Let me preface this column by saying this: I am a senior. This means that, as we edge closer and closer to graduation, I need to find better hiding places. I'm spending most of my time evading the inevitable Question. Total strangers want to know my Plans for the Future before they even know my name.
Remember high school, when your dreaded parents' friends asked where you wanted to go to college and made judgmental "hmm" noises? Remember how excited you were when you could say, "Tufts," and shut them up? The satisfaction was short-lived, because soon it was replaced by inquiries about majors. And when you finally declared one, the questions just got harder.
Well seniors, it's springtime and we have just four months to come up with a good answer. In the interim, though, you can try:
"I'm not going to grad school right away. I'm going to be a chocolatier instead."
This column is going to explore those careers that you'll never hear about in Dowling Hall. It's based on the fact that from an early age, I've been fickle when it came to career choice. I was never one of those kids who knew what they wanted to be when they grew up — not that I know now, either. When I was four, my parents were slightly disappointed by my aspirations to be a "grocery store checker-outer" (cashier), but pushing buttons and playing with the barcode scanner seemed a lot more fun than rustling papers around on a desk like most lawyers. I flirted with every job idea: astronaut, dentist, NFL player (too bad I'm a 5-foot-3 girl), animal rights activist, professional lemonade vendor. More recently — and more seriously — I've considered architecture, botany, the Foreign Service and screenwriting. I even went through an extended neurosurgeon phase. Out of desperation, I took a Myers-Briggs test to determine which careers fit my personality. Apparently, I'm destined to become a mortician.
Some of you already have jobs lined up. Some of you are underclassmen who have wanted to be cardiologists since before you could walk and already have impressive internship resumes. Good for you! We're not friends.
But for the rest of us, the job search doesn't have to be stressful. The recession is receding (knock on wood), and jobs are being created, not destroyed. (If not, with all our study-abroad experiences, maybe we can outsource ourselves.)
The way I see it, when we leave the safe bubble of the Tufts hill, we have a few options. We can reflexively apply to graduate programs and dig ourselves deeper into debt and postpone reality. We can take an underpaid, glorified internship and spend our days fetching coffee for our bosses, complaining the whole time. Or, we can find a really cool and interesting and unique job that challenges us and stimulates us.
Maybe your dream job is completely unrelated to your major. Maybe you have a secret skill set or hidden talent. Maybe you need more time to "find yourself." I don't have any wisdom or experience to share, but I can commiserate. I'm going to seek out the lighter side of the job search. Haven't you ever wanted to dabble in landscaping? Thought about why elevator repairmen are so highly paid? Wondered how to break into the electronic music industry? I guarantee that you've never heard of some of the jobs on the market I've considered. I guarantee you've never considered some of the jobs on the market I've heard of. Sometimes this is with good reason, but sometimes it can be fulfilling to think about a career that breaks the doctor-lawyer-consultant-teacher-accountant-engineer mold.
When people ask me what I want to do when I grow up, I want to say, "Make people smile." (And no, Myers-Briggs, not dead people.)
