<p>let me be the first here to say to you: congratulations! you have cleverly avoided wasting at least a decade of your early worklife pursuing your “passion” as a career. you could easily have spent the better part of your 20s and even some of your 30s working your heart out at something or other that seemed…well, not like work at all but, fun even. only to find somewhere down the road that the reason you still can barely pay your rent is that so many others want to do the same kind of thing almost for free (think of it as a kind of professional internship). so i suggest you can herewith eliminate the following not-supportive passions: writer, actor, winemaker, musician, free-lance anything, jewelry/clothing/interior/what-have-you designer, etc etc etc. i’ve always said that if someone is occupied in a particular enterprise that makes for a good personality profile in that little supplement magazine that comes with your sunday newspaper, then it’s very likely a lousy way to make a living. so what can you do? one kind of work nobody ever mentions here (odd, this omission) is sales. i don’t mean retail or real estate or cars or door-to-door magazines, but the kind of thing that makes any industrial business go 'round. pick your industry or product, identify the growth leaders, and start dialing-for-dollars. you work on your own, sometimes remote from the home office, and travel is usually part of the job description. passion? you can pursue that too - think “hobby”.</p>
<p>OP–if you are curious and like finding about new things all the time, what about journalism? (online journalism, these days).</p>
<p>@tood</p>
<p>^^ What do you think “Own your own Business”, Realestate and Insurance jobs are? Research in a lab? Type away write a book? Site behind a desk and play politics?</p>
<p>They are all sales jobs, sale sale sale, no sale no money and you are back in a corner to make the sale, no matter what it takes.</p>
<p>“They are all sales jobs, sale sale sale, no sale no money and you are back in a corner to make the sale, no matter what it takes.”
correctamundo i know that, you (i guess) know that, maybe everybody in the world knows that, but for some reason it seems absent from these rarefied blogs. no matter what it is you want to do, you won’t make a living doing it in a vacuum. gotta convince somebody to buy…whether your product is an it or…you. so we’re all products looking for a customer. you can spend a lot of time coming to understand that unfortunate reality of the workplace.</p>
<p>There is so much great advice in this thread that I’ll need a while to digest everything. I just wanted to respond quickly to the main things that jumped out at me.</p>
<p>There were a couple of questions raised about my internship experience. I’m working in a great environment with great people, no mundane work in the sense of making coffee or getting takeout for the office. A recent project I’ve been working on is copying and pasting data into spreadsheets, which I then turn into a pretty looking graph. I’m not literally staring at the computer doing nothing, but I do feel like my brain is rotting because the task is so repetitive and I “zone out” for the majority of time I spend on it. The analysts and associates mainly do variations on this theme, and the senior people above them seem to spend a lot of time explaining to their clients why they lost X amount of money. In short, the people directly above me are doing the same repetitive tasks, while I don’t “believe” in the work that the people above them are doing. I want to emphasize that I am not making them out to be charlatans. They are good people with the best intentions, but I would have thought that a little more certainty would be in order with so much of OPM (other people’s money) at stake.</p>
<p>I don’t feel like I’m adding any value. The work I produce ends up in (what seems to me) inconsequential dead-ends for marketing and justification of losses. I feel like a cost center because I don’t play an active role in making money for the firm, merely a supporting role. Some could argue that this sort of support work is essential to the larger efforts of the firm, but I feel like anyone could do this job and I could be easily replaced. I am contributing nothing unique. I’m guessing that all of us have at one point in our lives felt a glowing sense of pride from within after producing something. I don’t even have to be the sole creator - just pointing to something and saying “that part was mine” brings me great satisfaction. (This is assuming, of course, that you truly believe in the value of whatever it was that you made. Which I don’t.)</p>
<p>I think I like the general idea of the career path I’m on. I would like to be good at managing money for people. But I don’t think I’m learning any concrete skills that will help me along this path (and perhaps this is me being too shortsighted). I can’t deny that immersing myself in this environment has enabled me to BS semi-believably about many new concepts, but I don’t really understand anything at my job with the same depth and security that I do physics. So that’s my internship experience in a nutshell (which is what prompted me to start this thread in the first place). I’ll be starting my sophomore year and declaring my major fairly soon.</p>
<p>One career that seems particularly attractive is that of Elon Musk (not the Paypal aspect, but the Tesla Motors aspect). However, I am sufficiently self-aware to know that I don’t possess the requisite intellectual heft to be another Elon Musk, and that if I try, I will in all likelihood go down in flames. So here I am taking the “safe” path, hoping that I’ll be able to get involved in such cutting-edge technology ventures somewhere in the distant future.</p>
<p>Let me respond to a couple more points:</p>
<ul>
<li><p>On sales: I don’t think I’d be very good at it. The way I would approach any business would be to focus on building a great product to begin with. If you do that well, the product should sell itself and you shouldn’t have to hock it. Of course, I think the person who developed the product should get the lion’s share of the credit, not the salesman (which I’m vaguely aware is not how the world really works).</p></li>
<li><p>On buying stuff/going on vacations: I think what I’m after is the ability and freedom to do anything, not the specific activity itself or to do it 24/7. I don’t particularly love travel or golf - I just want to be able to do what I want when I feel like it. This is what I mean when I say I’m not passionate about anything. I like maintaining a healthy balance of everything, even golf or vacations or shopping.</p></li>
<li><p>If I remember correctly from some of oldfort’s earlier posts, her D actually works on the sell-side, which I believe is more exciting due to the faster pace and closer interaction with markets. I currently work less than half of her 90 hours, but I’m guessing time passes much faster at her job. Well, you know what they say about the grass being greener…</p></li>
<li><p>Many have mentioned tying my interests to my job. I have experienced that sort of laser-like dedication to a single activity in high school, and while I still love that activity to this day, I find that I got slightly sick of it if I spent too much time on it. Too much of a good thing can still be bad for you. Again, it comes back to balance.</p></li>
<li><p>Another point I’m hearing over and over is that there are trade offs that have to be made, that I have to do the mundane grunt work for a period of time and pay my dues, so to speak. I would have no trouble with doing that except, as I mentioned earlier, I can’t see what tangible skills I am learning at my job that will help me down the road (besides the experience of being in that environment). And more importantly, I just don’t “believe” in it.</p></li>
<li><p>It seems contradictory that my generation wants certainty and predictability, as starbright pointed out, but doesn’t want to be stuck in a routine job (generalizing from my friends’ and my experiences). Perhaps we want our lives to be predictably exciting? I also think that increasingly early specialization is becoming the default path for most kids, because we see these super-achievers who dedicated their entire lives to a single pursuit and think, I’ll never be someone that matters, someone to be reckoned with, if I don’t do that (again generalizing from my experience). </p></li>
<li><p>I suppose this is just me angst-ing about the human condition. As many of you have pointed out, with age, you gain wisdom, experience, and financial security. Yet you gradually lose mental sharpness, joints start to creak (personal experience, and I’m not even 20!), vision and hearing get blurry. You start to lose loved ones. It’s just sad that we are best equipped to enjoy life at a time when we least have the means to do so.</p></li>
</ul>
<p>I enjoy my job more than my leisure activities. I love those too, but my job is where my heart is.</p>
<p>The old saying is true, “Do what you love and you’ll never have to work for a living.” Are there days I don’t want to get up? Sure, but mostly I love my job.</p>
<p>I am in the same position as mythmom, through a combination of unusual god-given talent and dumb luck. Nonetheless, sorry, but my first reaction is–just find a job. What we have is a person who says that he is not a great student coming into an absolutely brutal job market that shows no signs of improving anytime soon, who nonetheless is turning his nose up at most “ordinary” jobs. Well, I have news for him–this idea that a person is supposed to “pursue a passion” is a product of the post-affluent generation of the late 20th century, a group that lived in a fantasy world. Do you think that the men of our parents generation (and at that time the workforce was primarily men) thought “God, I love being a steelworker?” No–they took pride in the fact that they were doing what was necessary to support themselves and their families.</p>
<p>We need to be sending the same message to our children.</p>
<p>OP:</p>
<p>Just make sure you keep an open mind and don’t assume that all business positions are like the ones you’ve perceived at your internship location. Personally, I’d go nuts as well just copy/pasting something all day long and for me it would be the equivalent of ‘staring at the screen’. Try to get an internship elsewhere for next summer (assuming yours was a summer position) to get additional exposure but again, realize that a lot of (but not all) internship positions often won’t be the most challenging positions and may have a share of simpler tasks.</p>
<p>That’s a good point, ucsd<em>ucla</em>dad. I think I may have assumed rather hastily that this internship was as good as it’s going to get (because of the lack of menial tasks, and the opportunity to do what is considered “solid” work at this firm). </p>
<p>EMM1, why don’t you tell me what you really think? lol. To be fair, I would request that you read my original post a little more carefully. I’m not as oblivious to the points you raise as you seem to think.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Well, I did many things before I got into the position I’m in. I’ve always found that being employed and active leads to other things, whereas sitting and hoping ends in a dead end.</p>
<p>Most people don’t play golf every other day. Besides work responsibilities, most people have family responsibilities.</p>
<p>I really admire my dad. He got up at 5:30 every Sunday to get a good tee-time and be back in time to make breakfast with my brother and me so my mom could have a day off.</p>
<p>He got home after his commute much too late to play golf.</p>
<p>He didn’t love his job, but I think he really enjoyed his life.</p>
<p>Fundamental:</p>
<p>I wasn’t responding specifically to your post, but rather to the general tenor of the comments, which in my view just feed this feeling that one is entitled to find work that he loves.</p>
<p>A concrete example: The child of a colleague has insisted that he won’t take a job outside his “field” (major). He’s still looking for a job. Five years later. Fortunately (or unfortunately) for him, his parents are in a position to indulge him.</p>
<p>My mistake–I misread your original post as saying “not superlative.” Halfheimers</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>What exactly is that opportunity cost? In other words, what do you think you will be missing while you pursue a PhD in math or science?</p>
<p>I think he’s thinking of finances, of going to school for years to get a Ph.D. and the potential income he would lose during that time - and thinking of paying out tuition to get a Ph.D. (which he could likely get funded if he went to school full time). I was going to comment on his comment, too. </p>
<p>As people have posted here already, there are many jobs that are interesting and worthwhile, and I think a lot of people love their jobs or at least like their jobs very much. </p>
<p>In my opinion, research jobs are quite likely to be interesting. On “opportunity cost,” after my undergrad, I earned a master’s efficiently / fairly quickly and started working, and then I finished my Ph.D. slowly while working at an interesting job. So, I entered the workforce quickly. My job got even more interesting once I finished my Ph.D.; definitely something new every day. I’m not a professor or at a university, but my workplace is not a for-profit and my co-workers and I all feel as if, in addition to having interesting work, we are “doing good”. This turned out to have been a good path for me. You have to “like” math and science (and school).</p>
<p>A couple of other thoughts: </p>
<ul>
<li><p>For some, it may not be the job per se, but the industry/organization you work for that provides your sense of fulfillment. I graduated with a degree in computer science (yep, a computer geek). Could have ended up in any number of industries, but ended up in an industry where, for me, I get a sense of pride/value in what we do. Not all techies need to work for Google. Not all business majors need to work on Wall Street. Companies in all industries need finance folks, accountants, engineers, etc. </p></li>
<li><p>IMO, keep your goals of making time to play and go on vacations. For me, the best way to achieve that is to make yourself valuable to your employer. Figure out whats needed, and provide it. As you become more valuable, your ability to carve out time for golf/vacations improves. Funny, for the past 20+ years, my buddy calls me every Monday morning. We look at our calendars, and the weather forecast, and pick an afternoon each week to cut out 1-2 hours early to play golf. Were able to do this because our organizations need us, and we dont let it get in the way of completing our assignments. Frankly, were probably better employees the rest of the week because were healthier both physically and mentally.</p></li>
</ul>
<p>goru–your 2nd paragraph makes a lot of sense and is good advice.</p>
<p>But you mentioned Google–did you know it’s one of the best places to work and have fun as well? They have a game room, a ping-pong tourney, Legos, razor scooters to get around the halls…it’s awesome!</p>
<p>Hi, I just graduated as a valedictorian from my high school and entering as a freshman into college. My major interests are Physics, Mathematics and Economics. Can someone please tell me if I can use any of my interests or a combination of any two or even all of them to get a very high paying job. I am a very hard working student and I can go for anything as long as there is a rewarding career with it.</p>
<p>^Math + Econ and go into Investment Banking or Quantitative Finance. Investment Banking will probably pay more, but be more competitive and require longer hours. You can try asking in the Investment Banking forum here, as they will know better.</p>
<p>To answer your original question, back in the day, the classic thing for a bright person who was reasonably successful academically but had no particular passion for any subject to do was go to law school.</p>
<p>Astrophy, for heaven’s sake, pursue your intellectual passions and see where they lead you. Just be glad that they are more likely to lead you in the direction of money than the brilliant student of philosophy or French Literature.</p>