Let’s suppose the OP follows her dream of creative writing but decides as a senior to try for one of these high paying IB or consulting jobs which are being discussed on this thread. A lot of other students will be wanting those jobs. Is it really the case that recruiters don’t care about major? It seems to me that if I were hiring someone for a business/finance job, I’d be looking for coursework in math and economics and corporate internships. I wouldn’t regard someone who has been writing fiction as equally competitive. Yes, I know there are other factors, but all things being equal, why would the creative writer get the job? People on this thread are speaking as though these jobs are being handed out to everyone who applies but is that really the case?
Believe it or not, most people in this world do NOT want jobs in IB or finance.
The whole point of focusing on learning and doing something you love is precisely so you never find yourself sitting in some cubicle going into work every day to a job you despise.
The OP didn’t posit a choice between job or no job. S/he presented a choice between doing what one loves (creative writing) or doing what one’s parents want. I don’t think “pleasing parents” is a very good reason for choosing a college major.
The concept that some majors result in “steady jobs” whereas others don’t is a false dichotomy. Most people with college degrees from reputable universities go on to land and keep steady jobs. The array of opportunities for a non-specialized major is often much greater simply because the graduate with liberal arts degree is less likely to pigeonhole themselves, tot think that they can only apply to X type of job because that is what their major is. So they have a more open mind and often cast a broader net when it comes to job hunting down the line.
Where on earth did you get that idea? My degree is in electrical engineering, and I have never done any electrical engineering in my career. For the first 7 years, I did do software development, which I suppose you can say is related. But after that, I spent another 8 years in marketing, and about the last 10 years as a professional investor.
IMO, the issue is, love it or not, right now OP doesn’t know if he/she is a good writer, will have marketable writing skills. A writing based job needs more than purported passion.
It doesn’t matter to me whether there are examples of creative writing majors who did make it big. Or someone we know who lucked into a specialized writing job. Times change.
The safer bet is to hone the skills, develop analytical strengths, as well as build some solid content knowledge. CYA while testing the love for writing.
@calmom nailed it.
Look, obviously the reason the OP’s parents are pushing business (ok at Princeton, I guess it would be economics) or engineering is for perceived employability/income. This isn’t about them simply preferring a different major. They aren’t pushing art history on her.
On my own thread about creative writing, many posters agreed that it is exceedingly difficult to support oneself in that field. In fact, if I recall, the exact point was made that it is far more difficult to become a financially successful creative writer than to be admitted to Princeton.
Some posters on this thread are saying it doesn’t matter if she majors in Creative writing because as a Princeton student, she will still be recruited for lucrative jobs in business upon graduation. That may be true, but I am a little skeptical that such jobs are being handed out like candy even to students whose undergraduate pursuits don’t demonstrate interest this kind of work (as an employer I’d worry about poor retention) and whose coursework and summer jobs haven’t provided the same level of experience that other applicants have. Please correct me if I’m wrong, because I don’t have direct knowledge of this, I am just trying to think like the recruiters would.
For those who say, she can apply her writing skills to other jobs, I am thinking my own kid would choose IB/consulting in a heartbeat over writing technical manuals for a small fraction of the salary. She would probably find writing manuals or corporate communications far more dreary and less creative and at least in IB she would be very well off and could save enough money to take time off from work and write.
For love or money? Let’s be realistic. You hope to have a job and career that you love. But it takes a lot of work and good luck. Here’s something I posted before on this board. It’s about how to think about your career options both when entering college and when exiting:
Sometimes when I think of life choices that young people must make, it brings to mind the line from Robert Burns’ “To A Mouse”:
“The best-laid schemes o’ mice an’ men
Gang aft agley,
An’ lea’e us nought but grief an’ pain,
For promis’d joy!”
I’m not trying to be pessimistic but rather realistic. We can plan and scheme, and hope and dream, but stuff happens over which we have little control. Opportunities arise, inspiration comes, but so do roadblocks and dead-ends.
As I have watched my kids’ careers evolve, I couldn’t have predicted either one of them, no matter that the kids were thoughtful and resourceful. But being thoughtful (planful) and resourceful is critical. Very few career lines these days are strictly linear, starting with a college degree and moving into a specific occupation and life career.
Instead careers tend to be broken into segments. I’ve given this metaphor before on this discussion board, but it bears repeating, I think. It comes from a commencement address that I witnessed a few years ago, in which the speaker came to his summation and said: “It is customary in ceremonies like this for the commencement speaker to offer advice on how to proceed up the career ladder after graduation. But I’m not sure the idea of a “ladder” really fits any more – if it ever really did. Instead, in today’s economy careers are more like “climbing walls.” You have goals, objectives you’re trying to attain. But you don’t move straight up. Instead sometimes you go upward, sometimes sideways, sometimes even downward for a while, and sometimes you may need to get off the wall. The important thing is to have an objective and to be flexible and resourceful in finding your way toward it.”
For the OP it’s important to define goals but also to do a constant “resource assessment.” What are your skills and talents, what experiences can you draw on, what interests would you like to follow? You may start out on one path but learn along the way that it’s not what really interests you, or it’s a dead-end. What then? Assess where you are then, decide on another move, which could even be getting off the wall to obtain another degree. But you should always be enterprising, use contacts and experiences, and keep open to new paths that fit your evolving interests and talents.
I think both of my kids’ career lines are very unusual, but they followed this kind of path. Careers develop in segments, and the economy is moving in often unpredictable ways to offer new opportunities. The really important thing for young kids in college and recently out of college is to be able to assess where they are – even if they don’t like their current job, what skills or experiences can they draw from it that’s useful for the next move? One skill and resource is networking. There’s no college course in networking. But remaining flexible and taking new opportunities is important.
Some examples. My oldest has had 3 “career segments” since he graduated with a degree in economics, with a couple of abrupt changes in course since he took his first job as an economic consultant after graduation. But the career as a whole has been progressive as defined by professional accomplishments, recognition, and remuneration. He uses skills as a writer, an economist, and an entrepreneur. My youngest has also had 3 segments, first coming out of art school as an industrial designer, then returning to school to earn an MBA and MS, and now working as a consultant and adjunct professor in “environmental design.” Such segmented early career paths are the “new normal.” Nothing like what I had, the same job (at progressively higher levels, and with administrative assignments as part of my later career) but just two employers in a multi-decade career.
But there is no indication whatsoever that the OP wants a job “in business” – only that her parents think that would be a better option than, say, her starting out working as an editorial assistant for a publishing company.
Smart college grads don’t depend on on-campus recruiting to find their jobs. They are going to cast a wider net. It doesn’t start in senior year – it starts with internships and summer employment, which helps with networking as well as building a base of job experience.
I am thinking that you seem to have a very limited conception of the vast array of careers available to creative individuals who enjoy writing.
Yes, I am still learning. That’s why I am on this site. However, most of the writing based jobs which have been mentioned to me may be writing but they are hardly what I would consider creative. Would you care to educate me more? I’ve discussed this on several threads and haven’t seen suggestions that I feel would interest my creative writer kid, other than becoming an editor at a publishing house, which we of course already thought of and isn’t exactly an easy job to obtain either. Writing PR releases for companies, technical manuals, etc. are not what I would consider creative and I doubt the pay is that good.
For someone who is interested in how people feel and think and interact, the stories of people’s lives, how they evolve and grow, I just don’t see this kind of business writing as being any more satisfying than a finance type job, and it’s far less lucrative. My daughter is thinking about clinical psychology which to me seems far closer to the interests of a writer than writing corporate reports or copy for their websites.
I do not think of this as a choice between “follow your passion” and “do what your parents say.” The OP did quite clearly say that he doesn’t really know what path he thinks he will have with the degree, and that is something to take into account. Even genuine passion has a hard time surviving through dismal career prospects and long-term financial hardship, much less merely a favorable disposition. And no, attending Princeton doesn’t make all the pain go away.
And it most certainly is a good idea to have a healthy amount of pragmatism in considering what you can actually do with your degree after you graduate. College is not trade school, nor is it “follow your dreams”-topia where you do whatever you want without a care for what comes next. Telling people only to learn writing, to concentrate their career only on being a writer, and not to pursue other options which could reach the same point while being more economically viable, is bad advice.
I think someone who works in Internal Communications at a large, global company has a life similar to the one Mathyone seems to be describing- story telling, bridging cultural and language differences with words and narrative. If you’ve got operations in 80 countries and a distinctive corporate culture, it requires a lot of creativity to bring employees together in ways that reinforce the culture.
I also think that speechwriters (aka “executive communications”) is a highly creative field which pays well, attracts some real “off the beaten track” personalities, but is a highly respected role in both the private and political arenas. I’ve known gifted speechwriters who can take a dry piece of policy and make it come alive; I’ve known hacks as well who can make an interesting topic dull and dry.
You are wrong about PR by the way- senior people in a strategic communications function- whether at a place like Hill and Knowlton or Edelman (two very big and well respected companies) or on the corporate side, make $300K and above. Sure- it doesn’t pay big bucks for a kid coming out a school. But it’s a field which can be entered by anyone with strong writing and thinking skills- a Master’s isn’t required, and a talented young person can go far very quickly.
The best “first job” for these kinds of careers is Capitol Hill- first a staffer/gopher, and then on the communications team. (you can advance in a Senate office very quickly.) Figuring out how to message 24/7 in support of a piece of legislation is a great introduction to either speechwriting or strategic comm’s.
The strategy/lobbying firms (APCO is very well regarded) are lucrative places to work as well. Their political work is highly regarded (not campaign work per se… but things like “how do you get voters in California to think differently about Gay Marriage”).
Generally all major fields, even the most highly mocked ones, have superstars who make a fortune. You can make high six-figure or seven-figure salaries because while most jobs in the field aren’t great, said superstars provide such great value that they’re worth the money. Acting is a great example.
Most people aren’t superstars and never will be. It would be stupid not to consider how your life might go if you don’t happen to end up on top. It would be stupid to look at dismal career prospects and say, “they won’t affect me, because I’m better than the average person here.” Most people think so, and the majority of them are wrong.
It’s better to optimize for average and sub-average case scenarios first, before you worry about the best case scenarios. Most people will have average results, almost by definition.
Creativity is not limited to the world of fiction.
Again, “creative writing” majors do not necessary look for “creative writing” jobs – but if they have an ability and talent with writing, that skill can lead to a job that is far more interesting and fun for them than a job that requires skills that do not come naturally to them. And also an opportunity to excel and get recognition that may be elusive if they have embarked on a course of study that does not excite their passions.
In our case, it’s our day time jobs that enable us to afford the activities we love.
That’s fine. Some people prefer to spend their work lives doing what they love as well.
I am very happy that I have done that through my life and to have modeled that approach for my kids.
I admit that I find the concept of retiring rather horrifying, as it’s hard for me to know what else I would do with my days if not for my work.
Neo- PR is nothing like the odds in acting. A handful of people in any college theater program are going to “make it big” i.e. the next George Clooney. There are trade associations for communications professionals which publish detailed salary surveys- and unlike Actor’s Equity where you’ve got thousands of members who make $8,000 per year in acting (residuals from a commercial) and the rest in a “day job”, people who work at a PR firm are making their salary at their ACTUAL job.
You don’t need to be a superstar to land a job on a management track at a global PR firm. You need to be a great writer, hard worker, and be extremely creative in the way you think. The folks who successfully got states to lower the speed limit to 55 mph had some out of the box thinking going on. Ditto medical marijuana. The entire “designated driver” concept.
This is not a field where the odds of making a good living are astronomical.
Blossom speaks truth. There are great jobs in advertising, corporate communications and public relations - intellectually satisfying and remunerative - that are all but invisible to the people on this site who have a narrow conception of “business.”
“Generally all major fields, even the most highly mocked ones, have superstars who make a fortune. You can make high six-figure or seven-figure salaries because while most jobs in the field aren’t great, said superstars provide such great value that they’re worth the money. Acting is a great example.”
PR and corporate communications are professional jobs with upward ladders just like any other. Where after a few years gaining experience you advance, manage others, get access to higher levels, etc. and yes, get well compensated. Why would you think this is any different from any other professional field??
DD was thinking about creative writing once upon a time. I encouraged it as a cathartic tool, but not for lucre.
“If you really want to write books, become a PA or a pharmacist, join Doctors without Borders or the Peace Corps for a few years and study the H out of the people you meet. What you write about that might actually change the world.”
Acting is perhaps an extreme example, in that results are more lopsided than they are in most jobs, and yet it has the same sort of structure that PR/advertising does. There are plenty of people interested in it (in a very lopsided supply >> demand of willing actors/writers/etc), the high-paid winners are those who can win others over in highly profitable ways, and the rest are merely a low-paid working class that generally makes a wage that is less than middle class. It isn’t a field in which most people would be OK being just average in (of my friends who worked in PR, many of them worked 1-3x minimum wage over a span of decades). And no matter how you slice it, most people will have a result that is about average.
It’s an issue that comes with most, if not all, fields where creativity is valued above specific hard skills: the best have great outcomes, the average have weak outcomes. Medicine, law, and engineering, for example, aren’t this way - even the also-rans have respectable outcomes that no one could really complain about. Some people have the passion for their creative field of choice, and they are willing to accept that their average case outcome may involve spending years as a “starving artist” before they really get anywhere (and the sad truth is that a lot of them don’t in fact, get anywhere after years of trying). However, the vast majority of people don’t have an overwhelming passion that they would pursue that way, and I know for a fact that merely a favorable disposition towards a topic (e.g. what the OP has) generally leads to people choosing a different path because they are not favorably disposed to being paid grunt salaries.
I’m not sure whether that comment about $300k salaries was meant to imply that that is a common outcome of natural career progression, or simply that it’s a career with upside potential that is not out of reach for the talented. If it is the former, then it is quite verifiably wrong. If it is the latter, then I don’t disagree but I think it does not properly account for average case outcomes. Pragmatism and a solid specific base of knowledge, even for creative fields such as writing and music, are at the core of what any quality university program should be about. Part of that is having a base of knowledge that is not easily replaced (you can’t be a physicist without a physics degree but you can be a writer without a writing degree), and another part is understanding that no matter what you think, odds are you are going to have about average career results. It’s best to act accordingly.