I started a PhD program with little idea of what I wanted to do with it. Ultimately I didn’t finish for personal reasons, but it sure was an enjoyable and rewarding way to spend my time!
I went to a top Ph.D. program in my field, and felt privileged to get paid while doing it. Even though I am no longer working academia, the time was certainly not wasted. as I use my credentials and acquired skills every day. Furthermore I managed to have two children in grad school, and kept both of them out of any daycare for the first year and a half. In my opinion, a fully supported doctoral program is a wonderful opportunity as long as the subject area is intrinsically fascinating to the student.
If your daughter is ultimately interested in divinity school and a future in ministry, it would probably be a best for her to work in a charitable organization this year to see how it all works. That would be my suggestion if she doesn’t end up with the Fulbright.
@Massmomm I applaud you for being so understanding. I am not sure I would be. To me the end point determines where you go. College is just so outrageously expensive that you need to have a goal first to help decide where to go. If one wants to work on wall street then that will determine where they go. If one simply wants to work for the local city newspaper, then the local state school may be sufficient. To me college is a means to an end. I know others will disagree but it is JMHO.
Mass- I’ve had a successful corporate career (in a discipline I certainly didn’t know existed when I was in college) for over thirty years with a BA in Classics. It would be fantastic for every HS senior to know what jobs are out there, but they don’t and they can’t.
One of my kids (also a humanities major) runs a large tech team for a company which didn’t even exist back when picking a major was on the table. Zero CS classes. Fantastic job- been promoted every 14 months or so. Great pay, wonderful benefits, terrific long term prospects. If someone had forced a career decision during HS I guess it would have been librarian or editor (and certainly, literacy and writing skills have been key to success in this role).
You don’t know what you don’t know.
@blossom The OP’s daughter is a senior in college not high school.
@suzyQ7, I think blossom is getting at the point that a senior in HS doesn’t know enough to set a firm career goal before picking a college (as MassDaD thinks they should).
The OP’s D has no clue (it seems) how her skills in research, writing, analyzing old texts, speaking a foreign language can be useful “out there”. My point is that now she gets to research THIS. She may find jobs and careers she didn’t know existed.
I have a college friend with a degree in anthropology who is extremely successful in market research-- started and owns a company which does both quantitative and qualitative research for consumer products companies and advocacy organizations (like-- what’s the best way to reach teenagers with the message that smoking isn’t cool, since previous messages that smoking kills you doesn’t seem to be working). He IS an anthropologist- just not the way he’d have predicted back in college when everyone else in his department was heading off to do field work in Africa or getting a PhD.
For a HS kid who wants to be a nurse- fantastic. For a HS kid who wants to teach ESL- fantastic. For most kids out there- they have no clue. So go to college- like the OP’s D. And now is the time to figure it out.
This is a perfectly normal and common situation, even among grads of top schools. Of course there are the kids who do fall interviews for Silicon Valley and Wall Street but the majority do not fall in that group.
I like the term “wise wandering” and the idea that too much planning can interfere with opportunities. It sounds like your daughter- and you- are open to possibilities. (I am in my 60’s and just spent the morning on a cultural job website, thinking of how many cool jobs there are on the site for young people just starting out.)
If she has a genuine interest in academics, and can find a funded program, great. But there will be a year in between for work, right?
With her interests and skills she could get all kinds of jobs. Cultural (museum, for instance), non-profits, maybe a job at a college, many others.
She will make a better chaplain if she has a little work experience, so she can relate to people, perhaps.
If she gets the Fulbright, yay, but if she doesn’t, can she emulate that experience in other ways?
I have told my kids that things tend to crystallize in late twenties, early thirties. I wanted them to have that long framework in which to feel okay about being uncertain. One is set in a career, one is in a PhD program and one works while still doing undergrad p/t. The two in early to mid-twenties are finding their way, but it takes time and faith!
@MassDaD68 , your kids must have been a lot more certain of what they wanted before they started college than my kids were. I know that there are kids like that. Mine just aren’t among them, and for kids like these, a good liberal arts school seems the best option, because so many other paths can stem from that.
It would have been a huge error to tell my daughter to go into engineering, for example, when she was more interested in other things.
To be clear, she has no regrets about her majors, but is trying to figure out which path to start on next. It’s a decision, not a problem.
What a great line. “It’s a decision, not a problem.”
Thanks all for your stories about your own lurching career paths. I will be sharing them with my daughter.
One of my d’s graduated in 2010… another terrible year for any type of gainful employment. First year she did have a $100 week paid internship with a prominent theater development company which I encouraged her to take. Since then she has been a nanny, a children’s music/movement/yoga teacher, administrative assistant in a nonprofit arts complex, birthday party entertainer/has been a college/high school coach for musical theater and both of those she has coached have had good admittances, she has had several acting gigs either non-paying or minimal payment (how about performing in Hamlet 6 nights a week for a month and earning 1 metro card and lots of pizza for dinner), sung in Carnegie Hall with a chorus she participated in, been a volunteer script reader for another non-profit theater company. She does also run her own theater company which is celebrating their 5th season but she is now the assistant artistic development of a major theater company with benefits and after 6 years post-college she finally had her first paid holiday ever!! My point is that some of the skills she acquired and the contacts she made at that first 6 month internship have served her very well… helping to develop her ability to being a strong candidate for the position she has now.
Older d who is also in the arts although envisioned herself as a college faculty member spent one year in what is known as a post-bac program preparing her portfolio for grad school admission and did attend grad school for an MFA although she was one of the youngest in her program.
Grad school is very specific and within a close-knit academic community so generally speaking you need to be fairly committed to a certain path as if you going for MA/Phd, it is longterm commitment.
When my kiddo was picking her major, I told her to research listings of existing jobs. Pick whatever you want, kid, but show me ten help wanted ads that support your degree’s marketability.
Find existing ads for jobs that would:
A. Support the lifestyle you hope to have.
B. Offer the kind of options that could work into your other future plans, time off, where you want to live, future family, etc.
C. Be of use to society.
D. Be something interesting and enjoyable that would challenge you and give you a sense of professional fulfillment.
All four are pretty important…but A and B are bigger parts of our lives than anyone wants to admit.
My kiddo chose Microbiology because she loves life science. But also, because there’s a pretty good demand for it in research, pharmaceuticals, food safety, government work, academia, agriculture, conservation, the CDC, and forensic science. With a simple certification, she could work in about any hospital laboratory in diagnostics. There’s good funding for her to continue her education with a graduate degree, too, if she decides to go that way. Plus…it’s a Pre-Med program, so if she decides to go to medical school, she’s ready to go. Her MCAT score should be competitive.
Not meaning that to be a brag so much as illustrating that a LOT of thought went into the future diversity of work she could do with her degree. Other things to consider:
A. Could you do your job if you became moderately disabled or ill?
B. How will the economy affect the work available?
C. Have you researched the job outlook for your profession? Will it expand in the future?
It’s never too early to think about, and plan for, the future. it’s a lot easier to work toward a goal…when there is a realistic goal and a lot of solid back up plans.
This sounds like many people that I know.
It seems to me that a lot of very smart people are good at, and interested in, a wide range of subjects. Many of the most successful people that I know started off with no idea what they wanted to do, and in most cases still didn’t know when they graduated with a bachelor’s degree. However, many of the most successful people that I know are experts in an area that didn’t even exist when they were in university. Having a general strong education probably helped them succeed, but picking the “perfect” education plan is in some cases not possible.
One advantage of working for a year or two is that work is less consuming than university, and therefore gives a person more time to observe and ponder options. However, if a graduate program is sufficiently compelling and fully funded, I don’t see any harm in going ahead and it might work out well, or at least lead to an interesting next step.
There is an old saying that the best way to be wildly successful is to do what you want to do, do it the way that you want to do it, and be right. Those last two words are difficult to predict (or if they were easy, everyone would already be doing it).
So there is a tradeoff. Should a student study something that leads to a well defined career in a well defined field, but is limited to that career and that field? Alternately, should a student study something that it interesting, increases their general knowledge of fields that they are very interested in, but might or might not lead to a career? If a person is very smart and interested in many things, the latter path probably does eventually lead to some career, and might lead to a very highly successful career. In some cases “successful” might mean financially lucrative. In other cases “successful” might mean develop something that the world cares about, without making much money. Where ever it leads, this latter path might take longer to get there, might not be the easiest path, and might lead to a career that could have been obtained via a shorter path.
All of which sort of leads me to think that what OP’s daughter is dealing with is reasonably common, and that if my daughter’s were to run into the same issue, then I would support their doing graduate work in an area that they are very good at and very interested in, but only if they could do it with funding and without taking on any debt. If this didn’t work out and they wanted to work for a few years and ponder the next step, that would be fine also.
Thanks again for your words of wisdom. @MaryGJ, I appreciate the way you’ve broken this down into values. That’s helpful.
@DadTwoGirls, your post resonated with me because I do think my daughter is more driven by her interests than by any desire to be successful in a worldly way.
She will be home for break next week, so we will do our best to help her sort out her grad school acceptances and financial packages. I think a year off, which one school requires, is ideal, but she is leaning toward the other one, so we will see!
Another reason to strongly consider majors with a high demand and diversified job market… a vast supply of stepping-stone jobs and people to mentor you.
My kiddo has been working at a ecology and evolutionary biology genetics lab for the past three years. Ten hours a week during the school year and full time in the summer. Not only has she been able to create a solid work history, and pay off much of her loan debt, she’s met dozens of researchers, clinicians, AgScience folks, food science folks, other life science researchers, academics…people who took her chosen degree and did a dozen different things with it. Hearing the stories of their careers, where to find breaks, how to avoid mistakes, information on grad schools…has been invaluable. She’s also made good professional contacts and has arranged a mentorship for independent research next year that she’s hoping to publish. The lab that she’s worked for is financially sponsoring her project,
If you’re studying a field with few available jobs, sometimes it’s hard to find these kind of contacts. There’s also less available money and fewer facilities to support your explorations.
Is that college seniors are “uncertain about their future” a liberal arts major at highly selective colleges problem? I’m interested in its solution though I don’t have a college senior.
Suggesting they consider majors with high demand job market when they enter colleges goes against their years of passion that may be why they got in in the first place. However, given these students are highly capable, would it be wise to suggest they take some courses in computer sciences in college? What fields need no computer skills?
I would definitely encourage her to work for a year or two before graduate school, unless she is absolutely certain what she wants to do. Having a job at least somewhat related to what she is interested in will help her decide if her vision of what the job may be like matches the reality. As Blossom notes, many kids end up in a job that is not what they may have envisioned.
It can be hard as a kid and as a parent for a graduate not to have a clear path, when others are marching along on the expected road. My older two are still not quite on a traditional path - although gainfully employed. It is different than the kids that are accountants, in law school, teaching or other straight career path jobs and sometimes it feels like it requires too many explanations. I both envy those kids and feel a bit like maybe they are missing out on exploring the wide range of possibilities that beckon a 22yo with a college degree.
The right path will vary with the individual student. Some people know what they want and stick with it and are happy. Some people need to figure it out over time. As parents we don’t get to run our children’s lives. We get to help them. Our children are the boss of their own lives.
I do find it helpful to hear from others who are in the same situation, and to verify that this is normal.
I agree with the comment that an unpaid internship is not necessarily a bad thing. Someone who accepts one has to understand what they are getting out of it, and feel that it is worthwhile and that the benefits outweigh the cost of giving away work for free.