I am a girl that has always sworn by my New York driver's license, that I will never leave the city, that I couldn't live outside of the five boroughs. And yet I have found that I am now in a desperate need for a change of pace. I need a break. If I could, I would just pack my bags and move back to Europe - live for a while in a completely different place, get my feet wet again.
I have never seriously considered doing something other than writing since I started college. Not ever. Not in a million years. And now that I am out of school, now that I am ready to put my degree to work, the only thing that I can think to do is anything but. I am now kicking myself for not being practical, for not getting that degree in International Affairs or Politics. Maybe then I'd have a job doing something that matters. Maybe then I would be making a difference. Maybe then I would be changing someone's life.
Maybe I'm just losing it.
E
3 comments:
While I tend to agree that a masters is the new bachelors, there is nothing saying that you can't make use of the degree you have in a different sense. Use your degree to prove that you can think and are creative and that you can learn anything you need to on the fly. This widens the range of jobs you can apply to.
A degree in politics or international affairs is useless. Bachelors are too specific right now. College students should be 'majoring' in everything. Get an understanding of all the different things that are out there: business/finance/economics, art/architecture/writing, engineering/science, etc. Kids are being groomed to a specific role right now and it drastically hurts their marketability. Masters degrees should provide for narrowing their specialities and abilities after they make a choice, not acting as a second chance cause you didn't know the first time around (especially w/ the cost of education).
If you are considering a Masters, I have two conflicting words of advice... One, its a temporary state and if you want to use it to explore, go for it. Go get the degree at a foreign institution and get your feet wet in a different country for a couple of years. Two, on the other hand though, be careful leaving a place that has an enormous amount of opportunity.
See, the issue that I'm finding is that I'm not being hired because of my degree - a trade degree in only Writing. As much as I might gripe about it, I love my degree and -at the end of it- wouldn't change the choices that I made for the world.
The problem I'm finding is that it's now nearly impossible to qualify for a basic entry level writing job -or any kind of job- without more than two years of experience or an advanced degree. My question is then, how do you get the experience if no one will give it to you? It's a Catch-22. Basically, from my experience, no one is willing to take a leap and hire the new guy. It's just too risky in this market right now and that is a major buzz-kill for us recent grads.
Oh, and this is the article that I was talking about: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/24/education/edlife/edl-24masters-t.html?_r=2&pagewanted=all
Great little big from Conan O'Brian's Havard speech back in 2000 ... it just seems fitting ... and perfect:
"What else can you expect? Let me see, by your applause, who here wrote a thesis. (APPLAUSE) A lot of hard work, a lot of your blood went into that thesis... and no one is ever going to care. I wrote a thesis: Literary Progeria in the works of Flannery O'Connor and William Faulkner. Let's just say that, during my discussions with Pauly Shore, it doesn't come up much."
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