On the How Did You Choose Your College? post, Missy asked if there could be another post where people say what their major was and what job(s) they got with that. She says: “Part of the reason I think it is so hard for kids to pick majors is ‘what kind of job would that be’?”
I agree. One of Rob’s potential majors is theoretical math. Not applied math: theoretical. And definitely my question there is what kind of JOB would that be?
Also, I think it’s so interesting to see how there can be a huge gap between major and job: sometimes they are (or seem) almost completely unconnected.
So let’s talk about that today, in whatever way applies to you. For example, maybe you can say, “This was my major, and here are some of the jobs associated with that major.” Or maybe you can say, “This was my major, but this is where I ended up, because etc.” Or maybe you can say, “This was my major, and there are NO JOBS, so I went back for schooling in this other thing.” Or maybe you will want to tell what happened with someone else. Just, whatever you think applies to this discussion.
Here is what I would rather not see, if we can avoid it: fighting about whether it’s better to go with a major that is attached to a definite employment path, or whether it’s better to follow one’s heart/interests regardless of future employment possibilities. It seems clear to me that the answer to that dilemma is “Sometimes one way is better, sometimes the other way is better, and it’s super-hard to figure out in advance which way is best for an individual person and their individual interests/life.” I’d rather stick, if possible, to stories about “This major —-> this job.”
I love this question! I knew I wanted to be a teacher since I was literally four years old. Or–at least–I never wavered much. I knew I’d want to get an M.Ed, so instead of majoring in education, I picked English. I loved to read and wanted to be an English teacher, so it seemed like the most enjoyable course of study that wouldn’t backtrack my plans for graduate school. Sure enough, I got my M.Ed immediately after undergrad. I spent one year teaching, then worked in publishing in NYC, test prep in Boston, went back to teaching but in more of a special education vein (which I loved), and then started having lots of babies and left the workforce for a while. The whole plan worked out great for me.
Mine is boring. I majored in Elementary Education, and I got a job teaching.
I did go back to school to get my master’s in reading education. I still teach, but now they have to pay me closer to what I’m worth. :P
Mine is similar–I majored in Deaf Education and became…a Deaf Educator. I went back for my M.A. in reading, too, and for 2 years taught RTI reading in a public school, but am back to teaching students with hearing loss.
I had a double major in English and political science. I am currently a features journalist; however, that hasn’t been my job all along (I graduated in 1999.) Since graduating I have been an English teacher (in a private school, since I was not certified), an editor for a non-profit organization, an editor for a parenting magazine, a freelance writer, and now this. So while all the jobs I’ve had are related to my degree–at least my English one–there isn’t “a job” that goes with it.
For what it’s worth, I started college intending to major in Spanish and study pre-law.
I had no idea what I wanted to do, and when finally forced to pick a major I chose English, mainly because I like to read. I also earned a teaching certificate, thinking I might teach high school English, but my student teaching experience quickly cured me of that idea. After college I moved to Colorado and spent a lot of time snowboarding and rock climbing, much to my parents’ chagrin. But! When I finally tired of that life, I became a magazine editor. An English degree is good for something after all!
I love this topic! I struggled with choosing a major because I wasn’t really sure what I wanted to do. In the end, I chose a more generic major, Communications. I will say utilizing your school’s career center and/or counseling center is a huge help in this area. I was able to complete some assessments that helped guide me to general areas in which I had aptitude and/or interest. I then focused on how I could really increase those skills and be in a major that I found interesting. So, communications it was.
I’ll add that, in my experience, internships and/or just general work experience also play a big part. Although I graduated with honors I am 100% certain I would not have landed the job I did out of college without having some actual experience. I might say that for many students the job experience and internships could be more valuable than the specific major (obviously may not apply if you want to be an Engineer, clearly you have to have an Engineering degree for that — or other more technical careers).
After graduation and working I felt a strong pull towards something more. I loved my job (marketing and PR for a healthcare system) but new that wasn’t the end of the road. I was quite passionate about social justice and for that manifested in public health. I went back to graduate school part-time (my job at the time actually paid most of my tuition because I could justify how the classes were relevant to my current job) and earned a Master’s degree in Public Health.
Today, many years later, I do not work in a field that would be considered traditional for either Communications or Public Health. However, I utilize skills and training from both of those fields daily and am thankful those are the degree paths I took.
I majored in English because it was what I loved and was good at. At first, I ended up working retail but then went back to grad school for a degree in writing. Though I am not currently publishing, it DID get me an administrative job at a university and I also teach in two different places. I am very happy that I still get to teach students how to write and work within the university setting.
I majored in Accounting, with a minor in Religion, but I decided I didn’t want to be an accountant. So I went to law school and got an LLM in tax law. Now I am an employee benefits and executive compensation lawyer. I’d say that accounting mostly prepares you to be an accountant or tax lawyer, although I know people who seem to be on track for more general business management positions (like CFO).
I got a degree is psychology. I didn’t know that you had to get at least a masters to do anything in the field. I went back and took the alternative route to become a special ed teacher. While I don’t use my degree “on paper” in my field, it comes in handy each and every day!
I have a similar story. Started out as a biology major (turns out, I LIKE science and math, but am not super great at it, at a higher level… whoops!), and then transitioned into being a psych major once I realized biology wasn’t going to work out. Graduated (2004) with a BA in psychology with a minor in criminal justice. Intended to go back to school for a Masters in social work, after working for a few years. Decided to work those few years in my parents engineering business, rather than work somewhere random… and after a few years decided school sounded awful. I have done most every job here (accounting, purchasing, some sales stuff, etc), but transitioned into HR and Operations once my mom retired. Unsurprisingly, my psych degree is REALLY USEFUL in dealing with people and all their various neuroses every day.
Me too, I had no idea my degree would not get me a job in Psychology. I don’t know what I was thinking…
I went to school to do my Bachelor’s in Journalism, but quickly realized (in my 1st year) I didn’t actually want to be a journalist. I switched to major in history and decided I wanted to be an Archivist, for which my Bachelor of Arts in History would allow me to get into a Masters in Archival Studies. The summer after I finished my BA, I had a brain wave that I wanted to be a doctor, so I went back to school to get my Bachelor of Science (which in Canada you can do in a much shorter time if you already have a degree). In my first semester of science, I found out how the publishing world worked, decided I wanted to be there, and got into a two week intensive program that led to me getting a job. My BA made me 100% qualified to work in publishing, so that worked out well. I worked my way up in publishing until I found myself in supply chain and loved it. At that point, for a lot of different reasons, I quit my job, did my MBA, and now have a (better paid) job in supply chain in another industry. Most people I know who work in supply chain have a business degree of some kind, either at the undergraduate or graduate level.
But my main advice is not just to consider whether your major in undergrad will lead to a job on it’s own, but to also layer in considerations of whether you need to go to graduate school in order to do the job you want. That’s not necessarily THAT important in your first year, but choices you make in subsequent years can impact getting into grad school, which can impact getting the job you want.
OK I’m game. I knew that my undergraduate major – Psychology – wasn’t a career path major. I always knew that I would be going to graduate school (which Rob may want to do as well to “clarify” or build on his major). I chose Community Counseling because it was broad and would fit many areas. I had one short job with developmentally delayed adults before I found my calling working in higher education. My major did help me get here but I use it in a different way than I thought I would while in school.
I majored in Anthropology with a minor in Biology. The jobs associated with that are primarily academic and require advanced degrees. I got a job working in my public library system as a reference assistant and decided to get a masters degree in library science after a couple years of working there. Then I got a job at a law firm and decided to go to law school. Now I homeschool 4 children.
I should add that I knew in advance that the career path for an anthropologist would require advanced degrees and that I wasn’t likely to pursue that career. I enjoyed my field of study and got good grades and figured I’d find a job at something. This was the late 90’s and the job market was good. It turned out I was right because I sent out a bunch of resumes, got a few interviews and was offered jobs in all kinds of fields (besides the library, there were consulting firms and banks and brokerage firms). I decided I liked the library best so I chose that. I wanted to work at a museum, but those were not hiring at the time. The library was as close as I could get.
I also know theoretical math majors who are successfully employed!
Please note that, for some majors, timing and the economy is what makes the difference, job-wise. I graduated in 87 with a history major from an Ivy League college, and I had to enlist in the Navy to get a job where I could afford to live on my own and pay back my loans (not a lot, by today’s standards, but still…). On the other hand, my friends who graduated in 97 with music majors and other liberal arts majors were offered ground-floor positions in the booming tech industry and are making mucho dollars today. Not that I am jealous or anything…
My point being, it’s tricky advising our kids, because you just don’t know what the economy will be doing when they graduate! My daughter is studying Arabic and International Relations, and we’ve already told her not to expect a decent job when she graduates (next year). So at least she is prepared to line up an internship that will bolster her resume and give her better chances in the job market a couple of years from now, rather than searching fruitlessly for employment right away. And the only reason she is able to do that is because she has no loans to pay back.
Timing is an important and horrifyingly unknowable consideration! I finished undergrad in 08- hello recession. Granted, I had already planned to go to grad school, so I ended up riding out the recession that way, but even when I finished (in 2011) it was hard. To this day, I have never had a full time with benefits type of job (sorry, not an encouraging anecdote). I have worked full time/hourly, and I have patched together part time jobs, all related to one or another of my fields of study, sometimes both. Diversification!
If Rob is interested in a particular school, have him contact the math department and ask what recent graduates have gone on to do. Faculty should know, but universities are truly run by a legion of what I like to call Helpful Office Ladies. Talk to the helpful office lady. Once he chooses a school, he should befriend her. This also applies to financial aid and admissions advice. The ladies know all and see all (and have seen it all!).
I went to school planning to major in “business” and try to get into the prestigious business school at my university. But then I got a ‘D’ in calculus (a pre-req) and had to change my mind.
My advisor (use your advisors! they are so helpful!) suggested Ad/PR instead. But when I looked at the Journalism school, I realized, ‘Hey, I’ve been writing ALL my life. I should go into print journalism.’
I graduated from the print journo program. In my last year of college I had THREE internships that involved magazines and newspapers. After college I was underemployed for a whole year – with a part-time internship a paper for awhile. I finally got a job at one of the two big city magazines. (My degree was a big part of that, but my internship experience was a BIGGER part.)
I stayed there for 10 years moving up the ranks from staff writer to managing editor of an entire division. But the writing was on the wall that magazines were struggling – and the pay was crap – so I started looking elsewhere.
I now write curriculum for a technical college and manage the internal communications of that college.
That’s the thing about writing. It’s a transferable skill, so you can end up almost anywhere, if you know how to write well. Maybe the same could be said for math? Rob could be anything from a teacher to a economist to a researcher… who knows?! But I’m sure there are companies everywhere that need people who can think the right away about numbers and math.
I was a history major at a small liberal arts school in New England. I went into college thinking I wanted to be a doctor (my school and other similar schools didn’t have “pre-professional” programs you took the pre-reqs for med school and then had whatever major you wanted). My parents counseled against taking any serious math or science courses first year because they felt the transition to college was big enough I didn’t need to be taking any classes that would seriously influence my future. So, first year I stuck to general requirements, realized I loved English and history and would be sad to give those courses up to take science courses and thus became a history major who took a lot of English courses.
I graduated in 2002 and promptly moved to London and worked at Sotheby’s as a auction assistant in Western Manuscripts– I did general office tasks (phones etc) and also worked with clients and customers. I got the job through a temp agency in London and was lucky because most people have to take unpaid internships for a year or two to get a paying job at an auction house. It was great fun and I was really over in London to experience living and working abroad rather than gain actual employment experience. It has, however, stood me well in my career as it’s a great talking point for interviews.
I moved from London to New York and began working in fashion in 2004. I got my job through the advice of a family friend who referred me to a head hunter. I worked in sales at a large luxury leather goods company, then moved to a smaller design firm and then to another large American luxury brand where I was a director of sales working with large department stores. In 2010 I left that job and started a design firm with a friend and former colleague. After a year it became clear that it wasn’t taking off the way we needed it to and I needed a new job. I was sick of fashion, not sure what I wanted to do next so back to the headhunters I went and landed a job in publishing where I worked with the executive office on business strategy. Turns out I had a knack for it and in the past 4 years have moved from publishing to media and am now in financial services still working in corporate communications and strategy.
All this to say, I was a history major because I loved it and I’ve built a pretty great career based on my abilities to communicate clearly. I’m a firm believer in a liberal arts education teaching folks how to read, write and think. I’m also a go-getter who was fortunate enough to graduate without debt and had the ability to take low paying gigs for a while which helped as I figured out what I wanted to do.
I majored in Biology intending to become a doctor and that’s what I did, just finished my pediatrics residency last month. What’s interesting to me is that while there are plenty of jobs (I assume) that I could get with a B.S. In biology I always considered I would need to get a graduate degree as well. I think this is because most of my family is in careers where you need to get a specific degree (teacher, lawyer, nurse, engineer, etc.) and so I wasn’t really exposed to the non-traditional job hunt or working your way up and becoming involved in a field you hadn’t planned on.
I have a friend with a B.S. in Biology who jobhunted from 2012 to this year with zero success except at Jimmy Johns. He ultimately retrained as a computer guy (coding, maybe webdev?) and got a job almost instantly.
I was a comparative literature major and ended up getting a job teaching immediately after college. After two years doing that, I got a job working in politics. After two years of that, I went to law school and now I practice law. I found my undergrad degree useful in that strong writing skills have been valuable in all of my jobs.
Can’t wait to read all of these. I find this fascinating.
I majored in French (language and cultural studies), minored in English.
My jobs have all been editorial related – proofreader/customer service for a printing company/marketing-content/writer.
(I feel like it helped my writing to have to write papers in a 2nd language for my major.)
Majored in English. Worked at a paralegal for a year after I graduated, then went to graduate school in English.
While I was in grad school, I had various standard humanities grad student jobs, doing various backing-vocals sorts of jobs for professors (tutoring students, leading discussion sections, grading, teaching intro level courses, proofreading). I also worked as an adjunct at another college and as a researcher and writer in another field.
Then I realized I would never get a good job in college-level teaching, and I left.
I temped for a while, then got a job at a trade newsletter in a field about which I knew nothing. The company hired all sorts of people who probably seemed unqualified, provided they could write, think critically, and learn new subject matter quickly, and provided they were willing to commit to working there for two years.
Then I left to work for the government as an editor, again on a subject I knew very little about, but I was able to point to previous jobs and say I had a lot of experience producing clear prose on topics I didn’t fully understand.
One of my closest friends at work got her degree in engineering and started off doing something closely related to her field. She left that department and now does something that’s much more administrative/strategic/HR-ish/financial. I don’t know that she regrets her degree, but she was pushed by her parents to do something “sensible” — and she didn’t exactly mind, because she found engineering interesting — but even the surefire career plan can unravel if it’s not what you really love. But in her case, it got her a job with education benefits, so at least she could have some help getting her next degree.
Fun! I have a BA in English and Theatre and worked as the Patron Services Manager for a live theatre for several years. (Basically ticket sales, customer service, marketing). Then I went back to school for an MA in English thinking I wanted to teach. I did a little of that, but then I did marketing and fundraising for two private girls’ schools. I took time off/mat leave when I had my kids. Then started a farm with my husband. Now, I also work as the Executive Director of a farm policy non-profit. I think my theatre and English skills have helped make me fairly well rounded, but the best training I probably ever got was waiting tables while I was doing my degree. Nothing teaches you customer service skills like that!
I majored in Art History and Political Science. Neither one was particularly practical and I had no idea what I was going to do with my life. I sort of stumbled into working in magazine publishing at the entry level and that eventually grew into a career in copywriting and marketing. I don’t really use either of my majors, but I do think my college education gave me the skills I needed to succeed professionally. It just wasn’t a direct line from what I studied.
My first degree was in Biology because I too wanted to go to medical school….that is until I went to medical school, ha! After becoming a med school drop out I realized I never really liked Biology in the first place (oops!) but my favorite classes in high school/college were Math and Chemistry. So I got a degree in Chemical Engineering and moved to Houston, TX. My first job was for a major oil company as a reservoir engineer. After that I worked for a smaller A&D firm (acquisitions & divestitures…like a real estate agent but for oil and gas properties) which was a blast. My current job is still in O&G but with a smaller company in my home town. My role involves more budgeting/finance/business planning and I absolutely love it! The best part is that I work part time, make my own schedule, and I am close to my family and my boys’ school!
I started as a chemistry major because I wanted to be a bench scientist. Then organic killed me, and I switched to English, HAHA. But I actually still enjoyed being in the lab, so I kept a chem minor, and my English department had a concentration in technical writing, so I did that. I was able to swap out some of the literature classes with courses in publication, technical writing, technical editing, etc. I also took on the brunt of writing the reports for my lab groups. Somewhere along the line (junior year?), I learned that there was such a thing as a medical writer, and that was what I wanted to do. So I got internships with firms that did technical editing and writing in the scientific field, and eventually (2nd job in), I got a job as a medical editor at a children’s hospital. THEN, I got a job as a writer in the pharmaceutical field, which is what I was aiming for all along. In that way, it was a pretty straight line between English/science -> writing about medical research.
(Then my pharmaceutical company got bought out, I was laid off, and I got a job in finance. Still a lot of writing/project management/distillation of ideas, but not nearly as direct a connection to my studies.)
If I could do it again, I would have gone straight to library school after undergrad. I equated library degrees with school or public libraries, so I had NO IDEA that someone could be a librarian of knowledge in an academic or corporate setting. That was definitely a case of not knowing what jobs even exist and also not having high self-awareness of what type of work environment would help me to thrive.
I started as a pre-PT (physical therapy) major, but chickened out with the calculus requirement. I’m still kind of a medical/injury/body mechanics junkie & I think I would have liked a hands-on job in rehab, especially with athletes. But I’ve also always liked to write, so I combined my interest in science with writing & got a bachelor of science degree in Scientific and Technical Communication (97). I worked in digital media course development for the university for a while, did a work abroad program in the UK (temp jobs) and basically missed out on any dot com boom jobs whatsoever. When I decided to settle down a bit, I joined a Very Large Tech Company as a technical writer. Moved around between several related jobs, supervised several teams of other writers, and eventually that morphed into project management. On the side, I got my Masters degree in Library and Information Science, with a goal of being a science librarian at a university. But the pay cut was enormous (50% or more) and the promised jobs had started evaporati g when I graduated in 2007 as all the working librarians discovered they couldn’t afford to retire. So I kept my tech industry job, becoming a certified project manager & still working in technical writing. Just over a year ago I took a program management job in the early adoption/product beta testing area, working with external customers. I love it – I’m a team of one (INTJ) but I reach across all our internal teams (development, test, marketing, manufacturing) and get a ton of customer contact.
I majored in English (loved reading and writing, didn’t really know what I wanted to do) and got my first job at an advertising agency. I liked it there, but the agency focused on display advertising so my role there was mostly traffic management and customer service. I was looking for a more copywriting-based advertising job when I found out I was expecting. So I stayed at the display agency until I had my daughter and was a stay-at-home mom for 7 years. During that time, I did freelance writing for a small publishing business.
I started looking for a full-time job when my kids were 7 and 4. I didn’t want to go back to the agency (which didn’t thrive during the recession anyway) and I was always very interested in government and politics. I ended up working in the state legislature, which I LOVE and have now been doing for almost 4 years. I’m going back to law school this fall and hoping to end up doing policy analysis or government relations with my law degree.
I majored in Accounting, which has a very clear career path, if you choose to take it (I’m a CPA). I would recommend majoring in Accounting to anyone who is considering ANY kind of business major. The reason is that you can get jobs in finance, economics, marketing, etc. with an accounting degree, but not vice versa.
I almost majored in math (I was thinking of becoming an actuary, which I ALSO could do with my accounting degree). I know several people in medical school who majored in math.
I had no idea what I wanted when I got to college. I somehow fell into Economics and also minored in Geography (because it was fun?). I ended up as a research analyst at an enviromental consulting company after college — but not one that did like science-y analysis — this was more cost benefit analysis stuff — major clients were mostly government bodies like the EPA. E.g. what is the cost of a new environmental regulation (example: jobs lost or increased production cost) versus the benefit (example: reduced health costs due to less asthma attacks). So actually relevant to my major! I liked building models (pretty basic – mainly Excel and basic database stuff) when I was there. Then I went to business school and got a dual degree — MBA and a Masters of Information Systems. Now I work at a financial software company. The moral of the story I guess is — Economics can be pretty useful after college and allows you to go in a lot of different paths. Basically any major which makes you think hard and be logical while you are studying it can be useful, is my point of view.
Like Ronelle I got a BA in psychology which did not qualify me for anything except that it met the “four year college degree” requirement. I ended up teaching HIV prevention workshops in middle and high schools, then worked at a mediation center, then taught 7th grade social studies, then SAT preparation. I stayed home with my kids for a few years when they were little and finally figured out that I wanted to be a genetic counselor. So now, at age 40, I have just finished a masters degree and landed a job I love. I think it’s ok if you don’t know the answers in college or if the answers change later!
I think it is so cool that you became a genetic counselor later in life. I was aware of the genetic counseling profession since college, because I have a friend who decided to go that route. But I became INTIMATELY acquainted with the genetic counseling department at our local university after having three confirmed losses caused by gross chromosomal abnormalities (trisomy 4, Turner Syndrome, and triploidy, if you are curious). I have daydreamed about becoming a genetic counselor now (I’m in my mid-thirties) but have felt like it is too late to start over. Bravo for you!
I’m so sorry for your losses.
I also really want to tell you it’s not too late! But obviously only you know what works in your own life situation. A lot of genetic counseling programs value having an older student in the class because our perspective is different from the students who are coming straight from undergrad.
I wanted to go to art school (parents said NO), started as an engineering major (because I’m good at math) and switched to Mathematics as a freshman. I have a BS in Mathematics and an MS in Applied Mathematics.
I have been a college professor, I’ve run a beef jerky company, and now I’m a homeschool mom who teaches dual credit college algebra and trig. Some of my classmates have gone on to be actuaries, doctors, lawyers, working in tracking, metrics and procurement in industries, and teachers.
In my experience, Mathematics is a surprisingly good degree. There’s a lot of paths it can take, depending on your specific interests and skillsets.
I majored in civil engineering because I have a love of math and science and that seemed like a concrete place to apply it. At my school, the civil engineering degree exposed you to four different “paths” (construction management, transportation engineering, soils engineering and structural engineering – I realize there are more paths than these for civil engineers but this was my school) and with very little experience, you could chose a paid internship over multiple semesters – a co-op – in one of these focus areas. I chose construction management because I thought watching buildings go up and coordinating that effort would be awesome and I could get a job where I lived at home, saved up that money, and used it for the next semester of school. Do you know what shy people who hate talking on the phone, conflict of any kind, and coordination should not do? They should not go into construction management. I hated that job from the second day I started it. Hated it. I didn’t like the work or the people. I didn’t feel prepared to work in an office environment. Hate. I went into transportation engineering after taking more advanced classes in that. That is my current job and I like it a lot. Calculations, repetition, quiet undertaking of projects. Plus I work for a huge corporation part time so I can be with my three girls a lot more than if i managed projects that needed daily attention. A+
“Do you know what shy people who hate talking on the phone, conflict of any kind, and coordination should not do? They should not go into construction management.”
Ha! When I was in grad school (in English), I had a summer job working as a minion to people managing a construction project, and wow, was it a bad fit. “Call these people and find out why their stuff is late!” “Call these people and tell them they screwed up and aren’t getting paid.”
Precisely. By the last semester of the internship, I was legitimately panicking on Sunday nights. I am so glad that didn’t end up as my career path.
I was a history major, went to law school, and still work as a lawyer. I had only very vague ideas about what kind of job I would have. I didn’t really have any role models for most jobs because my mom stayed home and my dad was a doctor–I knew about medical jobs (which I did not want) and teachers (from school) and that was about it. And I didn’t have a lot of imagination about jobs.
I liked history, and didn’t have anything else I was dying to major in. I didn’t really know what todo after college so I went straight to law school. Which is not really an advisable plan! But it worked for me, I like the research/writing part of being a lawyer very much. I did NOT like the confrontation part so I have gradually switched to doing all appeals which are basically all on paper and you don’t have to deal with people which is perfect for me.
ALSO I started out at a big law firm which was good for making money & paying off debt, but I found a terrible place for me personally (insane hours, cut throat competition, jerk partners, etc etc). I left the firm and started working on an hourly basis for friends/former colleagues who had their own small firms. This is GREAT, I love it. It is much more erratic hours, though and I end up working much much less. Which works for me as I know have 3 kids and don’t want to work full time, but it would be a challenging career path as someone who wants a full time job.
Finally, in the last two years I have switched from doing contract (hourly) work in the civil/corporate law context to working almost exclusively on criminal defense appeals through a public interest firm. It is still hourly, pays less than civil but is very steady work and it suits me philosophically.
I majored in economics. After graduation I worked for a year as a receptionist at a law firm while I decided whether to apply for PhD programs in economics or law school. (I wanted to go into academia eventually.) I ended up applying to law schools first because the process was easier. (This thinking should have been a cue to rethink this entire plan, but I was young.) I thought I probably wouldn’t get into one of the schools that could lead to an academic career, and would end up taking the GMAT and apply for economics programs later on. But shockingly I both got into and got a decent financial aid package at my top choice school. Yay? So I went to a very competitive law school, started out doing the things that I’d need to do if I wanted to be an academic, but I realized in my second year that I just didn’t have enough ambition for that career path. So I graduated law school and took a job at a big fancy law firm doing non-fancy law stuff. Stuck it out for three years and then moved back to my tiny home town where I got a part-time job as a receptionist at a spa where I’ve been happily employed for nine years while occasionally starting to write another romance novel I’ll never get around to finishing. So it’s an obvious and clear straight line: economics major -> part-time receptionist/aspiring romance writer.
this is my favorite response so far. :)
I majored in biology (BS in Genetics) because I wanted to be a scientist. If I hadn’t decided to continue to graduate school, I could have gotten a job at a university research lab or in industry as a lab tech. I did go to graduate school and received my PhD, but to get a job as a professor or research scientist, most positions require a postdoctoral fellowship, so that was my next step. After 5 years as a postdoc, I needed to either start applying for jobs or move fields and do another fellowship. I came to the decision that I didn’t want to run my own research lab, and I discovered the discipline of clinical chemistry. Luckily, the university where I was doing my postdoc had a fabulous clinical chemistry training program, so I applied, was accepted and completed a second fellowship, this time for only 2 years. Now I am employed as a laboratory director. I couldn’t do this job without the degrees I have, but I could have gotten here 5 years sooner.
My husband has a science PhD plus post-doc work & always wanted to be an academic. Unfortunately the early 2000’s were an absolute shit time to find an academic job. We could have gone to Mississippi State in Starkville Mississippi (where we had a horrifically racist encounter with a professor emeritus & where a potential colleague revealed she basically had no work to do…okaaaay) or Maryland Eastern Shore to start a new program from nothing – so my spouse would be busy 24/7 & we would be living somewhere neither of us wanted to be. So Husband started interviewing at corporate jobs & got one in our college city. He’s bounced around a few companies & we are currently moving across the country for his job (he started in May), but he’s really enjoyed the combination of science/research, customer problem solving, marketing/price development, and management he does. His current/new company is based in a European country and offers its US employees European-like vacation & family benefits. He loves it & neither of us can imagine him as an academic anymore, although he does love teaching interns and stays very active in college mentoring programs through the professional organization.
Double major in political science and business/marketing with a minor in leadership studies…after discarding my chemical engineering and chemistry majors when the chemistry classes got too hard. First job out of college was working in university international graduate admissions, then law school, and now I’m an in-house corporate lawyer for a large nonprofit. Went to law school because my husband is a college professor, and I had easy access to a variety of graduate and professional programs, so why not? This is not the best reason to go to law school. I love my job, but I hated law school.
Undergrad should teach you how to think critically and how to be a good writer.
I majored in Engineering. Specifically Materials Engineering. In my area most job with that specific Engineering degree would be in Steel Mills or other plant/manufacturing place in Quality Control. (I was NOT a roads and bridges or even a building/structures type engineer). I chose the major because I LOVE the science behind it. And, my school had a foundry on campus where we got to melt metal and make cool stuff with it! (little figurines they sell in the gift shop etc). So it was all really cool!!!
After an internship the summer after my second year I felt very ho-hum about the job/work field. I LOVED my classes and the science behind it all, but I found the day-to-day job very tedious, monotonous and boring. It felt very soul crushing to me. I took another internship to confirm my thoughts, and while better than the first I just could not see my selfing working in that environment for years on end. I wasn’t academic enough to want to go into research in this field, so I knew I had to change paths. At this point though, I was already well into my 3rd year of school and doing well. So instead of changing majors (remember, i LOVE my classes) I added on a minor in computer science, if I had been will to stay in school even longer (i ended up there for 5 years as it was) I could have double majored fairly easily, but I wasn’t really interested. I got a job as a programmer straight out of school and that what I’m still doing.
My major was applied nutrition and I am now a registered dietitian. I went back to school for my masters in nutrition science so I could get into an internship.
Degree is Management Information Systems – which is half business/half programming. The school says that degree is more to get jobs as consulting, which I hate. So I’m a programmer – work from home full time. But I thought straight Computer Science as a degree (which, agreed, would have been better) was too hard and boring and did not leave enough party time ;-)
I walked into the business school admin office my soph year (when you have to choose a major) and asked – which business major pays the most? This is where the pointed me and where I landed. So far, loving it.
Two anecdotes about a Theoretical Math degree.
My husband majored in Math Theory. He now works as a programmer for a tech startup out of San Francisco. He didn’t have any formal schooling in Computer Science/Programming, but did pick it up on his own and had a work-study job in the computer lab on campus with a guy who became his mentor and got him a job while hubby was still in school.
A good friend of ours got a degree in Theoretical Math, but after not finding a job after graduation, he went back and got an engineering degree and now works for a bug power company – currently in the nuclear power plant.
I love this question too! I was a history major, and work in business, where I (20 years later) run the region of a pretty large business, and had no problem getting hired. And as someone who hires a whole lot of people now, I’m happy to hire people with a liberal arts type degree.
I majored in history, mostly because it didn’t have a ton of required classes and allowed me to take a lot of coursework in other subjects I was very interested in (religion, philosophy, psychology, English). I had started out wanting to be a psych major and become a therapist, but for some reason I didn’t pursue that once I got to college. Anyway, as graduation neared, I didn’t want to go for a history PhD, nor did I want to go work in some entry-level, liberal arts-friendly job after college, so I went to law school.
Some law schools have creative and hands-on career services offices that help students who want them find unusual niches in the legal field or even outside of it. Mine did not. It was a funnel directly into big law firm private practice. So that’s what I did after graduating. And I’m still a lawyer, many years later, even though when I started practicing I thought I would last a maximum of five years in the law firm world.
I feel like there are lots of different paths I could have taken that I had no clue existed at the times I would have needed that information (e.g., while applying to colleges, while choosing a major, while deciding on graduate school, while making job decisions). I never had a great deal of supervision/advising at my schools at any of those stages. Not that I’m miserable or anything (and with jobs, as with so much else in life, it’s easy to think that some other job/career would have brought constant fulfillment, greater financial security, and daily glee, but in fact it would be roughly the same). But anyway. I hope my daughter will (1) be more self-aware than I was and (2) have more help along the way than I did, and will end up finding what really suits her — or she’ll just be an innately content person who can be happy regardless of her choices.
FWIW, I know lawyers who have theoretical math degrees. I also know a LOT of people in finance/investment banking who have degrees in physics or mathematics, so those kinds of majors have a lot of (potentially very lucrative) career paths outside of academia/think tanks.
I, too, felt like I had almost ZERO guidance from school, parents or anyone else. Life worked out but I feel like I would have made very different decisions with a little more input from older, wiser people in my life.
I did an undergrad in psychology and a masters in intercultural studies and it was the piece of paper I needed to do international development work related to HIV/AIDS. I’m home with kids now and not sure what, if anything, I’ll do next.
Another theoretical math major. I then did a year of applied math (grad school), intending academia. I realized roughly 10 minutes in that I was unlikely to make it as an academic, and even if I did, it would be awful and I hated it, so I stuck to it long enough to get a masters, and then started actuarial exams. Now I’m a consulting actuary, which is generally a pretty good job, and only sometimes as boring as it sounds (and honestly, I suspect all jobs are often boring, and being paid well helps cushion a lot of that.)
Theoretical math is an extremely flexible major, for what it’s worth.
I started out as a Communications major-I’d done theater and speech in high school and thought it’d be fun to work in radio. My 1st semester I took a speech class and couldn’t stand my professor. At the end of the term I found out said professor was also my assigned mentor/academic counselor, and I would have to meet with her to make/approve my class schedule each semester until I graduated. Rather than asking for a new mentor/sucking it up, I changed my major to Business Management and Administration. My senior year I had a paid internship at a specialty insurance company, and they offered me a position after graduation that I turned down because I didn’t want to introduce myself as an insurance adjustor for the rest of my life. I flitted around for a few years doing temp and entry-level jobs, oil company, hotel, etc. I was a property manager (apartments) for 7 years, then took 2 years off when my daughter was born. I am now executive director for an assisted living community, and I love my job. I’ve always said that my degree is just 1 step away from a BS in general studies–there’s not a company in the country that doesn’t have some position that my degree qualifies for . . . and I could probably be making more money in another field (most of the EDs in my area do not have a degree), but I love what I do and the people I do it with. I still don’t know what I want to do when I grow up, but I’m ok with that. I’m providing for my family at home and helping my “family” at work too, and the older I get, the more important that is.
I majored in Government and Politics, with a Minor in Urban Geography, because I thought I wanted to be a City Planner. I think the work is interesting, but I realized that you have to move around a lot in your career when you first start, because a lot of small towns/ governments only have two or three city planners, so the only way to get a promotion is to move. So I worked for my uncle’s civil engineering firm, doing some planning stuff, errands, title searches, etc. While I was working there, I got my MBA, and was really interested in accounting (but not being an auditor). After a few jobs, I am now the Financial Reporting Manager/Cost Accountant for a commercial nursery. Plants aren’t really my thing, but my job is super flexible, so for now it works. At some point, I would like to work in an industry that is more interesting to me.
I majored in Accounting, and had that major when I entered college. I didn’t want to work as an auditor so I did not go one to get a one year masters and take my CPA. Instead got a job as a Jr. Accountant for a startup company when I graduated in 2010. I have progressed through the ranks (making a few moves between companies) and I am now a Controller. Hopefully will be promoted to VP of Finance within the next year and my end goal is to be a CFO. I am starting my MBA part-time in the fall as our Board of Directors only like to promote MBA’s to be VP’s. (I think its a waste of time and money, but I need it to get over the hump to my next job).
If you want to do anything in business, Accounting is a great degree! To be any sort of executive in any field you need to understand accounting and finance. Accounting and finance are the language of business.
My brother wasn’t sure what he wanted to do and got many C’s his first year of college. My parents sat him down and asked what JOB did he want to have one day, and did he need a university degree to get there? He decided to leave a 4 year university and go to community college. He got his associates in HVAC and got a job before he graduated. He is currently installing AC’s which is a very hard job but you get paid well. After a few years of install you can move to repair, commercial hvac, etc.
I do not think everyone needs to go to a 4-year university. I have many friends who graduated with generic degrees in 2010 who are still working jobs that do not require a degree. Thats fine if you are graduating debt free, but if you have big student loans it doesn’t seem worth it! I would suggest any student who is unsure what they want to do go to community college for the first 2-years and then transfer to a 4 year university.
I majored in English and Communication Studies in college at a small private liberal arts school that I chose largely because it was in the right location and had a debate team, but only ended up with the Comm degree because I did three years of college and then took some time off and when I figured out I only needed two classes to do my degree but three if I wanted the English degree I settled for one major. I coached debate on the high school and college level for five years and then went to law school, and now I work as a litigator in a middle sized law firm in the midwest. It’s pretty straightforwardly related, but I’m glad I waited 5 years to go to law school because I both enjoyed school and also knew going in that I wanted to be a lawyer.
I started college thinking I would major in sociology, because “I wanted to help people.” Within the first semester I learned that a) I don’t love school and certainly didn’t want to go even longer to get a master’s and b) I don’t really like people that much. My sister is an LMSW and comparing our careers, I know I made the right decision.
So I changed my major to the super generic Business Administration, with an emphasis in Marketing. Right out of college I did get a job at an advertising agency working in media placement and traffic, nothing I had really specifically learned in college. From there I gravitated towards more analytical and technical work, and now 15 years later am a business analyst for the same company. My degree is somewhat applicable, but had I known better what I was really interested in and good at back then, I would’ve been better off with a more STEM based degree. I maybe would’ve gotten to where I am doing what I do a little quicker, without bouncing around positions trying to figure it out.
I also landed myself with a philosophy minor, just a few credits short of a double major. In fulfilling the non-foreign language liberal arts degree requirements, I just ended up taking a lot of philosophy courses. I’m sure it’s no surprise I do absolutely NOTHING with that directly, I fortunately do not sit around talking about Nietzsche all day. But I will say that taking those classes absolutely help me form strong critical thinking skills, my writing skills (so. many. papers.), and I can form a damn strong argument.
I was originally a biology major because I wanted to be a marine biologist but had no idea what that really meant. After a year of Chemistry which I was actually really good at I decided it wasn’t for me and I took a programming course and loved it so I switched to Computer Science. I now have a masters in software engineering and have been doing that and love it.
What I would recommend is getting a mentor and looking at internships early on, even ones for free. It lets you see what kind of career options are out there and gets you integrated into the community of where you want to go into. So if he is really interested in theoretical math put out feelers for people who work in that field and see the different kinds of jobs that people do. Also, see if there are local internships and start planning for getting a summer internship.
Maybe I was ‘special’ but I started being a lab assistant and TA’ing for computer science classes as soon as I could, it is a great learning experience. My campus had a local supercomputer center and to get in the door I got an internship as a web development intern and then moved up to software development. So by the time I graduated college I had already been interning there for 2 years.
I also can’t recommend enough getting a mentor, I actually wish this was required for all people going into STEM fields, particularly women and minorities. Having someone cheering you along and giving you guidance who is a professional in your desired field is invaluable. I would see if there is a local group either at his new school or in your local community such as society of theoretical math etc. there are various academic groups and it is a good way to make connections.
I know he’s young and it is really great that he is thinking about all this, most kids have no idea when they walk in the door so he is already ahead of the game. He can start taking classes early on in his desired field and see if he enjoys it.
My major was “Multimedia & Web Design” and I got a job as a web developer before I graduated from college, so that worked out nicely.
I’ve since had two kids and moved states and despite having a couple web dev jobs once I got here, I am now a file clerk, which has nothing to do with web development and is basically an entry-level job but I LOVE IT. I scan stuff and organize paperwork and digital client profiles and request records and fulfill records requests. It’s very well suited for me and I would never have guessed I’d end up here with the degree I earned.
I did English all the way through – B.A., M.A., then Ph.D., and I echo those who have emphasized the importance of timing – I graduated at a terrible time for getting a tenure-track job, but the ideal time for turning part-time adjunct teaching into a viable job (my first two years after graduation, teaching was assigned preferentially to recent graduates, so I benefited from that, and then the faculty unionized and teaching was assigned based on experience, so I benefited from that in turn – I’m now full-time, though not tenured, but the path I took to that position is no longer viable for people coming up behind me).
My husband did two undergraduate degrees, one in computer science (for its employment prospects) and the other in philosophy (because he was interested in it), and he too experienced the issue of timing – he graduated just after a big hiring boom in computer science (which had seemed like a guaranteed paycheck when he started school), and suddenly there were no jobs in his field. He ended up going to law school on the strength of his philosophy grades and has worked as a lawyer ever since.
What I love is the theatre. I did not and do not see a way to pursue that AND have the other things I wanted in my life, so it has remained a very important hobby and I am fine with that. But I’m opening there b/c that’s my “passion” and always has been.
Thought I’d be a teacher, as my parents and many family members are teachers, and I loved school, and it seemed like a good fit. Went to my very good state school and got a degree to be an English teacher. Was an English and theatre teacher and was good at it. However, the pay was lousy, the job was all-consuming and with so much more drama LOL than my heart could take. And honestly, I liked directing the shows 1000x more than teaching the classes. So when I had a chance to move to a big city and do something else, I went.
Was a proofreader for a legal publishing company for a while, then transitioned to being a software trainer and help desk type person at that company (using the teaching degree!). Then switched to being a software trainer for a couple of big law firms downtown. Then the older partners started retiring, the associates got more and more computer-literate every year, and I saw the potential end of that career path. So I went back to school for an MBA. Amazing experience and learned as much about being in a very male-centric world as I did about business. Got a job at an insurance company as a communications/speechwriter-type person in IT. Job has since morphed to a Chief-of-Staff/handler of VPs type role. Looking to get a key information security certification so I can pursue other opportunities soon — there is a definite need for women in IT who understand business and can speak to both techies and salespeople. Not that I expect THAT transition to be easy, as I am over 40 and my titles don’t necessarily show the breadth of the actual work I have done, but…one day at a time.
I don’t regret anything I studied or the decisions I made in my teens and 20s because there is no point in doing so, and all those steps led me to where I am, and I’m pretty happy. THAT SAID, one thing I would do differently as an undergrad would be to study business or accounting THEN. I…was already good at speaking and reading and I LIKED that the best, but I’m not sure college really helped me get any better at them. I didn’t THINK I liked business but I’d never really given it a shot, and I am pretty sure I’d be a lot further along in this career if I’d started sooner. I always would have had my speaking and communication skills as assets, you know? But at the time, I really couldn’t conceive of doing anything but teaching, and it just didn’t end up being what I needed, after all.
“I did not and do not see a way to pursue that AND have the other things I wanted in my life, so it has remained a very important hobby and I am fine with that.” — This makes a very good point. For some people, it might be helpful to visualize the life you want and work backwards. I majored in radio/tv/film and dreamed of becoming Diane Sawyer. Unfortunately, that type of work was incompatible with my Myers Briggs profile (INFJ) and with my desire to be available to my (future) children while they were young. After a year at a local radio station (soul crushingly awful), I sprinted to graduate school and earned a masters in public relations/journalism. This led to a career in corporate communications, and I was later able to transition into freelance writing which worked for my family goals. One thing that I really regret and am trying to remedy with my own rising senior is a lack of exposure to career options. I feel like I meet people all the time with cool jobs/careers that I never even considered because I had no idea they existed. I was only thinking in terms of journalist, nurse, doctor, lawyer, engineer, but there are so many different, exciting options out there! Swistle commenters are rocking my world with all of the possibilities and experiences they are relating!
My husband is in IT and he was by far the most satisfied with his job when he was on a team that included half a dozen 20-something guys (most unmarried) and one lady who was about 40. :)
Mine is also easy- my degrees are in fisheries and wildlife science, and my job is as a biologist with the fish and wildlife service. There was never any doubt what I wanted to do.
I have a BFA in printmaking and Industrial Design. I come from a long line of white trash, first kid to go to college, etc. and I’m a lousy teacher. (I think this comes from growing up on a farm and hating every minute – students are just another crop that must be turned over as soon as they mature.) As I worked my way through those four years I accumulated administrative skills and eventually held a high-level position in the Fed’s health care administration while painting at night. Life intervened, as it does, with partners, offspring, injuries and other interruptions, but I’ve built a studio and have representation at a kickass gallery. Thanks to my level of education I may live long enough to retire and paint full time.
TLDR: If you’re going into fine art because you’re absolutely bent that way, plan to have an non-arts job with regular hours and good compensation, don’t sleep.
Accounting. The Business School was the “hardest” to get into at my university. Therefore, I applied as an incoming Freshman, as it was the “easiest” way to get into it. I still took a LOT of classes in other colleges, but did the business core as well. I liked the business classes. Loved marketing and contract law, but knew I didn’t have the personality to be IN marketing or a lawyer. Accounting was almost my fall back. It came easily to me- it’s a puzzle, it comes out equal at the end so long as you do it right. It was also a career path that had a decent amount of jobs (even not going into auditing) and job stability. It also fits my personality, because I can do a lot of the work on my own without having to deal with people a lot. For the past 17+ years, I’ve never been out of work for more than 3 weeks between gigs. I’ve concentrated on manufacturing and construction. I’ve been an Office Manager for 10 years- accounting with a bit of HR thrown into the mix, because generally no one else wants to deal with it.
I started out majoring in accounting but thought it was the most boring thing in the world, and switched to Business Education. I was going to teach typing! (How many high schools teach typing anymore?) But during my student teaching semester my senior year, I realized I was NOT cut out for teaching. After college I got a job as a bookkeeper for a small business, eventually worked my way up through various job moves, earned an MBA, and now (23 years after graduating college) I am the assistant controller for a company in the oil & gas industry. So . . . I ended up in accounting and do not find it boring at all. Wish I’d known this 23 years ago.
As far as Rob is concerned, the best advice I can offer is to do internships during college. The job market is so competitive right now and will probably be that way for a long time, and interning will give him much-needed work experience while also helping him figure out, in a low-stakes way, what he does and does not enjoy doing for work.
When I started college I had no idea what I wanted to do so I spent 3 semesters at a local community college to get some basic credits. This saved me lots of money and helped me figure out I wanted to major in Social Work. I moved to a bigger city with some high school friends and we all attended the local state school together where I got my bachelor’s in Social Work. However, I did not have a family who was able to help me financially so I had to take out loans and work 30+ hours a week to afford it. To say I was stressed out was an understatement. Also, in my last year I got pregnant and had to figure out how to juggle a newborn, a full class load, an internship, and my retail job. When I graduated I was so burnt out with everything I couldn’t even think about going back for my Master’s or getting the licenses my state requires to practice Social Work. I also needed money so I accepted a management position from my college job and worked for that same company for 10 years in a variety of positions. In that time I’ve had 2 more kids and with it more debt and financial obligations. This has made it nearly impossible to go back to school or to pursue the social work field which I still have a passion for. I’m still stuck in retail but at least I run the stores now and have gained some incredible experiences I wouldn’t trade for the world. I just know that my passion and desire is to make a positive difference in people’s lives and retail is not doing that for me. Luckily I still have alot of life in front of me and the opportunity to go back to school or change careers is always a possibility.
Heh. Okay. So I always liked science, so I started with a biochemistry major. I did fine, but I was miserable, and I just couldn’t imagine doing this for the rest of my life. My parents kept pushing me there, though, saying it was the only way I would get a paying job. It retrospect, I wish I had better support and stuck with this, since my interests and hobbies still heavily skew in this direction. But! I’ve got a great job now that I like/love. Moving on.
Sophomore year, I switched to psychology, with an emphasis on forensic psychology and neuropsychology, which was pretty heavily math driven. I loved it, but I was still at a loss for what I wanted to do with it. I did a summer abroad, and it was a great self discovery experience as well as excellent for learning independence and independent living skills. It also led to another major change.
Junior year, I switched to English. I loved it. I was always a bookworm, forever reading and writing, so this felt like acknowledging reality, that this was something I loved and maybe could make a life out of. I still wasn’t sure what I would do for a career–professor, perhaps? But I was finally really happy, loving what I was doing, seeking out more engagement, and it was all driving me to lots of self direction. (My parents were displeased). At some point, a professor suggested law school, and I went with it. Which, in retrospect, is a terrible reason to choose law school–gee, I can read really fast and I am a great writer!–but there you have it. I also liked the idea of the challenge and a secure career (hahahaha oh man, those halcyon days of legal employment before the crash). I did have an interest in the law, and had been pursuing a criminal justice dual major along side all these major changes.
I graduated undergrad with dual majors in criminal justice and English, plus minors in neuropsychology, biochem, and women’s studies. I really busted my ass my junior and senior year to finish on time.
How I ended up with specific career after law school is another story, but that’s what led me to law school and my career as a lawyer. I like my job; at times, I even love it. I am not a lawyer in a big law firm; I am a jack of all trades working for a non-profit. It’s not at all what I imagined, but I use the things I learned from all my majors and minors with surprising frequency. It was actually great (unintentional) prep for law school.
I majored in International Relations because I wanted to work for the State Department. About a year into my very structured program, the first Iraq war broke out and I was already getting disillusioned with some of the policy implications of representing the US overseas and also I decided it wasn’t a career conducive to family (something classmates of mine both proved and disproved in the last 25 years), and I loved my history classes and I loved archives and I decided I was going to be a history professor, although my major was still International Relations. I also fell in love with theology and I would have probably majored in THAT and aimed for a theology professorship only I was enrolled in a professionalized program where leaving International Relations was challenging from a course-requirements POV. I ended up graduating with a major in IR-History and Diplomacy.
ANYWAY, I got a master’s in British history and then went ABD in US history and then get married and had infertility treatments and got pregnant with triplets and took a break and did some adjuncting and spouse got tenure and there pretty much are no history-professor jobs so I went back to school, got my degree in library science, got a job as a school librarian, and I’m really happy.
Oh! Spouse is an economist and he would tell you that the finance world loves mathematicians (all kinds) so if any of Rob’s other goals with for that major don’t work out, all the Investment Banks and financial consulting firms would be happy to pay him well to apply his math knowledge to their money-making ventures.
My major was history and my first job was communications for several state senators. Then I was promoted to legislative analyst where I was the staff person for 3 IL senate committees. from time to time I subbed in on health committee headed up by Barack Obama. Then I was so inspired by all the amazing lawyers around me at the Capitol I made the most terrible financial decision of my life and went to law school. At this moment I am a stay at home mom but I have worked 8 out of the ten years I’ve been an attorney at 3 different jobs, none of which were related to the job I went to law school wanting. My husband has a philosophy degree and he did a year deferral on law school because a high paying (in 1997 dollars) computer job came along preparing the power company for Y2K. Now he is a top data privacy tech guy at an insurance company you all know.
I got an English degree with a minor in Classics (Latin), and I am a book editor. It seems to make perfect sense, except that English degrees are for English literature, not the English language, so although my major is related to my job in general, it’s not always relevant when I’m working on, say, a how-to manual on a mechanical topic. The skills I use most every day are those I learned on my own, on the job, or through an internship I soight out. My major was…well, it was mostly a good time.
What HAS been extremely helpful, however, are all the other courses I took that gave me grounding in languages, art, history, psychology, and even some science, since those are the types of books I work on. Exposure to practice with analyzing text in many different fields and genres has made me better at my job (although I wouldn’t say this background ever helped me get a job). Having a job related to my humanities degree feels pretty lucky.
My husband majored in psych and has worked in bioscience labs since graduation. His career has nothing to do with his major; employers mostly care that he’s graduates from college, not what he did there.
(And thus continues my illustrious streak of making typos while talking about editing. Good job, me.)
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Wow, there are a lot of English majors among Swistle readers! I also majored in English. Then I got an M.A., and finally a Ph.D. in English. Now I teach English in a private high school and also work part-time as an essay coach for a college consulting service.
I always knew I wanted to be an English major, and to teach. I also knew that the university teaching market is awful, so I went into grad school with eyes wide open. I didn’t accrue any debt in grad school and I don’t regret my decision to get the Ph.D, even though I’m not teaching on the college level right now. Maybe someday, but I’m happy where I am right now.
I recently graduated in May with a psychology degree (and a pretty low GPA). While originally I was on board to get a Master’s or even a Ph.D/Psy.D, because I was a dewy-eyed sophomore who had newly blossomed dreams of changing the world, I burned out HARD on just undergrad my junior year. My senior year was even more difficult because I felt like I had chosen a major which didn’t lead to employment opportunities unless I went to grad school, and it was too late in the game to switch majors. Not fun to feel like you’ve wasted your time (and in my case, my parents’ money, so cue hand-wringing, guilt, depression, etc). However, once I graduated and actively started seeing what kind of jobs are out there for a recent college grad with just a bachelor’s and no experience, instead of just feeling sorry for myself, I realized that there’s a ton out there.
I originally planned to go into the field of mental health and work with youth who had emotional or behavioral problems. There’s a lot of jobs out there for that sort of thing in the states. However, right after graduating I moved to the UK to spend a bit of time with my parents, who had moved there the past summer. I was planning on staying for a few months while job searching in the states and then moving back when I found a position. However, I completely fell in love with the UK and Europe and decided to stay here instead. While the mental health field here is still a pretty hopping place, I actually stumbled across the non-profit sector and something just CLICKED. Especially with how many awful things are happening; every molecule in my body was screaming “DO SOMETHING, NOW.” So now, I’m focusing on finding a job with a charity or non-profit that works with vulnerable and marginalized populations, a social justicey type deal. That is what I believe is important for me to do: working with individuals to improve their lives but also working on fixing the big picture–fighting inequalities, advocating for legislation to reduce racism, sexism, xenophobia, homophobia, ameliorating access to mental health resources, etc.
So now, I’m completely happy with my choice of major and don’t feel like I wasted four years of my life or however much my parents paid for me to go to school. Which is a great feeling. Honestly, everything usually turns out okay–that’s kinda become my motto in life.
I majored in accounting and then got my Masters in Taxation after working for a few years. I started my career in business & excise taxes (sales, use, VAT, property) with only some experience in income tax (which most people associate a career in tax with). I then left the tax world and had two jobs doing accounting (cost and revenue, then contact accounting, booking actual entries and doing associated account analysis). Now, I do external reporting and technical accounting. My group writes our financial statements and I also do things like assist or businesses in implementing new accounting standards, goodwill impairment analysis and conduct training for our controller groups.
So you can do a lot of different things with accounting. There’s also the audit side and the tax law side as someone mentioned. Depending on company size, someone in industry will have a varied view of the actual impact of transactions to the company.
I majored in photography. By the end of sophomore year I knew that was NOT what I wanted to do. So, I switched schools and majors to graphic design. Then… I took a semester off. Switched schools again and switched majors to art ed. That I loved but then I needed to graduate quickly because my brother was starting school so I had to switch back to photo so I could graduate sooner.
I have worked in design, taught preschool art classes, special projects at a hospital in the lab, and now work in an office at the university I started out going to school at. (Which I really enjoy.)
I honestly find that depending on what you want to do, having the degree is more important than what the degree is in. I am now working on a masters degree at the university I work at in digital communications and marketing – for free. I’m still not sure what I want to do with my life but the classes sounded interesting.
My husband majored in mechanical engineering and he is now a mechanical engineer.
I got a degree in aerospace engineering. While it did not lead me to being an astronaut ;-) it did get me a co-op (work every other semester) job at a large government org interested in space and flight, then a full-time position involved with human space flight. (Others with my degree work for a variety of air/space companies, automotive, even some oil & gas companies when the job market was tough). (Also, that particular govt org takes lots of engineers and scientists of diff types, and business and finance majors, and folks w/ interests in education.) (Oh! Also! Someone else in my group – I had the job for ten years – doing the same job actually had a BS in math. So sometimes a math degree can get you into engineering-type jobs, too).
I got a BFA in Acting and with that worked a few different jobs 1- a choreographer, 2- a voice coach 3- a theater curriculum developer and finally 4- a managing director of a theater. While doing all of this I also worked as a personal trainer to help pay the bills and slowly moved in that direction as I liked the work (and income potential) more. I worked for a fitness company and worked my way up. Because of this relationship, I went to grad school to earn my MBA, and now am co-owner of a fitness company.
I applied to college as an English major because I wanted to be a writer, but after being convinced that I needed to have something to “fall back on”, I ended up changing to psychology during orientation the summer before my freshman year. I also got a minor in women’s studies.
Little did I know at the time (my advisor was useless and we weren’t allowed to switch), with psychology you pretty much have to have at least a master’s degree to get anywhere.
After graduation, I ended up taking a summer job at my hometown newspaper as a copy editor. That transitioned into a full-time job as a reporter, and I’m still a reporter now, nine years later (albeit at a different newspaper).
Sometimes I think I should have stuck with English, because at least then my job would be related to my degree. I loved the psychology program (and especially some of the professors) so much, though, that I don’t think I would do it differently. I just long for the financial ability to go to grad school so I could actually put the knowledge I gained to use, because I’m afraid I’m slowly losing most of it.
I double majored in Political Science and International Studies, thinking I wanted to go to law school. I got a job at a law firm after college and decided I hated it then made my way into the nonprofit world where I eventually became a CFO (yes, chief FINANCE officer). I had always been good at math and picked up accounting at different jobs along the way, but have never had any formal training in it. I am now the CFO for an amazing international organization which I guess circles back to my International Studies major.
For me, even though my original career direction wasn’t the right fit, I stayed open-minded and went with the flow which landed me in a position I LOVE that actually does have at least a little bit to do with my major.
Fun question! :)
I have a non traditional story, I was in school for almost 10 years before I got my English degree. The first 4 years I went to school full time and worked part time. I was also really involved in student government. But my personal life took a lot of my time in retail and at an after school program and for me it was hard to manage it all. School suffered. Then I got married and my personal life was more stable and the extracurriculars were no longer interesting now that I was married/all my friends had graduated. I kept going to school part time and but I would take semesters off to work in unique opportunities. I worked in politics managing local campaigns which then led to coordinating press events for the state House of Representatives for two years. In the off seasons of those jobs, I took classes. I had a baby and was a stay at home mom. I decided to finish my degree, taking 2 classes a semester and having family members help watch my son. Let me tell you, my grades when I was a mom were the best they’d ever been. I graduated with a BA in English at age 27 when my kid was 15 months old. I am a stay at home mom, but in the last 5 years have also worked in the direct sales field part time.
I majored in Chemical Engineering, because I love chemistry & math. I debated a straight Chemisty major, or a Petroleum Engineering major, but in the end stuck with Chemical Engineering because it was more widely applicable than either of the others. My major led to a job in the oil & gas industry. (Now I stay at home with my kids & use my degree to give them overly scientific answers to their questions 😂)
My husband has a similar story, although he didn’t get his degree until later. He’s always loved coding, so he got a computer science degree and now works as a software developer, which he loves.
Thanks for doing this post Swistle!
I was a math/statistics major in college, planning on being an actuary. Then I did two actuarial internships and realized that it was NOT for me. I finished with my BS in math and statistics and decided to go to grad school for Biostatistics (applied statistics in medical research) and that is the field I work in now – it is very much applied statistics, but there is some theory, lots of programming in statistical software, and there are many career paths. It is a great mix of individual work and team work (perfect for an introvert like me).
I have three degrees in Comparative Literature (BA, Masters, Phd). It was meant to lead to a college teaching career and I did teach for 4 years as an non-tenure track assistant professor (and 4 years before that as a adjunct at the same university) but I never could find a tenure-track job. The competition for academics in the humanities is insane and there are so many desperate people with Phds working for almost nothing as adjusts that I would not recommend this path to any kid, no matter how smart. I think things are better in the hard sciences, but I can’t speak to theoretical math.
Today I work part-time writing marketing materials for supplement companies, an outcome that would have horrified my younger self, but is okay. I don’t love it, but it’s flexible, allows me to be home with the kids, and the pay’s not bad. Also relevant, I got the job through sheer nepotism. My sister owns a free-lance writing business. I work for her. If I hadn’t gone this route, I probably could have found work writing or editing for a non-profit. I actually did that for a couple years between the Masters and the Phd and we live in the DC area, where non-profits are plentiful.
I am LOVING these questions! I have a very meandering path to my profession.
My whole life I wanted to be an elementary teacher. My grandma, mom, and sister are all teachers. I spent high school working with an aftercare program and helping in my mom’s classroom. I picked my university based on a strong their strong college of education and high placement of graduates in teaching jobs.
My school, in their very great wisdom, placed freshman in a local elementary classroom for “field experience”. Having been in classrooms with my mom for years I shrugged. Then I was placed in a 7th grade science classroom and I left that experience with the feeling of HELLLLLL NOOOOOO. NOPE NOPE NOPE not going to do this. See… my 18 year old brain never really understood that being an elementary teacher could mean teaching middle school and I was horrified at the thought of living a life teaching tweens and I ran screaming from the life of an elementary teacher.
Still thinking I’d like to teach, at the start of my sophomore year I changed my major to secondary education, minoring in english. By the end of that year I decided teaching was not my bag, for many reasons. Junior year started with me majoring in English Lit and freaking out because I absolutely had the mindset of “This major —-> this job” and to me English Lit—->waitress. So, I started trying to figure out how I could make english/writing —-> job. I was attracted to a “business writing” minor, figuring that would at least give me a more marketable resume. Then I discovered that my university had a new undergrad program in Scientific and Technical Communication and THAT sounded marketable as hell (they had a well-established graduate program and were in the 2nd year of offering it as an undergrad degree). I met with the program chair and promptly switched majors during the second semester of my Junior year. (if you’re counting, this was major #4 in 3 years).
I loved the program and the chair was able to cobble together a minor from the classes I had already taken. Since I had 2 years in education and 2 years of ROTC classes we made up a minor called “Training and Leadership Development”. The summer after my Junior year I had to take a few make-up required classes due to the change in colleges, but I was able to do that cheaply at a community college in my hometown. I ended up having to stay an extra semester to finish the program requirements so I graduated in the summer instead of spring. One extra semester after 4 different majors was not bad.
So! Now you want to know what I do and if This major —-> this job. Well, I’ve been in my field of work for 17 years and… it has nothing to do with Technical Communications (which is basically manual writing). See, as a student I was a phoneathon (fundraising) caller for my university, moving up to the role of student manager my sophomore year. I loved the work and the people and the (full-time, professional) program manager was leaving at the end of my senior year so I applied for her job and got it. Having moved up through the ranks at various non-profits I now manage a program and staff. My college experience plays a big role in what I do – both what I learned in the classroom and in my student work experience. The writing and marketing I learned is used daily, my education background helps me as a manager (especially as I manage both students and entry-level positions), my ROTC experience helps with leadership. And of course, I would never have even KNOWN about jobs in Development if I hadn’t taken a job as a caller when I was a freshman.
I was an accounting major and ended up working for the state as an auditor. I would go to cities, government agencies, schools, etc, and audit their books. People assume I know how to do taxes, but I don’t! Tax accounting is a whole other beast. I wanted to be an accountant because I love numbers and auditing was GREAT because I love fact-checking and re-doing other people’s work. I don’t want to be reading technical updates to the tax code. That doesn’t sound like math to me. Also, taxes are so…imprecise. I want there to be one right answer, not a bunch of different ways you could classify this or that to get a different tax bill.
One thing high school students might like to know is that I got 30 college credits before graduating from high school (combo of dual credit classes and AP classes – how many you can get frustratingly depends a lot on what your school district offers). Because of that, I was able to dual major in what I wanted to do (accounting) and something I added just for the love of it (political science). I find politics, both historical and present, SO interesting, but I didn’t want to go on to law school, or work on campaigns, or EVER run for office.
Oh! This is where, even if you’re planning on 4 years at a full university, going to summer school at a community college before or during your 4 years can be helpful as well – find out what classes at your local community college transfer to low-level required classes at your university (101s and such) and knock them out. If you know where you want to go, ask the admissions counselor for a list of the exact class to take at the exact community college and how to transfer it. Then you have more time for classes you WANT to take and/or a second or dual major.
I majored in journalism and mass communications, and this major served me very well. I loved to write and my intention at the time was to write for newspapers, but the major was intentionally broad and I got to take a lot of courses in subjects I might never have had time for in another major. (Russian, four semesters.) I did end up working for a newspaper, but only for 2 1/2 years, and then I’ve done other things for the remainder of my career. In fact, I spent almost three decades in a field I didn’t even know existed, but for which I was well-prepared for both by my interest and by my experience. My oldest son, on the other hand, resisted my near-insistence that he major in journalism because “there will always be jobs in newspapers.” Huh. Not so much. Instead, he followed his passion (political science) and now is an attorney working in the public sector. My advice? Theoretical math actually is a very employable field, especially if Rob enjoys the academic life. Let him go for it.
I’m Canadian so things can be different, but here goes!
I started as a Psychology major. I knew I probably wanted to be an educator, but I also was still thinking I may have wanted to be an educational psychologist. In my first year, I discovered my University had an Educational Psychology minor and I had come to the decision that I did want to be a classroom teacher anyway. So, I switched my major to History and add the Educational Psychology minor (already had prerequisites from first year courses done for these subjects so it was an easy switch/didn’t set me back).
This was better for me because my Psychology courses were more specific and applicable to teaching and less generic and sciencey (as science and math are not my strongest areas!).
After my four year honours degree (Bachelor of Arts Honours, major History, minor Educational Psychology), I went into a teaching program to obtain my Bachelor of Education, Primary-Junior Divisions.
I’m an elementary school teacher in Ontario, Canada and am well-compensated and loooove my job!
Oh fun! I have a BA in Linguistics. The specific field of linguistics only really has careers in academia, although the major can be useful in speech therapy, language acquisition, teaching, etc.
I majored in Linguistics because I just LOVE IT SO MUCH, however, while it does have some careers associated with it, overall it was not a ‘career’ major for me.
Immediately after graduating, I got my TESL certificate, and taught adult ed ESL for awhile. And I shall tell you that after this my PLAN was to teach ESL abroad/live abroad. However, boyfriends and what have you, so instead I decided to go to library school, primarily because two of my linguistics major friends were going to library school, so it seemed related (and I could go into why I DO think it is related, but, well, I’ll spare you). So I got my MLIS (library and information science). I got THIS degree Dec 2006, heading into The Start of Tough Times 2007, with a breakup and a 1yo on the horizon, so for an assorted number of life/economy reasons, I had to just take any job I could find, instead of finding a library job (which was my goal with the degree). Assorted jobs led me eventually and circuitously into accounting, and then I went back to school to get my MS Accountancy and am now a CPA.
My two graduate degrees are definitely on the more job oriented/practical side of the higher education spectrum. I’m not saying which is better (because I agree, it’s both) but I do sometimes wonder if life might not have been better/easier if I had a BA in Accounting to begin with. But I learned so many interesting things that have nothing to do with accounting. And I do so very dearly love Linguistics.
I majored in Biology – with the sole purpose of becoming an Optometrist. Then during my freshman year, I spent a month volunteering in an optometrist office and I realized I *hated* patients. Oh my goodness, I just had no idea what dealing with the public was like. I still kept with my Biology major, and added a Chemistry minor. I felt like just having a bachelor’s would land me as a dishwasher in a pharm company, so I decided to go to graduate school. I really didn’t know what else to do if I didn’t want medical school, or optometry school, or pharmacy school. In hindsight, there were many options, but I was unaware. I was heavily pressured to do a PhD, by other PhDs (surprise surprise!) but I did not want the end result – career wise – of that path. So I went with the Master’s instead. All of my classmates in grad school went on to get PhDs, and there has been varying success there, often I’m told they wish they’d gotten out when I did. An MS seems to indicate that you’re intelligent yet trainable, whereas the PhD seems to indicate you’re intelligent and expect a large salary, and only want to work in a specific field. I digress. My recommendation to undergrads who come through where I work (I work for a University Core Lab) is to look into CLS degrees, as well as nursing. I have consistently seen positions for CLS and nurses, throughout my 15 years post Bachelor’s. How about have Rob search current jobs? That might indicate where he could shadow someone, and see if he likes it in the field? I cringe to think if I’d never worked with patients before applying to optometry school, oh man, I’d hate my life right now.
Oh this is fun, and I am not surprised at all the English majors you have reading and commenting here.
I always thought I wanted to be a teacher, and reading is my favorite thing to do. Straight out of high school I had zero support in my education so I ended up at a community college doing poorly. After a few teenager-type jobs, I got a job at a financial institution in the mailroom, worked my way up to being an Assistant in the Training and Organizational Development dept., and then my VP of HR created a job for me as an HR Coordinator in charge of employee events, morale, recognition—the fun stuff. I was also the go-to person for editing and proofreading corporate documents and employee manuals and all kinds of goodness. All the while I took a class or two, started a family, supported my husband through art school, etc. Post-2008 my financial institution slowly fell apart and I waited around to get laid off so I could have a severance package (I’d worked there 11 years at that point, and it was a good package) and go back to school full-time, because with my husband as a freelance artist, we could not afford it otherwise.
In 2012 I finally got laid off, finished at my community college, transferred to my good ol’ state school (I’m in CA so we have a huge state college system) as an English major with an emphasis in Education. But I realized early on I wanted to teach community college, not high school, so I switched to the Literature and Language option. I graduated with my BA in 2015, at the ripe age of 33, and I’m halfway through a Masters in English at the same school, with dual emphases in Literature and Rhetoric/Composition. I start a Teaching Associate gig on campus this upcoming year, and I’ll be teaching an elective fiction course to non-English-major undergrads. My plan is to head back to my community college and all the surrounding ones to adjunct once I graduate, and to eventually try like the devil to find a tenure-track job. I also want to do a PhD but will probably wait until my kids are a little older (they’re 8 and 5 right now).
I’ve worked at my university’s writing center along the way, first as a tutor and then as a consultant-y person helping manage the tutors and teaching writing workshops and working with our students who are struggling to pass the graduate writing test. It’s been a great job to hep me make connections and gain experience that is somewhat relevant to my future.
Though I do feel like I “wasted” a lot of time in my early education, being older and (arguably) more mature than my schoolfellows has been nothing but a benefit. My professors love me because I’m a damn good student now, and I have a lot of real-life experience that I’m able to apply in multitudinous ways. I LOVE being in school now, and it has helped that I very much knew what career path I wanted when I got into this English thing, because I have a number of friends with English degrees who have no idea what they want to do with them. Exploring options is definitely important, if only so you (Rob) don’t feel like you were blindsided by the options (or lack thereof) upon graduation. There are probably jobs on campus that can help him explore his interests (math labs? tutoring centers?) while gaining experience, in addition to outside internships.
Great story, and I second the “exploring options is definitely important”.
Count me in as another person who majored in English because I liked to read. My original plan was to go through and get my doctorate to teach English at a university but I was an older student when I started (I got married the first time young and left school to put my then husband through school) and the market for teaching at universities had become daunting. So many adjuncts stringing classes together! I considered getting my education degree after my bachelor’s but in the end I took an entry level job in marketing after graduation. I’ve worked my way up and am now the Director of Marketing at a head-hunting firm and helping with the marketing for a start-up that launches official next week! English and Marketing are just barely related but being a decent writer with copywriting skills helped when I got started in the field.
and I should proofread before mentioning my copywriting skills! :)
I graduated in 2008 with a degree in Economics. 2008 was not a good year to find a job. I ended up getting a job in child welfare / child protective services. It’s government, so that’s cool, and it actually really fits my personality which I never would have expected. I should have gone to school for social work, but they were ok with any social sciences degree.
BA in English- office work, tutor
MA in English- library assistant, adjunct English instructor, technical writer,
MLS in Library Science- Librarian
I got my B.S. in molecular cell biology with a minor in English, got a masters in secondary science education and have been teaching high school chemistry and ap biology ever since. I got my masters for “free” I did an internship where I worked at the school during the day subbing/teacher helper and the school paid for my masters. I don’t know if these type of internships are still around but it was a wonderful feeling not having any additional debt.
I got my bachelor’s in magazine journalism. And while I wouldn’t call myself a journalist these days, my career path has mostly stemmed from/benefited from that major. After graduating, I worked as an editor for agricultural trade publications (a field I had no background in) and then moved into communications for trade associations. Now I’m more in the nonprofit sector, serving as director of marketing & communications for a regional nonprofit. I’d be torn on whether to recommend my major these days – media is in such an upheaval, and jobs in traditional print/broadcast journalism are few and far between. BUT I do think my journalism training/degree gave me a good foundation in writing, editing, researching, analysis, etc. that have served me well over the years – and there are many jobs in the corporate/government/nonprofit sectors for former journalists & good communicators.
This is fascinating! I have to admit I haven’t read all the comments because I was so excited to tell my story.
I’m happy to see so many English majors here. I knew I wanted to major in English because I loved it and I was good at it, and I continued to love it throughout college and never wanted to change majors. I did know going into it that my only option after graduating would probably be teaching which doesn’t exactly pay the big bucks. So for that reason I chose a school where I got a full ride scholarship. But when I was close to graduating I realized I just wasn’t cut out to be a teacher, so I decided to go to law school. I loved law school, it’s great for English major types. The problem was I graduated right in the midst of the recession in 2010 and there were no law jobs so I was unemployed (beyond temp stuff) for a whole year. If my husband (fiance at the time) hadn’t had a good job, I would have had to move back in with my parents :( I was pretty sure going to law school was the worst mistake I had ever made. BUT THEN a job opened up at a place I had wanted to work and had been hassling for the year and now I’ve been here five years and love it. Weirdly I am an environmental lawyer despite having zero science background. So… to sum up… English major –> Environmental lawyer.
My husband’s story is also very interesting. He started out college as pre-med under pressure from his parents, but he HATED it. So he switched to computer science, which was a hot new thing at the time (circa early 2000’s?). He loved it but again, graduated in the midst of an economic downturn and could not find a job for almost a year. Finally he got a job as a web developer and it was awful and he was paid peanuts. When I decided to go to law school, he thought that was a good idea and decided to go too. He is now an intellectual property lawyer, a job for which you need a “technical” degree. So computer science –> intellectual property lawyer.
Ooh I know another interesting one–my sister’s degree was in “international studies” and she started off working administrative/management jobs for which any humanities degree would work, but she has since started her own very successful dog walking business.
I am very happy with what I’m doing now, but if I won the lottery I would go back to school for theoretical math like Rob and be an astrophysicist. I really liked math but I didn’t pursue it because I wasn’t as good at it as I was at English.
I majored in journalism because I liked to read and write and wanted something a bit more “professional” than majoring in English, but it was a pretty broad, liberal arts program with a few journalism courses sprinkled in. I got a job at a small daily newspaper right after graduation, and then a year later, got a job at The Associated Press, where I’ve been for 20 years.
So after flailing around miserably for two years of university and then taking a semester off, I found my way to social work, which is what I received a Bachelor’s degree in. After graduating, I found a job right away at a local homeless shelter. There, I had several jobs including basic residential work (making sure residents met curfew, followed the rules, maintaining order, etc.), case management, working with the mentally ill and substance abusing residents, and ending up promoting to management. I left that job and transitioned to case management in a mental health clinic, where eventually I promoted to a counselor position. I currently work as a child protective services worker for my county. Positives of this line of work include the good feels you get from helping people, a relatively strong job market, a sense of purpose & making a difference, meeting a very diverse group of people, etc. Negatives include low (sometimes very low) pay, especially in non-profit work, high stress, high responsibility/accountability/liability.
I have my degree in Business Administration with a concentration within that in Finance (also a minor in Economics). I work in banking, underwriting commercial loans (in recent years, I specifically focus on government guaranteed loans under the Small Business Administration).
I majored in Political Science because I found it interesting, because I liked the first Political Science professor that I had, and maybe also because the woman who ran the honors program that I did my freshman year was a Political Scientist and so I got more exposure to it early on than some other disciplines. At the beginning of my freshman year, it might have seemed equally likely that I would end up majoring in Anthropology or Literature, and in fact I didn’t take any Political Science courses my first term.
On the other hand, I also used to try to get my friends to play “election” with me when I was 7, I got in trouble once in elementary school for asking a kid if he was a Democrat or a Republican, and in high school I kind of wanted to be C.J. Cregg when I grew up…so maybe it was fated from an early age.
My first job out of college was looking for someone with a “science or social science major.” It was providing support for a medical study, and they needed someone who was familiar with how studies are designed. My Political Science degree definitely gave me that. After that I had a generic administrative assistant job in that I probably could have gotten with any degree, and then a job in HR that it would have likely been better to have a Business Administration degree for, except that I already had a fair bit of experience and I did do a lot of interpreting policy. My fourth job there was no such thing as the “right” degree for. I was in charge of scheduling university classes…lots of logic puzzles and problem solving. Theoretical Math would actually have probably been pretty good background to have.
Now I’m in my 5th job, as policy analyst at a medium sized university. I like my job, I use a lot of what I learned in college both in terms of how to write and how to anticipate the impact that different kinds of policies will have and how groups make decisions. I could have gotten this job with any number of degrees (the woman in the cubicle next to me has a degree in 19th century English literature, my boss has a degree in Biology, my other co-workers have degrees in Anthropology and Sociology).
Earlier in my career when I was struggling more with money, I often regretted not having majored in Math. As a college freshman, I didn’t know how to attach it to a career (other than something less than exciting like accounting), but as an adult I’m more aware of the ways that math skills connect to coding, of all of the ways that you can earn money doing statistical analysis, etc. I’m not super familiar with the difference between a theoretical vs. an applied degree, but one way I might approach it is by thinking about when decisions actually have to be made. For example, if Rob is thinking about maybe being a theoretical mathematician, or maybe being a computer programmer…are those two different sets of courses for his freshman year, or mostly the same ones? If he can sign up for his first semester of classes and still be “on track” for either of the majors he’s considering, that gives him a chance to show and get a feel for whether he feels like he actually fits in a department.
I majored in English, but went to a school which is known as a solid liberal art school. So, I think any major in the humanities from such a school would be equivalent. Anyway, I started in publishing (direct line from major), but then moved to nonprofit programs management. The key things that I gained in college are: communication skills (especially writing and public speaking), critical thinking (English was good for this) and organization. None of this is ground-breaking, alas.
I was a political science major, minors in biology, women’s studies, and sociology. I wanted to work in politics and I did for about a decade; specifically, I worked for a couple women’s health organizations doing policy and lobbying. I moved from there to a state health department and switched to doing policy on Medicaid and mental/behavioral health. In between I got married and had a baby. When the baby was older, I went back to school and got a MPP in health policy, to improve my quantitative skills. I could do baby stats but nothing with large data sets and I wanted to learn to crunch numbers, look at trends, etc. etc. I work for a university-affiliated health policy center today, on improving care delivery for kids with serious emotional disturbance.
My husband was a philosophy major undergrad and went straight thru to PhD at a well regarded uni. He published a little in grad school but the academic market in the humanities is dismal. He found a tenure track job, but before tenure the uni re-organized and poof — the ethics requirements were no more and they declined to grant to him tenure. He had been doing applied ethics and was able to find a job (after a year of adjunct work and turmoil) in a community org doing conflict resolution. He says he tells students not to consider doing a PhD in the humanities unless they literally cannot imagine themselves doing anything else. He also tells people that they should NEVER go grad school in the humanities without funding; you’ll never make enough to pay off your grad loans. And finally he highly recommends at least a year off between undergrad and grad school.
I think math would be good. I’ve done hiring and mostly what I’ve looked for in entry level type gigs is (1) smart; (2) interested in job. Other stuff can be taught but mostly I’ve looked for people who have analytical/critical thinking skills.
I completely agree with your husband – do NOT spend $$ on a graduate degree! If they won’t find you they don’t think you have a future in it! My husband a CS Prof tells his students this all the time, although granted he’s in computer security and cryptography so his students have amazing job offers at graduation.
I got my BA in history from a major research university with a minor in Jewish Studies and Math. I had intended to double major in math and history, but the theoretical math wasn’t for me. My goal was to get a PhD and teach at a university. I got a fellowship for a PhD program, but absolutely hated it. PhD politics are really ugly. Anyway. I got pregnant and have stayed home for the last 12 years homeschooling my kids. But my husband works at a university (i.e. Free tuition) so I’ve been casting around for a masters degree. I’ve started one in education, but I’m really not into it, so I’m not moving through the program very quickly.
My husband though was excellent at math and double majored in math and computer science. (Took a CS course that was required for math majors and fell in love). He worked as a computer programmer and hated it. He decided to apply to grad school when I did since we had just gotten married and he would be moving anyway. He went and got his MS and PhD in CS with a concentration in Security and Cryptography and is now a CS professor and a hacker on the side.
I guess there are exceptions to every rule, but I paid for my Masters degree in computer science at NYU and it was due to being there that I got a summer internship at Google that paid for a good chunk of it, which probably helped me along the rest of my career trajectory afterwards.
I am going to aim to be concise about this!
Entering college, I thought I’d major in Spanish so that I could teach, but then realized that although there was a NEED for Spanish teachers, I did not actually WANT to be a teacher. So then I thought I’d major in art because my parents said I was great at it (I was OK), and I thought I could be a fashion designer. That was not realistic, and after my first art class, I realized my perfectionism would drive me crazy, so I abandoned that idea. I settled on an English major because I was good at writing…it was YEARS later when I realized that I don’t actually LIKE writing.
I had been told that I could get “any” job with a BA/BS degree, which wasn’t quite true, but I did get a job as a magazine editor, which was what I wanted. But then I disliked the work, and the magazine industry wasn’t doing well, so I got a job at a Planned Parenthood-type clinic where I’d been a volunteer. The plan at that point was to get an MA in English, then a PhD. I lasted half a semester in the MA program because I realized I liked healthcare and activism. So I continued working in the clinic for six years until I finally identified that I wanted to be a nurse, went back to school, and here I am as an RN, which I actually very much enjoy!
What a great response! I love these kinds of stories, where you try job after job until you feel a “click.” Congrats!
I have a computer science degree, and I worked in IT for 10 years before going back to school for a graduate degree in physical therapy.
I’d say study something that makes you happy without worrying too much about what “job” it translates to. There are always companies looking fir smart people willing to train specific skills.
Oh I love this question because mine is so weird: I majored in French (and European Studies), and I’m the Director of Sales Operations at a (n American) software firm, and have been in Sales Ops and managing complex software systems in the tech space nearly my entire professional career, because obviously ;-)
When I went to school I was adamant that any Liberal Arts degree would hold the same weight in my job search regardless of major. I was pretty sure I was going to go the Corporate America route (rather than, say, academia / teaching) and it didn’t seem like Random Corp of America would care if my degree was in English or French or Asian Studies: I went to a pretty good school and I was fairly confident the degree + a good GPA would be all they looked at. My parents vehemently disagreed, which is why I ended up with the 2nd major of European Studies, which for some reason my mom thought made me more marketable than someone with just a French degree?
Anyway, I’m pleased to have been proven right, and I feel that unless you know in advance exactly what you want to do, and that a certain degree is the path you need to take to get there… companies consider an undergrad degree to be just a piece of paper that proves you’re smart enough to get through college and learn new skills, especially on the liberal arts side of the house. I went with French because I loved studying it; I wanted to be able to study abroad, and this seemed like the last/only time in my life where I could devote myself to something I loved just for fun (I mean, sure, I was paying for it and it was hard work, but I mean it wouldn’t have to be my secondary or tertiary focus after earning a living / learning how to be an adult etc). I have absolutely no regrets about doing it that way!
tl;dr – if you don’t necessarily know what you want to do in life, study what interests you NOW in college. It has less bearing on your career path than most people assume.
Couldn’t agree more, IF you want to go into corporate life. I worked in the HR department for two companies 2004- 2015, and was involved in new hire orientation/training at both. Especially for entry or mid level jobs, we would regularly hire people with incredibly unrelated college degrees to their new job descriptions (even during the recession). It’s all about how you leverage your previous experiences (academic, professional, extracurricular, volunteer, you name it) and communicate your desire to learn.
I’m loving these posts and comment threads!
I graduated in 2001, so the hiring landscape was probably a little different then. I majored in Economics at a liberal arts school (so received a BA). I went on to work at a tiny startup consulting firm in the health care information management industry immediately upon graduation (there were 3 employees when I started there, including me). We won a massive contract to provide HIPAA implementation and compliance training to hospitals, insurance companies, government agencies, etc in one particular state, and fell in love with the profession of corporate training. Ended up moving on to corporate training in a large national bank, then on to a mid-sized regional insurance brokerage/wealth management company. Most of my fellow Economics majors either went directly into MBA programs or some kind of consulting job. A few went into political consulting/government jobs, and a couple went into international economic development. (That’s what I can think of based on the acquaintances I still keep in some touch with).
Of my CLOSE circle of friends from college, one majored in biology, got a masters and PhD in biology related fields, and now studies dirt in Eastern Africa (that’s not a joke). One majored in chemistry, and is now a neurosurgeon. One majored in Economics, sold shoes wholesale after graduation, became a real estate agent, and now stays at home with her kids. One majored in psychology and is a psychologist. One double majored in math and physics and is now a software designer/engineer.
My husband’s story is more interesting (to me). He got a BS in Fine Arts (emphasis on painting) from a large state university. Was hired upon graduation to draw the assembly instructions for furniture and stuff like that (he gets SO MAD when assembly instructions are not clear!) Did that for a couple years, moved to L.A. and worked as a set designer for movies for another couple years. Then ended up working for a company that designed the form liners for the big retaining walls on the side of highways. He now is the VP of Operations for a company that designs and builds outdoor driveways, patios, kitchens, fireplaces, etc. He does zero artistic work, it’s all business management, budgeting, oversight, etc. He never took a business class in his life.
I know several people who study dirt in Eastern Africa. I wonder if we know the same people, or if the dirt in Eastern Africa is just especially interesting = ).
HA! I think studying dirt in East Africa sounds VERY interesting! Oh, the stories I’ve heard :)
I double-majored in political science and economics, with a minor in Mandarin Chinese, and a plan to go to law school and become an international attorney specializing in US-Chinese negotiations. The law school thing didn’t happen, but, turns out, PoliSci/Econ + Chinese is a pretty solid background for almost any business position. And, for me, the best part was learning to look at everything from multiple points of view, both in the history of nations, and policy/government, and in how to influence something as nebulous and enormous as the economy. One change always has several unexpected reactions.
Also, I think it is really important to have some kind of plan for employment post-graduation before you major in whatever. Theoretical math sounds like a research-heavy employment opportunity, so, does that mean he needs some kind of advanced degree for solid options? Can a research lab or institution pay for that degree? I don’t know, but worth digging a little before he is in his last semester of college, ya know?
xox
I was a history and Asian studies major. Right after college I worked at a public relations firm and then shifted to a research consortium. After that I got my Ph.D. in history and am a professor now.
My husband was a theoretical math major and he now works as a data scientist.
I tell my students all the time that a liberal arts degree can get you to almost anywhere you just have to be really savvy about matching skills and experience to your degree. Do paid and unpaid internships in a number of fields etc. and build reasonable skills. For someone like your son interested in math there a huge number of data analyst jobs but he will need to know computer coding and algorithms. He should think after his first year about some jobs he honk he would like look at their qualification requirements and try to get those skills on to his resume.
My degree is in Aviation Management. I landed a paid internship in Airport Operations/Security at Denver Intl Airport my last semester in college and was hired on full time afterwards. That dept. handled writing airport policy, maintaining the security system for the entire airport (card reader access, determining levels of access for different employee types, etc), and issuing employee badges for the 25,000+ employees. I left after 5 years but that would’ve progressed to working as an Airport Ops Manager which involves airfield operations, etc. I had other friends with the same degree go to work for airlines. Lots of possibilities that I didn’t even fathom when I was in college.
I majored in Communication Sciences and Disorders and then got a MS in Speech and Language Pathology. I worked as a speech therapist in a school setting for 5 years, then had kids. Worked in Rehab hospital briefly and then Early Intervention and now I am a birth doula.
I majored in Pharmacy, and got a job as a pharmacist, which I discovered was boring and repetitive. I went back to Law school and am now a lawyer. Also sometimes boring and repetitive, but it pays the bills and my life is about more than just my work.
I went to college with a “premed” leaning, but basically wanted to focus on something science/math related because those are my strengths. I ended up getting my degree in chemistry after sampling classes from biology, chemistry and math. Chemistry clicked best for me and the professors were spectacular.
Soon after graduation, I started at a coatings company as an analytical chemist and was then promoted to quality control manager there. After many years in low/mid-level corporate management, I left last year and am now a lab manager (department of 1) for a toxicology lab in a pain management clinic.
I didn’t know what specific jobs were out there for chemists, but I knew that a science degree would likely work well in my area’s job market and I could go to grad school if not.
I LOVE THIS SERIES OF POSTS. My job is especially stressful right now and having these fascinating comments to read at lunchtime is super-duper increasing my quality of life.
As you may recall from my previous extended ramblings…:) I went to college not knowing what I wanted to do. I always liked to write, did well in English, etc. But an English degree? What would I actually do with that? I didn’t want to be a teacher (didn’t like to get up in the morning, and didn’t like the idea of the limited salary). So I stumbled around through Everything 101 until my brother (who had graduated from the same university with an engineering degree) said “You know, I work with some people called “technical writers” at my job. They make good money. They seem happy and smart. You should look into that. I know UW has at least technical writing classes, because I had to take Writing for Engineers in school.”
So I walked over to one of the Engineering buildings and asked if they had classes in technical writing. They did indeed. But no major offered – just a minor. I didn’t want to transfer for my last year, so I asked my advisor what major I could accomplish quickly with the credits I already had. Journalism came up as the answer, so I minored in technical writing and majored in journalism. (Which was funny given my objection to teachers’ salaries…journalism was the absolute lowest paid major at my college at the time.) As part of the tech writing program, they matched up each student with a (paid!) internship. I got a second internship based on my success at the first. Got a tech writing job straight out of school based on those classes and internships. I have been a tech writer for 20+ years. I’ve recently moved into a different type of role but it’s still part of the technical documentation world.
I thought about going back for my masters about 15 years ago but there isn’t a pressing need in my profession, and now any college funds we have are going to savings for our kids so it probably won’t happen.
I agree with earlier commenters about how it would be useful for kids to understand what level of schooling is required for given career paths. If I had known about it at the time, and hadn’t found tech writing, I would likely have pursued a library science degree. But that career requires a masters.
Good luck Rob!
Oh, my brother (the one with the engineering degree) also pursued a math degree. (I don’t know what kind, sorry.) But he stopped just short of finishing it because he found that it really changed the recruiting he was getting for careers – lots of defense/military recruitment for math majors and he didn’t want to work in that sector. This was ages ago but maybe worth mentioning, in case it helps you ask the placement folks questions about what type of math degrees lead to what type of jobs.
I wanted to enter college in the Animal Science department because I wanted to be a vet. My parents said no because they thought Animal Science was for farmers so I entered college as a biology major. Then transferred to An Sci the first week on campus. Parents were thrilled.
Second semester junior year I took a business course and realized I was in the wrong major. I was kind of at a loss so I graduated An Sci and spent the year after college “finding myself”. Then got a job as a veterinary pharmaceutical rep- an industry I never knew existed. I got my MBA while working and now do strategy for an Animal Pharma company.
When I started school, I wanted to be a doctor so I chose to get a BS in biology. Organic chemistry did me in, but I started getting interested in the psych classes I was taking so ended up minoring in psych. After graduating, I did a year of volunteer work and then planned to go back for my masters in school psychology. But my job as a volunteer working with refugees, was very stressful and showed me that I have a hard time setting others problems aside at the end of the day and that counseling was not going to be a good fit.
Once my volunteer year was complete, I ended up in a new state, following my parents who had moved. I applied for a laboratory job on a whim, thinking I could at least put the science skills to work while I figured out what to do. I ended up working at a large biotech company doing chemical analysis and eventually worked my way into quality assurance. I worked there for 10 years until I had children and then became a stay at home mom. One thing I learned there, is that I hate all the corporate team building, goal setting, benchmarking etc…. INow that my kids are older, I’m a part time preschool teacher and (seemingly) full-time volunteer at school and church.
I originally wanted to be a Physician Assistant, and it was Organic Chemistry that did me in, as well. I’m now a stay at home mom, and although my kids are still young, your description of “(seemingly) full-time volunteer” hits home for me. You made me laugh out loud twice…thanks! :)
I got my degree in Economic Theory and i literally looked up economics in the phone book a few months before i graduated and applied to all the Economic consulting firms listed there (this was in DC) i got a job doing economic consulting and i hated it. so i tried a few different career paths over the years. Having a degree in economics was totally useful for every job i had, even if it wasn’t economics related. it just gave me good fundamentals about data and theory and policy. Eveutally i decided i wanted to go into research so i went back to school, became an RN and got a Masters in Health Policy. Now i do policy research.
I was a marketing major, originally thought I wanted to be an accountant though. I realized after my 1st semester that I was not cut out for accounting, even though I enjoyed it and went with marketing instead. I am a people pleaser and it was a good fit for me. I had a hard time finding a job when I got out of college (in the early 90’s) and started out working for a department store. I quickly was promoted to department manager, where I was a good 20+ years younger than my co-workers and you can imagine how much respect they were willing to give me. Then I was again promoted to a clothing buyer and that lasted about a year. I hated the travel that was required and I bought for a boring subset of customers 40+ years older than I was at the time. After that, I worked as a CSR for a large insurance company, then met my husband and moved 6 hours away and my boss called some contacts in the area for me and found me a job as a inside sales rep with an insurance broker. Then, I had my daughter and stayed home with her. When she was almost 2, I realized I needed a part time job or I was going to go crazy! I worked retail for 8 more years, again as a manager, this time with more qualifications and authority and I really miss it. Now I work as a receptionist for a chiropractor, part-time and as a substitute teachers aide. I love both jobs and all but the subbing job have related to my very flexible marketing degree!
I was a math major. My school didn’t have applied vs theoretical, just math, but it was definitely more theoretical, by a lot. I did cryptography for the federal government right after school (2007 – not an uncontroversial time to be doing that work), but ended up hating it. After grad school in information science, then eventually a 12-week intensive programming class, I’m a software engineer. I definitely use concepts from both my degrees at work, but not often.
A lot of classmates who also did theoretical math went into finance. They seem successful, but the idea never appealed to me.
Started off undecided (TOO MUCH PRESSURE TO DECIDE MY LIFE AT 18), then tried Business. Failed my business math prerequisite for a variety of reasons both in and out of my control, so scrapped that idea. Junior year, finally bit the bullet & decided to major in English, with a focus on inority literature, just because I liked it, and minor in Communications because some of the classes looked fun. My mom kept saying “so how does this lead to me not supporting you financially?” and I had No. Idea. But did it anyway. (I felt then, and still feel to an extent, that there are paths in school where the experience is more important than the degree, but then I’m a dirty liberal arts degree holder ;-) )
Found out about an internship at the University Press, went for it, got it, and decided I would use my degree to go into publishing. I thought I’d be an editor, but that internship showed me I really didn’t like editing work. Got a part time job at the same time for a small arts education company that also did publishing, and sort of fell backwards into doing marketing work for them, and found I loved it. And I’ve been doing marketing ever since–some in publishing, some not.
English USED to be the kind of major that could get you in a fair variety of fields, but I don’t know if that’s the case anymore. I can tell you that my English major led to marketing, a friend’s led to teaching, another friend’s led to law school, and another friend’s led to business school and from there to a sales position.
Unrelated to MY experience, a friend went the theoretical math route, and now works for the military (as a civilian) doing stuff he can’t tell us about, but it’s all extremely related to his education (he also got a masters & PhD in the same area). It’s all very complicated and top secret, which doesn’t really help you much, but he pretty much has guaranteed work, and will be able to retire at 43.
I majored in chemistry because I had always liked sciency stuff and had an amazing chemistry professor my freshman year of college. But I kind of had no idea what to do with it after I graduated. I had some thoughts of teaching, so decided to go to grad school for a PhD so I could become a college professor. This was a terrible idea. I hated the actual research part of grad school (and really hated all lab type work). I started looking for a job as an escape hatch from grad school and found a job working for a chemical company in their environmental health and safety program. A blend of science knowledge, technology, data manipulation, and customer service that is ideal for me. I’ve built a career in it now and often marvel that my career was something I literally did not even know existed while I was in college.
Woo hoo! I seconded Missy’s request, so I’m happy to see it happened. I’m LOVING these university-related posts!
First the major and the current job, then the path from one to the other…
I have a B.Sc. in Biology, and an M.Sc. in Botany/Mycology. Am I a botanist or a mycologist? No, no I am not. I am a policy advisor with the Canadian federal government, and my area is real property policy. I am also a part-time fitness instructor, and have a small business as a fine art photographer.
After graduating with my M.Sc. and knowing by that point that I didn’t want to look through a microscope for a living, I got a job (based on my M.Sc.) coordinating clinical trials for the urology department at a major hospital in my home city. After a year I quit and backpacked through Europe for a month, then got into the federal government as a project officer (communication projects, database management, some web publishing) with Health Canada (based on my year coordinating medical research) upon my return. After almost exactly a year, I got into the federal government’s management training program (for which you needed a Master’s to apply, but no area of study was specified). I got matched with my current department based on a small infill development I was doing as a personal project (I was a very ambitious 20-something); they liked my project management skills and the fact that my project was real-property-based. Within that program I worked at a number of assignments, including various officer, analyst, and advisor positions.
So my current job doesn’t have anything to do with my degrees in terms of subject matter, but the abilities to analyse, think logically and critically, and write clear, evidence-based recommendations come at least partly from my science background. By far though, the skills I use the most are communications skills – particularly writing and editing – and those I’ve accumulated from a lifetime of being a keen reader and writer, plus at this point I’ve been editing corporate policy documents in my current field for over 9 years. If I ever leave my current job, you can bet that these are the skills I’ll rely on most to keep a paycheque coming in.
It’s worth mentioning that I started teaching at the gym (14 years ago) because it combines a passion for teaching that I discovered as a grad student TA, with the realization that I needed to keep active if I wanted to continue my indulgent dietary ways. And, ironically, my photography includes a lot of macro work with plants and flowers. I may not be staring through a microscope, but I’m still getting up close and personal with flora through a lens!
I started out as a double major in English and Rhetoric, because I liked to read and thought it would be useful to know how to write. But I was pretty sure I didn’t want to be a teacher, and didn’t have a good sense of what else I could do with an English/Rhetoric degree other than teach. Being a practically oriented person, that bugged.
The summer after my freshman year in college, I had an internship at the company for which my dad worked. Every year this company would hire the kids of their employees. The only rules were: you had to be in college and you couldn’t work in the same department as your relative. My dad was in Finance, so my internship was in Marketing. I loved it. The people were young, and fun, and what they did seemed interesting and practical enough to earn me a job afterwards. So I went back to school and transferred to my college’s business school, majoring in Marketing.
My second semester junior year I took a class in business law, required for all business majors, taught by a professor from the college’s law school. Basically it was a class on contract law. And, I loved it. Really, really loved it. Looking back it seems obvious that I should have been preparing to go to law school all along (there are a ton of English majors who do) but I had the criminal law construct in my mind, and because I knew I didn’t want to be a criminal lawyer, I had dismissed law school as a possibility.
So, I didn’t change my major, because I wouldn’t have graduated on time, but I did go to law school and 20 years later, I work as a commercial contracts lawyer for a company. I enjoy it very much.
I love these posts! You have the best readers EVER.
I started as a biology major. I quickly realized the class load was TOUGH, and I was lagging behind. I was pretty sure that I wanted to work in law enforcement, so I switched majors to Spanish, kept the biology minor and went to work right out of college as a police officer. My fluent Spanish helped tremendously.
Fifteen years later, I still work for the State Police, but a slightly different capacity now. I manage the evidence program, and I LOVE it. I have even used my biology background a time or two!
I can’t wait to read these! My school had a minor available in Violence Studies (it was a new thing, and seems to maybe have not lasted?) Anyway, I was fascinated by that, but it wasn’t a department exactly, more like a group of classes and professors. I figured out I could major in Interdisciplinary Studies (IDS), a department of the Institute of Liberal Arts and basically create my own major and write a thesis. So I majored in Interdisciplinary Studies in Society and Culture with a concentration in Violence Studies. It was fascinating.
My jobs have been: outdoor stuff, ski instructor, librarian, Domestic Violence Advocate and stay at home mom. So, one related to my job? I was most certainly on the “go to college for education and to learn how to learn” not on the “go to college to obtain a career” path (and that was a direct rebellion of what the rest of my family did, not because one way is better and now I’m off on the tangent). I think it could have easily led to a graduate degree and research studies and all sorts of stuff, but I ended up discovering the western US during college and that proved a bigger draw than academia, and then when my husband and I decided to marry, we flipped a coin to chose whose career to follow and his won. (Which was a good thing).
Anyway, can’t wait to read these!
My undergrad is in Liberal Studies and I have graduate degrees in International Relations and Library and Information Studies. I am a paralegal. In my experience, what I found was this: so many jobs these days rely on experience rather than education. They want you to have an education, sure, but really they want you to have experience. I have NO experience in either of my actual fields because for my IR degree I was living overseas on a military base and any related jobs were for high-up contractors and/or people who were bilingual, and during my MLIS I was a stay at home mom. If I’d taken a work study or worked part-time at the reference desk I would have gained some experience, but instead I stayed home with Eriana. Then I found zero jobs in libraries without experience, and couldn’t volunteer for experience because of union rules where I live that say professionals can’t volunteer. Also any teaching positions for those fields require PhDs at the colleges where I live. So.
TL;DR / I loved my programs and don’t regret my degrees, but wish I’d done more research into what I could actually do in the fields and what I needed to do to gain experience while I earned them (or before I chose them). I love my job, but if I’d known I would end up in law I would have gone to law school.
I think I may be unique here as I have degrees in meteorology and geography. I grew up in the Midwest, so weather held an early fascination for me. I liked math and science so meteorology seemed like a great fit. I enjoyed my high school geography class, so I figured a geography minor would be interesting but useless. That lead to my first GIS (computer mapping) course, which I loved. Who knew there were actually jobs in geography? A summer internship with the National Weather Service showed me that I would be bored to death as a forecaster (while the weather is different every day, what you do really isn’t). I bumped up my geography minor to a second major and got work as a GIS Analyst for an environmental consulting company right after graduating. After a few years I moved to a supply chain management company where I head the GIS team for a good salary.
I will echo everyone stressing the importance of internships. Without the NWS internship, I would have looked into forecasting jobs and wound up hating things. Another student job with an academic GIS company confirmed my interest in GIS and allowed me to point my career plans in the right direction before it was too late. You just don’t know what is a good fit for you without trying it out.
My husband is a geographer! When I met him, it was like “…that’s a thing you can actually do?” He’s in environmental engineering now, although I think he’d secretly prefer to teach it more than anything.
Heh, my husband was a geography major too. That led him to his first job doing GIS stuff and now 20 years later he’s a VP in commercial real estate finance. The path doesn’t seem direct but every job he’s had that led him to where he is started with geography and that first GIS job.
I went to a community college for drafting and earned an Associate in Applied Science. I worked for a company that built really bad computers, specifically in Testing – I drew the plans for the cards that went in the machines that tested the really bad computers. From there I went to work for a company that built trade show exhibits and LOVED it. I started doing 80% of the drafting, and ended up doing 100% of the graphics work (or causing it to be done – photography, painting, awnings, what have you) and maybe 20% of the drafting. Boss sold the company, new boss didn’t like women and me in particular, left the to stay home with my baby. We needed more income, so went to work at a daycare, and kept doing that until baby #2. Stayed at home for 3 years, started a cleaning business with hubby and did that for 12 years, now I drive a school bus and clean a church 4 days a week and an office once a week. The cleaning and the bus are far removed from my college training, but they work with my family since I am off work when they are out of school, and I can move the cleaning schedule to suit our needs.
I graduated 2014 with a BA degree…but I designed my own major! I knew I wasn’t passionate enough about any one thing to really focus on a specific career, and so I decided to throw caution to the wind and study what I actually loved to learn about. My school has an individualized studies department, so I wrote up a proposal for a major program including all the classes I would take and got it approved my sophomore year. I took English, history, and global studies classes, focusing on Europe and specifically the UK for my thesis (which I wrote through the history department, which is another tale of bureaucracy and honors program woes). So whenever people ask me what my major was, I either say history if I want to be general or British studies or European studies. Occasionally I’ll use museum studies since I had internships in two different museums during college. I thought I wanted to be a curator or some sort of museum professional.
All that to say, I now work as a documentation clerk for a pharmaceutical company. Sort of related to museums, in that I’m archiving all their paperwork and getting it stored properly. But it’s just a means to an end (the end being $$$ for my student loans). Truthfully I have no idea what I want to do, and I might actually go back to school for my master’s if I can ever scrape up enough cash. :)
I have a few college degrees, perk of work for a large university= free education, but I have a BA in English and a BA in Languages. I currently work as an Admission Advisor for a Health Science program. I coordinate lots of different aspects of my department including: admissions to 12 different programs, convocation, new student orientation, website updates, social media and general putting out of fires.
I love higher education and enjoy all aspects of it.
Right now I’m working on my MBA in Marketing because it’s free and why not. After that I’ll finish my BA in Classics and Philosophy while my husband finished his free PhD.
So I love these questions. I get to read a bunch of interesting comments and get to impart my “wisdom” on the one person who might read it ;)
I majored in accounting. I knew I wouldn’t be a good engineer, so I went with business. And accounting seemed like the most useful.
I graduated in 2001, and have had 2 jobs. I obviously am not comfortable with change. Both jobs were in medical auditing. One with the government and one with a contractor. I kind of chances in to the medical side of it, but I find it very interesting. But now I’m a bit pigeon holed in it.
I majored in chemical engineering. I got at job in process research and development at a Fortune 500 (probably more like 100, but I am not sure) company. I quit to stay home with my kids.
My husband majored in chemical engineering. He has been employed for over 30 years with the same oil company. One of the big 5. He has had many jobs there – r&d theoretical stuff at their research facility, on-site waste water management at a refinery, pipeline/transportation support, offshore engineering management for existing platforms, offshore HSE management for platforms being constructed, hazardous response team member, environmental auditor, and a few I can’t remember right now.
My oldest daughter majored in biomedical engineering (and got a psych degree at the same time). She went right into medical school. She finished that in May and is now in her first year of residency in internal medicine on a hospitalist track.
My youngest has three semesters to go on her chemical engineering degree. She will be interning this fall for one of the big oil companies and again over next summer. She hopes to be hired there after she graduates.
So – all straight shots.
OOo! I love this question! I was an American Studies major, I intended to go to Law School and the writing and reading involved in that BA was a good fit to prep for a law degree. I ended up getting my MFA in Film and Television Production and am now a reality tv and feature film producer.
I majored in political science and intended to go to law school until the financial reality that hit me and I was scared to move to DC solo so I got an entry level job in government relations (lobbying) for an association of people working on influencing state and local legislation based in NYC where I had friends. After two years I got brave and moved to DC planning to work on Capitol Hill but again the financial reality of that hit and I took a job working for a government contractor on health policy issues. Then I moved to an association and worked for them for many years on health insurance policy issues including very detailed work on health reform as it was passed and implemented. Eventually we moved away from DC and I kept working for them on health policy issues and telecommuting. Since I was not in DC full time and the adminsitration had begun implementing health reform, I began to focus more on the regulations associated with the law (where all the details are). From that I branched out into my own consulting business helping employers and then people that operate their group benefit plans implement/keep on top of all of the many health reform requirements and all of the other legal requirements they have to follow. When I graduated from college with a political science degree I didn’t understand that jobs like mine existed. BUt by following a very logical path to an entry level job typical of someone with my degree and then taking upward and increasingly more specialized steps over 20 I have arrived where I am. I enjoy it, it still relates directly to my degree and as a micron business owner I have a lot of control over my time and workflow which is perfect as a mom of three kids.
I majored in French, and now I am a university French professor. Pretty direct line. I love my job.
Something like 95+% of our French and Spanish majors are double majors, and plan to use their language and cultural skills in some other field. Here are some of the jobs our recent alumni are doing, actively using their French and Spanish majors:
Translation/ interpretation
Teaching, including ESL and TESOL
Health professions (doctors, nurses, health science, physician’s assistants, pharmacists)
Social work
Corporate work for international corporations or corporations with a significant non-English-speaking consumer base — we have one person working for HP, and even though she’s based in the US, she has colleagues in Europe and can speak French to them when necessary.
Work for NGOs like Doctors Without Borders and many more
Translating the voices in video games for Canadian users
Child care
Criminal justice
Languages and cultural contexts (we also have minors in Chinese, Japanese, German, Arabic, and Swahili) are useful in many, many fields.
More data points: my brother was a history major and is now a high school social studies/ government teacher. My sister was an English major and is now an LCSW with the homeless population.
My favorite story is my husband’s. He was a history major with a minor in Medieval Studies. He meant to teach, and got a job teaching high school right after college, but the city where he was teaching had a budget issue and laid off all the first-year teachers. So he got a job at a small startup pharmaceutical company, taught himself their statistical analysis software, and has been doing statistical data analysis in the pharmaceutical industry for the past 20 years. This is why I’m passionate about a liberal arts education! You can think and solve problems and write and communicate in lots of different contexts! Hip hip huzzah.
I majored in Economics with a Minor in History. Mostly because I wanted to be a micro biologist but due to a dumb mistake on the Chemistry final (scan tron bubbles…damn you to hell!), I failed Chemistry and could no longer be on the path to biology. Got out in 4 years, on the bubble of the internetz being a THING, and have spent the last 20 years working in financial services. Doing…and learning technology project management stuff like software development, infrastructure, coaching, training, etc. (transferable skills regardless of industry). Then program and portfolio management came along. My dream of getting out of financial services has come to life (after being laid off by large credit card company, along with 75% of my colleagues in our world) and I am now working at the HQ of a multi-channel large retailer. Still in IT, but now I’m the head of project management and governance and my job is to improve processes and advise leadership. Apparently. HA. I’ve been in this role for 2 months and every time the CIO introduces me to someone, my title gets bigger. Which always has me totally snickering. In my head. Too bad I’m not seeing anything different in my paycheck! Cheers and good luck to Rob!
Mine makes sense in a way, but not exactly. I was an English major, and I am an editor, which seems logical, right? But really, I don’t think the major helped me much with what I do now; it’s more like, I became an English major because I am a word person, not vice versa. And there were a lot of years working in bookstores, and in office jobs that were not editing/proofreading, before I found my focus.
Great topic! I’m looking forward to reading all of the responses.
I majored in Russian Literature, which I basically fell into. I had planned to study political science or international relations while continuing to study French and learning some Russian. I fell in love with the Russian department at my school and ended up switching majors. I then went to grad school in Russian lit, convinced that I wanted to get a PhD in Russian and Czech literature and become a professor. I became more and more unhappy with that plan and eventually dropped out with only an MA to show for my time.
After that, I took a series of temp jobs in offices before starting to work at a tiny publishing company that published newsletters and directories. I left that job to stay home with my kids and ended up homeschooling. I have no idea what I will do when the youngest two transition to public school.
I was a pre-PA major and then I discovered the TWO YEARS of chemistry required. So I transferred schools and became a nurse (BSN), like my mom and sister. I never thought about nursing (I was going to REBEL and be an ARTISTE!) but I’m so glad to be a nurse. I can change jobs if/when I get bored, and while there’s a learning curve, there’s still a wide variety of areas in which I can work. I can work with patients or not, I can manage other people or not, I can work in a totally theoretical area or not . . . the doors are wide open – part time/full time/whatever.
Nursing is good in that you are required to do clinicals in a wide variety of areas and speak with a wide variety of nurses. I saw a lot, plus I worked as a CNA in high school and then a nurse tech in college. As an RN, I’ve worked in the ED and then medical critical care, then cardiothoracic critical care, and now I’m in a cath lab. I always feel like there’s a dozen or more places I could move after this – no stagnation.
I think the degree itself is a great combination of science (and a new grad could totally go that direction) and caregiving (for the more people oriented). Nurses can also go on the be NPs/PAs/MDs and I’ve seen all that happen while they’re able to earn a living/support their families at the same time. I guess what I’m saying is that 1. I’m happy to be a nurse and 2. I have never felt like I’m done. For those who want to go on, there are a myriad of possibilities.
I’m a nurse.
Degree #1: BS in Aerospace Engineering. Turns out, I don’t like Aerospace Engineering. And marrying another aerospace engineer makes work complicated, especially during a recession. But, it was nice of large major defense company to pay for:
Degree #2: Masters in Business Admin. I can do minor accounting now. I’ve never used this degree specifically, but I know that I have bits and pieces that fly out of my mouth from time to time. Back to that recession, being laid off from large major defense company led to:
Degree #3: BS in Nursing. I used to pass out at the sight of blood. Now I work in the ED. I want to combine all of this into the perfect job so that means I’m working on:
Degree #4: MS in Nursing. Planning to go into quality initiatives, data analysis, etc which I see as the best use of my engineering mind and bedside nursing skills. My husband is hoping I stop here and don’t go for a PhD.
I’m going to crib off this format! :)
#1 Bachelors in Microbiology, minor in Chemistry. Pre-medicine.
#2 PhD in molecular biology
#3 MD, then internal medicine residency and a year of oncology fellowship
What do I do now? I SAH mom writing a novel about doctors and patients!
I was a spanish major and intended to teach. But when I got a job, it was in the computer training industry. That lead to an industry consulting position and ultimately a product manager.
I have read that a lot of foreign language people often end up in software because they use similar areas of the brain. Not sure if it is true, but thought it was interesting.
I DID major in theoretical math (we call it “pure math”, as opposed to “applied math”. I got my PhD and now teach at the university level. HOWEVER, for Rob’s info and yours, here are some things you can do with a pure math degree:
-go to grad school and enter academia, like me
-go to law school or med school if you take a few extra classes in undergrad — math majors consistently top the list of “highest percent of this major admitted to law/med school”. We usually duke it out with physics. :)
-get a job with the federal or state government — lots of big data stuff, operation analysis, etc but also the NSA (National Security Agency) is the single largest employer of mathematicians in the WORLD.
-get a job “in industry” if you also take some computer science/coding classes — lots and lots of industries employ mathematicians to analyse their procedures/operations, optimize them, etc
-be an actuary (always near the top of the 100 best jobs lists), which has a lot to do with probability, statistics, and finance
-teach high school
-tutor high school/college students, charging outrageous fees (around here in southern california, people have offered me $200/HOUR to tutor their special snowflakes in algebra. They tell me it’s $150 for someone with a bachelor’s degree and good grades.)
Mine is boring. Majored in education, taught for a few years and am now a stay at home mom. My husband, though, is more interesting. He has a bachelor’s degree in Criminal Justice, but decided shortly after graduation that he wasn’t really interested in that job. He started as a teller at a bank and was promoted to the corporate office within a few months. Ten years later, he’s been promoted several more times and makes a decent living. :)
My degree is in journalism. Of all the things I was interested in at the time I picked my major, which included biology, chemistry, forensic science, and law (paralegal work), it was the only one where I could take all my classes on Tuesdays and Thursdays. When I declared my major junior year, I was working five days a week to afford an apartment (with roommates!) near the school. I realized much later that I could have worked less, but at the time, I was terrified of not making it “on my own” so I overdid it and picked the interest that would fit in with that.
After two and a half years of writing, reporting for the school paper, taking photojournalism, and getting an internship at a paper for a summer, I knew I did not want to be a reporter. I had minored in English so I could take a couple of editing classes my school offered, and I copy edited for the school paper my final semester. After graduating, I worked as a temp at various not so great places and was pretty sure I would never get a job in my field, because editing is a thing you often need to be near publishing houses to do (at the time, all the editing jobs listed in my area were for Web editors, which I was not versed in). And then one day I applied for a job as an administrative assistant for a local scientific publisher and got brought in to interview for an open editing position instead. I have worked for that company, first as an employee and now as an independent contractor – ever since. I stay home with my kids full time and edit on nights and weekends. I mention my entire career trajectory because looking back, I realize that I graduated wanting to become an editor, but planned to quit work when I had kids. And now I am an editor who works from home and also is home with her kids. I am honestly a little amazed every time I realize that I am doing exactly what I (thought) I wanted to do. Whether either the career or the staying at home were good choices for me is another conversation entirely, but … here we are.
Short version, I majored in journalism, wanted to be an editor, and now I am an editor.
Double majored in music and German. Short term out of college I taught a few piano students, but full time professional job I got a few months later due to my major was Customer Service rep for an international company. They needed a German speaking rep.
My short story – BA in Journalism, (3 years working in advertising) then MS in Counseling Psychology, and currently a Career Counselor at a large university in our college of liberal arts.
But of course I can’t keep the story short – I’ve made it through about half of the comments (and recognize a few of my friends in there! Hi Katie and Amanda!), and I’m seriously considering encouraging new freshman that I meet with to read the comments on this post.
My own career story started in high school – I loved art classes and photography, and ended up being the editor of my school newspaper my senior year, in addition to doing a mentorship at a newspaper (which in hindsight, what an awesome program – the only reason I did it was because it allowed me to leave school 2 hours early to go to it). I was more focused on layout and design, but still decided to major in Journalism. I always have loved writing, so it seemed obvious. Once I actually started in the program, I realized you had to select one of 3 tracks – Broadcast, Professional, or Strategic Communication. I was turned off by the competitive nature of professional journalism positions (and the low pay) so I decided to do Strategic Communication with an advertising focus really based on no knowledge whatsoever. I did an internship in London at a small ad agency while studying abroad, worked in advertising at our student newspaper, and had a few other jobs – then my senior year of college got very involved in National Student Advertising Competition and took a Media Planning class. I really just wanted a job after graduating, and the creative side of advertising was so competitive and I was NOT talented in that way at all – I loved my media planning class, and the professor was the Media Director at a large ad agency. I made sure to do well in the class and impress him any way I can, and also worked with him on the Ad Competition and ended up getting a full time internship at that agency (without even needing to interview) 2nd semester of my senior year. I was PRETTY sure that I was set for life then – I had gotten my dream job and that was that!
I ended up staying in advertising as a media buyer and then a media planner for 3 years. It was a fun job, my agency was large and there were tons of really young people. I got really tired of the constant fire-drill mentality of working for clients, on something that I really just did not feel was meaningful in the grand scheme of life. Through talking to many people, I realized that what I was enjoying most was helping all of my other friends find jobs after they finished undergrad and felt lost and confused – working on their resumes, helping with interviewing, and in general brainstorming what they could do with their life. My roommate at the time was working in a career center, which I previously did not know existed, and had never visited (the irony). I was quite annoyed to find out I needed a masters degree to work in any sort of higher education setting as a career counselor, so ended up finding a low level admin job at a university so I could get a MS in Counseling Psychology for free while working full time. After finishing my degree, I got a job in the career center at that university, and a few years after that moved to my current role.
To say that I love my job would be an understatement. I actually work at my alma mater, and there is a huge push now to help liberal arts graduates feel prepared for the world of work. It’s an exciting time to work in this field, and there is nothing better than helping a student understand the value that their English/Psychology/History degree can have on almost ANY field. Most of what I do is meet individually with students, to talk about anything from how to choose their major, what types of experiences they use to supplement their education (volunteering, internships, etc) and how to find them, and then ultimately looking for jobs after they graduate. I specifically work with students interested in law school, and while I have no interest in being a lawyer, it is a fascinating population to work with.
A lot of the commenters have already echoed what I feel is a major issue in selecting a major and ultimately a career – you just can’t know the vast array of professions that exist in the world before you start to get out there. There are a lot of ways to learn more about them – the LinkedIn Alumni tool is a FASCINATING exercise (linkedin.com/alumni) to look at the types of jobs alumni with various majors are doing now.
This has turned into a novel, no shock given my interest in the topic – can’t wait to read more of the replies!
Majored in International Relations and Spanish. Thought about teaching Spanish (still think maybe I should have). Went to law school because I couldn’t think of anything else to do. Loved law school. Did not like private practice. I am now an in-house lawyer / HR person.
I majored in music, recording arts specifically. I wanted to be a sound engineer and ultimately a music producer.
I am now a freelance editor, copywriter, and web/print designer.
So yeah.
I don’t regret what I took in school though. It was a great experience.
Funny, the other photography major in here is also named Heidi. *waves*
Anyway, I majored in photography. Got my B.S. photography, was the media person for a missions team for 2 years, worked in a photo lab, then was a photographer’s assistant. Then I had a baby and stayed home. I tried starting a family portraiture business, but it didn’t work out well. I have the wrong personality for making people comfortable in front of the camera. That and I wasn’t willing to be dirt cheap. Now I mostly take pictures of my kids. They will have a very well documented childhood.
I majored in social studies teaching and minored in French. During my junior year, I started working as a research assistant for one of my professors. She was technically a sociology professor who did a lot of education research. I loved doing the research, so I decided to get a Master’s degree in sociology.
I currently teach sociology as an online adjunct at the university level. It works perfectly for me right now while my children are small but I’m not really sure what my plans are once they get older. Generally, a graduate degree in sociology leads either to a career in academia or in applied social research and I could see myself doing either of those. I’ve also toyed around with idea of going back to school for another graduate degree in Instructional Technology to keep doing more work with online course design, which I’ve been doing as part of my current job.
I went straight for a Master’s in Anthropology (system is different in the Netherlands). Loved it, but it was difficult finding a job afterwards (which was no surprise). Got some NGO jobs (program assistant, program manager etc., not hands-on). Went back to university for a Master’s in Education, taught in High School for a few years. Am now doing a combination of both: setting up educational programs for refugees, mainly (unaccompanied) minors. I like it, but would like to go back to school for a PhD in Anthropology, just because I love it so much (and I LOVED research). Also did a few years of freelance translating, editing and writing (newspaper articles), not related to my degree(s) but because people saw my blog and asked me to work for them.
All in all I’d say that most of the jobs I had were mainly because of my (fairly extensive) cv – I did a lot of side jobs (working in hotels, restaurants etc.) and volunteering (with refugees, at festivals etc.) during my school and university years – combined with having *a* university degree. (Except for the teaching, for which I HAD to be certified, but I got picked from many freshly-graduated candidates applying for the job because I had experience with teaching as a volunteer and I was ‘well-rounded, considering all the things i had done in my life’.)
I found this link on what to do with a degree in theoretical math. http://edition.cnn.com/2009/LIVING/10/26/cb.ten.math.jobs/
I didn’t really know what to major in so I went to an open house and got steered towards Medical Technologist. This is the person who does blood tests in a hospital. It’s a three-year program at the university and then you have to do a clinical year in a hospital. It sounded good, I got started. Then I learned that getting into a clinical program was actually very challenging, as there were so few spots that they only took the people with the most stellar grades from the three years prior. If you did not get a clinical placement, the university would give you an Associates’ degree that really didn’t have any marketability. It seemed like way too big of a gamble of time and money, and the more I learned about some of the work conditions, the less I felt I wanted to try. So I looked to see what other programs in my department would accept the classes I had already taken, and chose Health Physics. It’s a safety specialty that focuses on radiation protection. I graduated and have worked in it ever since. It was a little hard to get my foot in the door, and I had some contract and temporary jobs first. But it’s worked out pretty well. I do regulatory work at the state level now, after having moved around through nuclear power, federal government contract, and environmental cleanup.
I wanted to major in Math, but my mom advised against it because she didn’t see what kind of job I could get with just a math degree. So, I majored in electrical engineering because I liked math and I didn’t like talking to people. I got a job as a systems engineer for a defense contractor. Never liked it. Used my employers benefits to pay to go get an MBA which I have yet to use. (although I have been on the board of a few non-profit, volunteer organizations, so maybe that counts as using the MBA? I’m guess it has probably influenced my decision making in those positions.) I worked as an engineer for 10 years before my older daughter was born, and then I chose to stay home with my kids. But now my kids are 9 and 7, and they don’t really need me so much, so I’m trying to figure out what I want to be when I grow up!
I do think that I may have possibly ended up in the same engineering job with a math degree – I did work with math majors. But I also wouldn’t have been stuck with that sort of job – I would have had different options for jobs and grad degrees. And maybe I still woudn’t know what I want to be when I grow up!
I started off in biomedical science (pre-med/vet/other science). I left it after a year for reasons that I realize now had less to do with me not liking science, and more to do with the school being a bad fit (huge classes, labs taught by brilliant grad student who unfortunately couldn’t speak English, etc). I switched to journalism because I loved writing/reading and my parents nixed an English major because they thought it was impractical (they were paying my tuition at this point). I took a media law class pretty early on. It was supposed to be an easy A, but the semester I took it the regular prof was on sabbatical and they brought in a law professor to teach the class. He taught it like he taught his law students. It was not an easy A and most people were really unhappy about it, but I loved the class so I started looking into law school. I went to law school and then on to work in litigation. I left work a few years ago when my husband was transferred abroad and we started having kids. I think the research/writing of journalism was good prep for the research/writing of law school. My only real regret is intially going into litigation. I loved the research/writing aspect, but hated the daily conflict.
I may have covered this in How To Choose A College, but:
I was a theatre major to start off. Intended to make it big on Broadway. But I discovered a) I didn’t actually like the theatre departments at either of my schools, and also I am too thin-skinned for the constant rejection being a professional actor involves. So I switched to English and communications, concentrations in Professional Writing/Editing and Journalism, respectively. I knew I’d never want to be a journalist and in hindsight PR would have been a better choice for me, but comms wasn’t taking minors, only majors, and journalism fit my schedule better.
I’d intended to go to New Yorkand get a job at a publishing house. What I actually did was move back home and get a job as an editor with a company that maintains a database of mortgage fraud. Then I worked as a technical writer, writing software user manuals. Then I was an editor again, editing emergency management exercise reports and meeting minutes and the like.
I never did go to New York. I met my husband and settled down instead, and his career path keeps him in the DC area (where there are no publishing houses, or at least none of the type I was interested in working at). I discovered, though, that I really hated working in an office. I’ve stayed home with my kids since they were born, but when it’s time for me to go back to work I will in all honesty probably go back to working in a coffee shop. I loved being a barista. I feel like it’s a waste of my degrees, but without that college experience I wouldn’t have met my husband so I guess it wasn’t a total waste!
I got my degree (Psychology, 1988) way back when – at a private/Evangelical college (it was a great school academically, don’t get me wrong) where I only realized in hindsight (significant hindsight) that no one there took me or my potential career very seriously. I’m sure they expected me to get married and be a mom/homemaker. While other people were getting internships and learning what they needed to do to prepare for their futures/apply to grad school, whatever – my advisor signed off on whatever classes I signed up for and never once talked to me about what my goals were or future plans. I was too naive to realize this disservice – nor did I have support otherwise (parents/mentor) to steer me. So I got the degree and only then realized that my only options without more school were things that I didn’t want to do even a little bit (and at that point returning to school wasn’t financially possible). So I got a clerical job and eventually ended up realizing I liked accounting – so I went back to school and now have an MBA…it was all a very long and winding road. It makes me very aware to be as supportive as I can with my own daughters (who are in high school now) – helping them to make choices that are more specific and purposeful with their lives as compared to my own wandering butterfly past.
Ooh I want to read all of these. My degree is Biology, which has…no jobs (at least not in 1993 and doubtful since), so I went to grad school for nursing, but did not finish that program. Instead I work in finance. I got in at a data-entry job but it happened to be a great fit with that company, so I was able to work my way up, and now I am the operations director (at a different company) – a finance degree would be really helpful but (obviously) any degree would make my job a possibility.
Commenting first then going to read everyone’s comments! I was a marketing major not because I wanted to go into sales but because I found an amazing professor and just kept taking all of the classes he offered and selected him as my advisor. I intended to be a finance major when I started college in 1987 but had the worst most boring professor for intro to finance. He completely turned me off the entire subject. Amazing the different a really good professor can make. My job, however, does not now nor has it ever had anything to do with marketing. I went to grad school and do what I went to grad school for.
I too majored in psychology from a State University, but did some dual credit at a junior college. While I enjoyed my psych classes immensely, I took a few classes geared towards law and enjoyed it. I ended up getting an Associates Degree in Paralegal Studies and also my Bachelor of Science in Psychology. I worked as a paralegal in several law firms gaining experience, and then because of my BS degree, I was able to land a job within a large corporation for ten years and then most recently, a global oil and gas company where I work as a Commercial Litigation paralegal/project manager in their legal dept.
I had originally thought I’d maybe go into marriage counseling, but yeah – grad school did not appeal to me after all.
I majored in Human Development and deferred an MSW program to work for a year as a social worker. Thankfully, because within six months I was applying for law school and informing my intended MSW program I would not be coming. I graduated law school and became a child advocate. Both my degrees came in very handy. (No prelaw is not necessary. I’m not sure I know a single lawyer that was prelaw. My law school actually preferred other degrees and some sort of life experience.)
I was a double major in philosophy and French with the intention of doing a semester abroad and then going to law school. I did the study abroad and loved it, but two summers paralegaling dissuaded me from going into law. I ended up getting a job planning incentive travel rewards for companies with large sales forces, a job I didn’t know existed but got me to NYC, which was where I wanted to be. From there, I transitioned into project management within the dotcom world because that’s where everyone was going at the time. And then watching my dotcom proceed to manage itself into bankruptcy inspired me to go to business school. Once I was in business school, I realized that I needed to be doing something that directly helped people (as opposed to marketing baking nuts or going into investment banking), and so I ended up in corporate strategy at a hospital. I did that for 9 years and am now raising my kids and running a small medical foundation for roughly 5 hours/week.
I went to college planning on being a veterinarian, so started down the pre-med path which was highly competitive at my school. I got “weeded” by Chemistry in my freshman year and now had no idea what I was going to do when I graduated.
I had a lot of AP credits (15 hours, I think), so I had room to play and still graduate on time and I had a father who was a university professor who very much espoused the attitude that “college is for learning how to think and for spending time on subjects that you’ll never have another chance to study.” I ended up with a double major in English and Math. At the time, I told people that that I was majoring in English because I loved it and in Math because I wanted a job. (It was the mid-90s. There were jobs out there, but there were also millions of just-English majors graduating every minute.)
Our math program had 4 tracks — “traditional”, “applied”, “education”, and “statistics.” There was a lot of overlap, especially in the first couple years, so you had time to figure out what you really wanted to do. “Traditional” would have been closest to the theoretical math I think Rob is interested in. I didn’t take that path, because I knew I wasn’t passionate about math and I believed (again influenced by family — my father, older brother, an aunt, an uncle, and several older cousins were all university professors in various fields) that you should really love a field to go to grad school in it. “Applied” was mostly for people going into engineering, physics, etc type careers which I wasn’t interested in either, although I took a lot of those classes just for fun (I probably should have thought harder about that path, but really doing it right would have meant another major in one of those subjects and I didn’t want to give up my English classes). I did both the “education” (the classes you needed to teach high school math) and the “statistics” (become an actuary) track. Thought about both those careers and decided they weren’t for me.
I think the double major served me well in interviewing — it was an unusual enough combination that it gave me a starting point to talk about how I was good at both analytical/logic based thought and at communicating complicated ideas clearly. (My now husband used to tell people it meant I liked to use both sides of my brain.) I ended up with a consulting firm, testing of the software they built and then installed for clients. Then I had kids and decided to stay home for a while. A while stretched into a decade and a half when we became a foster family when our youngest was in kindergarten.
Adopting 2 fosters means that fostering is done and now I’m back to thinking I’ll go back to work when the youngest is in full time school. Thinking about going back meant deciding what I wanted to do next. I loved the software testing, but not the 60 hour weeks; plus, the company I worked for (whose culture I loved) is no longer in existence. I’ve volunteered a LOT in the elementary school library and the media specialist suggested I consider doing her job, so I looked into it. Currently, working on the Master’s degree that will give me the certifications I need to apply for school library positions. I’ll be done just in time for my now youngest to start kindergarten, so then I’ll start the process of waiting for a job to open up somewhere, so it remains to be seen how viable this career path actually is. Part of me wishes I’d done this back when I first went to college, but I also think I’m a different person now than I was then; the classroom management that terrified me about teaching when I was 20 doesn’t seem so impossible now. :)
I’m always hesitant to give college/major/career choosing advice because I feel like my personal experience is heavily dated. When I graduated, I think it really was true that — for a lot of jobs — you just needed a 4 year degree and an ability to talk about why you could do the work they needed you to do. Is that still true? I hope so, but I don’t really have any way of knowing…. My oldest son’s high school counselors have a reputation of being very, very good at helping students figure out where to go to college and what to major in, so I’m looking forward to meeting with them next year.
I still agree with my father though about college and will tell my kids the same thing. Allow some time in your schedule to take that weird class that doesn’t count for any sort of requirement and isn’t in “your field” but just sounds interesting. You’ll never have another chance to sit around and talk deeply about philosophy or theology or Russian literature; you’ll never have another chance to learn about soil in East Africa, or the history of theater, or how to play the gamelon.
I knew I wanted to study business, and I majored in Finance. I was lucky enough (through my parents help) to get great internships in college, and graduated in 2007 when the job market was still strong, so I easily found a job. I have since transitioned over to a Compensation Analyst and find that having a business degree to be very helpful – never had trouble finding a new job, and no didn’t have to pay all the money to get a second degree. Plus being financially savvy is helpful in other aspects of your life such as financial planning and budgeting.
I started out as a math major in 1999, but pretty quickly realized 1) college math is an order of magnitude more difficult than high school math (even AP Calc BC!), and 2) everyone thought that meant I would have to become a math professor. I don’t know now whether that’s true, but I fell in love with my intro to computer science course, fell in love with the internet, and switched majors. Been a programmer in a diverse set of fields for 13 years since.
I majored in Accounting. At first, figuring I should test the waters a bit rather than limit myself, I didn’t declare and planned on taking classes in a lot of areas to see what interested me. Accounting 101 changed that. It was perfect. Halfway through my first semester, I visited a counselor and declared. Classes in business law and MIS were required and almost convinced me to change, I enjoyed them so much. However, I don’t have the drive for law school and the MIS classes were filled with students I had encountered on campus and not liked very much (hah! teenagers… smh).
I got a job in a CPA firm before I’d even graduated and stayed just a year after graduation. I hated it. BUT, it was a great way to dip my toes into the different types of accounting jobs. I would have thought auditing would be good with my attention to detail. NOPE. Taxes were a big puzzles or game. NOT FOR ME. I stumbled into non-profit accounting and have done alright there for 12 years. Thinking for-profit sounds interesting now and wondering how difficult/painful the transition might be. Also, I discovered a love of investing and financial planning – not enough to make a career out of doing it for others, but my money is in good hands.
Like the other Accounting majors who’ve commented, I highly recommend it for anyone interested in business. One of the most frustrating things about my work is communicating with people who have no accounting or finance education, but who are making decisions critical to our ability to maintain sustainability.
This is such a great thread — I love reading everyone’s stories.
I majored in biology, went to med school and am now a doctor and love it. It was a long road, though. Sometimes I think I should have majored in History since I loved it so much (and got better grades in it) and then I could have taken a post-bac program to slog through pre-med requirements. I agree with the other posters who say you should major in what you like the most, since you’re likely to get the best grades in it, and supplement with internships/extracurriculars/volunteer opportunities.
I started off in Special Education, then switched to Computer Science, then went to General Business (all in two years). I wanted to make use of my French studies so I finally switched to International Business. I graduated with NO jobs in the market, so I started as a secretary in the trust department of a bank. After 19 years, I left as a VP of Trust for Employee Benefits (designing retirement plans for businesses). I left to do the financial work for my husband’s printing company (more flexible hours). I never used my French and eventually lost it; I’m happy with my career, but kinda wish I’d majored in Accounting.
Wow! Finally got around to reading all of these great comments. I copied some (ok, six pages worth) to share with my daughter who seems to think that everyone but her goes into college knowing exactly what they want to do. I think it will be super helpful, especially because lots of your readers had majors similar to what she is thinking of starting with.
As for me, I always knew I wanted to be a teacher, and that’s what I still do and as long as I focus on the kids, not the administrative, political BS, I still love it.
Went to school as a psych major, which, as noted, has zero related options unless you go to grad school. I knew that going into it, but I waffled between becoming a psychologist, psychiatrist, or therapist, and also originally wanted to work in a school setting. I ended up choosing social work for graduate school, even though I felt no connection to my undergraduate social work course and vastly preferred the more clinical stuff. However, social work school was easier to get into and I didn’t feel like stressing out. I prefer being the big fish in a small pond. :/ And since I’d decided to become a therapist, it didn’t really matter what particular graduate program I chose..,MSWs do the same thing as marriage and family therapists, counselors, etc.
I liked my job as a therapist okay, but had no qualms about quitting to stay at home a couple years and one baby later. Now, as someone else stated, I work as a full-time volunteer for my son’s school, our church, and two service organizations. I find that I prefer volunteering because you can quit at any time and there is less pressure. Even though I don’t quit, I like knowing that I could. Too bad I can’t get paid for my work, though!! …oh, wait….
I was a double major in Women’s Studies and Child Development. I loved, loved my women’s studies courses and it led me to a volunteer position during college -> part time job during college-> to full time job after graduation as a domestic violence advocate all at the same amazing organization. Loved the work. Then I did Americorp for a year and some other volunteer work before grad school to get my MSW. I had an internship that led to a job working with homeless families and specifically homeless women. I did that kind of social work in a few states for a few years until I had kids and am now staying home trying to raise feminist sons :) I did dabble in fee for service therapy, but I hated it. My husband would highly recommend computer science. He was a math/computer major guy and got full rides all the way through to his doctorate and has a great industry job. His large company is always hiring computer science majors.
I am thrilled to read of other math majors as that is what my BS degree is in. Initially, I wanted to teach so I got my teaching certification along with my undergraduate degree. I received a graduate assistantship that then paid for my graduate degree in Curriculum and Instructuon. I worked in Residence Life all through undergraduate and grad school so decided to keep working in it after I received my M.Ed. I eventually worked various student affairs jobs on different college campuses including academic advising. Then I moved back closer to my parents and switched to a gov’t finance job. Luckily that job got me into the federal system and I was able to get an academic advising/education job again. Love it! I deal with this exact question of what to study and careers on a daily basis so I love reading other people’s paths. I try to encourage students to think of where they want to live or what education qualifications are listed on any job applications they would be interested in. Paths can vary so much but it is more about keeping doors open in my opinion.
Student organizations are a huge resource. They often allow students to job shadow or attend conferences which can be a great way to network or get a better idea of the career possibilities.
I always knew I wanted to be an international business lawyer (working for a corporation). I was a mathematical economics major (more statistics and models/ less theory) and then went to law school. Now I work for a Fortune 500 company as an… international business lawyer. I had a couple of back-up careers in mind- sports doctor or international commercial pilot. Good thing I didn’t fall back on those as they would have been difficult without the medical degree or flight hours!
Here’s a good resource to help answer just that question: http://careerservices.umhb.edu/what-can-i-do-with-this-major
I majored in Sport Management, minored in Quantitative Business Analysis (would have majored in QBA had it been an option). Graduated with a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration, then went straight into an MBA program. Admittedly that was not smart, because no one wants to hire an MBA w/out experience (other than internships). But, it was right for me at the time. But it definitely led to a job I could have gotten without the MBA. I was hired as a Data Administrator for a hospital/university based research group at a fairly low salary. I’m still at the same job, with several years experience now, and several raises leading me to the top of the salary range… to the point where I should look for a new job. I don’t want to though.
So what’s fascinating about the whole choosing a major for a particular job idea is that so much changes over the years. If you do anything government based (which research grants often are!), the regulations change – almost to the point where your job duties also change drastically. Think of people who work in healthcare – constant changes! I guess it’s true of any job really. New inventions, new products, new regulations, new codes of conduct. It’s all such a crap-shoot!
I am so late on this! My undergraduate degree is in Theater and after I finished school I got a job as an administrative assistant and then got promoted to PC Support Assistant (this was like 1992, so a LONG time ago) within a year, because I had an affinity for computers and there weren’t that many of them yet, so I seemed even smarter! Eventually I went to grad school for a Master of Science in Information Management and eventually became a Director of IT but then I started staying home with my little darlings and now, 11 years later, I am working part time as a technology teacher. I don’t think people have as much freedom now to just get a liberal arts degree and assume a job will work out.
I majored in English, minored in Art History at a small liberal arts college. My first job out of college was in fundraising for a symphony orchestra. I eventually spent ten years in college admission, during which I earned my graduate degree in nonfiction writing. I’ve been at my current job, Director of College Counseling at an independent school, for six years.
A liberal arts education was great for me, and prepared me really well for a wide array of careers and a way of thinking about the world that makes me happy. It enabled me to see how studying the graduate field that interested me most (writing) was still really relevant to my work even though it might not seem so at first glance.
I recently heard a Higher Ed speaker say that a high school senior choosing a college based solely on the quality of a certain major is like allowing an 18-year-old to make a life plan for his or her 40-year-old self. For someone who has good judgment and a broad life experience as a teenager, or who is just really clear about themself and their strengths and desires at that age, that might be a good thing, but I feel fortunate that I stumbled into an education and a life that I probably wouldn’t have imagined when I was in high school.
I was an Animal Science major, and I got a job at a livestock research breeding stock facility when I graduated. So I definitely used my major-I worked there for 5 years, and later I worked as a vet tech assistant-a job I got because of my Animal Science background.
I loved working with animals, and I did really well with the company-I was the first woman manager of one of their research farms at my location. But, it was an extremely physical job, and because it was a farm, I worked every other weekend, was on call nights-used to have to go in and turn on heat lamps for young animals in the wee hours. It was very intensive. One time I went swimming at the YMCA, and in the locker room I had a woman come up to me, and say “you don’t have to stay with a man who abuses you.”. I had to explain that I had actually been knocked down, and run over by a bunch of animals, trying to load them onto a trailer to move them to another barn. That is why I had so many bruises.
Besides the great people I worked with, the fun we had-I think what that job did for me was instill a real confidence in my ability to do a job. I was young, eager to learn, and had wonderful coworkers (almost all male) who took the time to show me how to use a welder, cutting torch, wire a fan. I was a city mouse who turned country-and I didn’t have the background that most of my coworkers took for granted. So after I left that job, I used to apply for jobs I didn’t have much experience in, but felt if someone would teach me, I could definitely do it! That attitude has served me well over the years. So while this is a very long answer, and I am a substitute teacher now, I do feel that confidence I gained when I was young, even now, at my advanced age of 55-stems from my choice of a major, and that very first job out of college!
I did a double major in pure & applied math. Wound up in software for a few years and then eventually meandered sideways into MRI research (which is a mash-up of physics, engineering, biology and chemistry with a huge side order of computers). Most of my friends wound up in software or doing a PhD in math.
I found that studying theoretical math really taught me how to think. A lot of things translate directly to science and engineering, you just come at them from a really abstract perspective instead of as a result of trying to solve a problem.
My degree is in agricultural science. I chose to keep my interests broad so I didn’t major in crops, animals, nutrition, food science or soil like some of my peers. When I graduated there were a minimum of 4 job offers for every student and there was a huge range of jobs. I went into agriculture thinking that I wanted to be a vet but when I got into the program I was shocked by how many options and career tracks there were. I grew up in the city so I had no idea how awesome this whole area of science would turn out to be.
When it comes to jobs, there are many so I will just list off a few interesting ones. Many of my friends finished their undergraduate degree and then went on to veterinary school and are now large or small animal vets in cities and rural communities. The group that specialized in crops are working for large pharmaceutical companies to breed plants that solve current agricultural problems, develop new types of plants that lead to new food products or are in sales of crop products directly to farmers. The group that took animal science are working for feed companies to sell different products to farmers or they are managing livestock on farms. The nutritionists are developing new diets for farm animals or working for pet food companies to come up with better pet food formulas. The soil guys are mainly working for government and doing soil analysis to determine the effects of climate change on our land and waterways. They are also working with farmers to solve problems for them if their crops aren’t performing well. The food science guys develop new food products for food companies.
I stayed really diversified in my education and started my career in communications for a not for profit farm organization that helps farmers communicate with government. Since then I have gone on to manage farm organizations and now manage a farmers’ co-op.
VERY late to the game on this one, but since it’s partly due to a very busy time at work (topical!), I’m jumping in regardless. :)
Majors: Native American Studies and Peace and Conflict Studies double major
Career paths that are a direct shot from these: hah! hahahahahaha. The classmates whom I’ve kept in touch with are pretty much all over the map, though it’s not surprising that a lot of us have ended up in nonprofit/public interest work.
Some of the paying jobs I’ve had after college:
– office manager and similar positions, one at a for-profit clothing company, the rest at various nonprofits. Most of the management piece came about because of previous work experience, though.
– grantwriter (part-time, freelance) – this is becoming a more rare standalone position, but it used to be one that a lot of my college friends and I were interested in.
– database monkey/coordinator/administrator. This mostly came about because my brain likes figuring out logic puzzles, and I was often the person who liked it best in any given small office, so I ended up taking on more and more of it.
– web person (part time, freelance) – I learned a bit of html on my own, and again, was often the person who was least intimidated by diving in and updating our website. I’ve ended up doing this in some form for the past 15 years pretty consistently, often as part of other titles.
– fundraiser of various stripes – this is where I am now (mostly on the database side of things), and it’s a good fit for me.
Double major in Public Policy and Environmental Science. Several years later went to medical school and became a primary care doctor.
I’m a bit late on this.
My major was English and I chose it because I was good at it. I thought it would be fairly easy to get good grades if I choose something I enjoyed. I never wanted to be a teacher though, which is what most people who major in English end up doing. I wanted to be a writer. Like, for a magazine or something.
It took me 6 months to get my first job out of college with my BA in English and I ended up working at a trade magazine as an assistant editor and I only got paid 25,000 (this was in Philadelphia, 1999). My boss was an ass and I eventually quit. Then I got a job in rural PA making a whopping $26,500 as a Career Counselor at a trade school. I really liked that job, because my co-workers were nice and fun and I was young and didn’t have kids yet and I got to work with young people and adults who were changing careers. Then my husband got relocated to St. Louis, MO and I got a job as a technical writer at a software company with a CONSIDERABLY higher salary. My job was to write user manuals on how to use the software. It would be tedious and boring to most people, but I enjoyed it. This was in the year 2001. I did that for about 7 years and then, within the same company, I moved into marketing and communications because I kept helping out the sales team and they were like ‘oh she can do stuff, let’s bring her on our team,’ so that’s basically what I do now: marketing/communications…then around 2010 the corporate office pulled me in for event planning so I do that too. And I got into editing websites, etc. And I’m still at that same company, 15 years now. I don’t think I could have moved as easily into a marketing/communications/web/social media type role directly from tech writing with another company. Because I didn’t really have the experience and I was mostly self-taught, but my company needed me to do this stuff because they were too cheap to hire someone else…
But it’s all worked out in the end, really.
So far, anyway.