<p>If you’re really stuck on career options, read What Color is My Parachute? It’s helped probably millions of people just like you over the years. </p>
<p>What kind of career did you ever see yourself having? teaching? writer? attorney? </p>
<p>If you’re good with people and have “selling skills”, apply to AT&T. They love to hire new college grads who are “people persons.” Their sales reps make a decent per hour rate plus get excellent commission…and very good benefits. It is not unusual for a first year employee to make more than $50k.</p>
<p>Enterprise Car Rental hires a very high number of new grads every year.</p>
<p>These jobs may not be “career jobs,” but they can be something to put on your resume for a future, better job…and your debt will get paid.</p>
<p>[not to derail the thread, but TFA is a terrible disservice to children and education. The “training” is 5 weeks. 5. weeks. Would you want your children taught by someone who has 5 summer weeks of “teaching” practice? And you can go “teach” with other TFA people who have no better option, no actual desire to teach, no plan to continue to teach. Google “12 reasons to resist TFA” and you can see my opinion is not the only “ugh”]</p>
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<p>I’ll leave broader judgments about TFA aside, but - unless things have changed radically - they are highly selective. It was harder to get into TFA than Harvard Law School several years ago. You might look into Americorps, Peace Corps, or some other service organizations. They are well respected, and future employers favor people who emerge from them. I think you might get loan payment deferral, if not outright forgiveness, if you sign on.</p>
<p>Yeah, I take issue with the idea that TFA folks have no better option – these are kids with great grades and interviewing skills coming from good universities. This group has options. They have to compete for this one.</p>
<p>Are you implying that I don’t have options? </p>
<p>hix651 -</p>
<p>What work experience do you have? Is there a promotion track in that workplace? Yes, this may not be the career that you envisioned when you began to study history, but it could lead to something that is equally fulfilling. Do read the Parachute book recommended above, and take look at “Fire your boss” by Pollan and Levine. Even though you might not have a boss just yet, it has a lot of solid advice about separating your life from your work. Not all of us have to have emotional fulfillment on the job every single day.</p>
<p>^^
Very good.</p>
<p>Yes, what work or internship experience do you have so far? </p>
<p>What are you “good at”? </p>
<p>What do you love to do?</p>
<p>Very little work experience. One year on campus as an administrative assistant, and one summer on campus as an assistant to the campus architect. The career office told me to omit one of those from my resume, as too much on campus work would hurt me. I like writing; I also understand that jobs involving writing/editing don’t really exist.</p>
<p>I feel like I’m being inundated with stories of people with degrees who end up working menial jobs, if they have one at all. A friend was telling me about a recent graduate from our school she met at the homeless shelter where she volunteers. It is very disturbing. I think law school may be the logical choice? </p>
<p>I’m trying to think what I would do if I were in your shoes. Here are a couple of thoughts:</p>
<ol>
<li><p>If history is your thing, can you volunteer to work with a professor on one of his or her research projects? This leg-work might not lead anywhere, but it shows commitment, and (hopefully) suits your interests.</p></li>
<li><p>Can you use your writing skills to develop a history web-site? You might need to learn a bit of web page design - but this is no bad thing - and then develop a resource that might be useful to others. This again is a demonstration of value.</p></li>
<li><p>I’m not in the legal field, but from what I’ve read about the prospects of law graduates, I would not consider law school at all. You might have 50K of debt and no clear job, but that’s a whole lot better that 200k and no job.</p></li>
<li><p>I don’t know what the prospects are for history teaching. Can you get on a list for substitute teaching in your location? At least this would give you some class time. You might have to re-tool a bit to become a teacher, but this could be worth a look.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>Don’t consider law school - right now, your odds of getting a job that’d help pay the law school loans are very low (there’s a surplus of law school graduates).
Think of your skills - use the parachute book, but also “Do what you are” (it has tests you can take and examples).
History may mean a lot of things beside teaching and law school. For history, a good knowledge of a foreign language tends to be required - did your college make you take 3 semesters of a language and can you take an extra semester, so that you can work in a multilingual setting? That’d be one way to look at things.
Another possibility would be trying to find a job at a large university - any job, including administrative assistant, because those often come with the benefit of being able to take a class per semester for free (so, three classes per year). You could take classes to complement your history degree or useful for the direction you want.
Try to get an internship or shadow a professonial in a field that seems interesting, and ask them how they got to that position. Perhaps, interview a lot of professionals and run a series in your campus newspaper (pitch the idea to the newspaper editors if they don’t have one of those series, I’m sure they’ll be all for it) - this will add one interesting item to your resume, will get you to expand your network, and will give you information about careers.</p>