create vibrant spaces out of boring plain rooms, they create an outlet for people to express themselves in non-violent ways and can be very therapeutic. If you have any art in your home or have ever visited an art museum or if you allow your child to draw at home or take art classes in school, you’re a hypocrite.
WE NEED LIBERAL ARTISTS
Question: Do you enjoy reading books, watching educational programs or have you ever attended school at all? Your Language Arts teacher–the person who taught you how to read and write and your English teacher, the person who taught you how to analyze and understand texts better–was mostly likely an English major. A lot of Liberal Arts and History majors are also researchers who have discovered a lot of important historical information. These are the scholars who interview people about their experiences so we can learn more from our past so that we don’t repeat certain mistakes in the future. A lot of these people work with Film Majors so make documentaries and educational programming. If you think that there are too many young people studying Liberal Arts right now, just remember, older historians aren’t going to be around forever. We still need a new generation of educators, researchers and scholars in this field to create more of that content. Every day, people who study Liberal Arts are discovering new things. I know how much you people love people who go into Gender Studies. These are the people are breaking down gender norms and trying to create a society where both men and woman treat each other as equals by analyzing and breaking down harmful gender norms. (I know, the idea of this triggers you and you’re probably screaming that this is a load of BS and about how you hate feminists and more uniformed nonsense.)
WE NEED PHILOSOPHERS AND SOCIOLOGISTS
Philosophers and sociologists are the people who change the world and help inform politics. They change the way that we think about ourselves, each other and the world at large. They are the scholars who start revolutions. People such as Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Noam Chomsky studied such fields. I know how much you conservatives love to champion MLK Jr. as a bastion of conservative values. How do you feel knowing that while he was attending Morehouse College, he studied sociology, a field that you deem “useless”? He also studied theology, a field where you can only hope to become a pastor. He used his studies to inform his stance on human rights and equality and how we as Americans could achieve it. MLK Jr. is the first person that comes to everyone’s mind when we think about civil rights in America. And that’s right…he was a sociology major. Philosophy and Sociology teach us to open our minds, think freely and challenge many of the norms in our society and many people in this country who study these fields go on the help change laws, protest against injustice and make us ask ourselves if we are truly able to pursue happiness in our society–again, as long as it doesn’t bring harm to other people. Ask yourself: Would you have gone back and time and told Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. that studying Sociology was a waste of time and that he would never find a job with his degree? I don’t think so. You know who else studied philosophy in college? Bruce fucking Lee. Yeah, go back in time and tell him that was pointless as well.
In conclusion…
If you’re going around on the internet telling people that they wasted their time studying any of these things in college–you have the right to do so but just think about how different the world would be if we didn’t have anyone studying these fields that you deem “useless.” No 20-year old who’s studying Gender Studies is going into your house every night taking food out of your child’s mouth or taking money out of your wallet. If they’re (we) are complaining that we can’t find jobs after we graduate, so are a bunch of Baby Boomers who can’t afford to retire because they ran into a financial snag or got screwed over by the company they worked for all their life. The job market sucks for a lot of people and guess what? It costs money to go to trade school. If you are truly tired of millennials complaining about not being able to find work, why don’t you tell us how you found work or if there’s any free or low-cost training programs that we could take for fields like plumbing, carpentry or any other trade? Stop bitching about our complaining and do something. Not everyone can do what you did to become successful or get as lucky as you did.
Sincerely,
An Illustration major who, if lucky, will be getting the chance to illustrate books and create cartoons alongside a Business Major that will teach children on how to start their own businesses. I currently am experiencing difficulties finding a decent job that actually requires a degree (preferably, an administrative assistant job) but I am stuck working part-time and doing deliveries for a restaurant. I live with my girlfriend in our own apartment (for those who want to call me a loser who’s stuck living at home). In the past, I have also worked as a media assistant for a non-profit (got laid off from that job), a teacher’s assistant (the job didn’t always pay on time and caused me to go into debt), an after-school teacher (also got laid off) and a group leader for an after-school program (I, along with 5 other people in the same year quit because the management and a lot of the kids in that program were terrible).
P.S
IT’S NOT WHAT YOU STUDY IN COLLEGE THAT MATTERS, IT’S WHAT YOU DO WITH YOUR STUDIES WHEN YOUR GRADUATE.
