It's week three in my quest to figure my shit out and I don't understand why I can’t seem to figure out what I want to do with the rest of my adult life now that I am out of school. I know that I need to stop being lazy and start being proactive about my situation. If I truly am over working in customer service and retail and really want to start using the degree I worked hard for, then I need to suck it up and get out of my comfort zone. You know, putting myself “out there” and all that. As someone who still doesn’t grasp the difference between business and business casual and finds the concept of pant suits a true American tragedy, this feels like an insurmountable task. It is so easy to stay at my current job. I’m mostly good at it, and the feeling of working my way from a lowly barista to shift supervisor is something that makes me feel fulfilled.
This week, I talked to another friend of mine. Like me, he graduated with a degree in history. Unlike me, he pushed through his studies with a purpose and end goal in mind, whereas I went through the motions with school, with my only goal being to make it out in one piece, degree in hand. Each class he took, every topic he researched, was done with the intent of beefing up his academic resume so that when the day comes for him to start applying for graduate programs, he will be a prime candidate. Currently, he works in wildlife habitat management. He likes being in nature and working outdoors, but it definitely isn’t what he wants to continue doing. Complacency never suited him, so almost every day, he works on his mental checklist of things to further himself, whether it is looking for field schools, scholarships, job opportunities better suited for someone with a bachelor's in history, or learning foreign languages. As a lover of lists, I interviewed him to see how he developed his, in the hopes that it would help me formulate my own.
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1. Have you always known what you've wanted to do with your life?
It kind of depends. I’ve had multiple long term ideas, but they've changed. I wanted to do astronomy, but the college I went to didn't have a degree for astronomy. So, I changed my mind and went with history, which I always had an interest in. When I started taking some history classes, I thought I wanted to be a professor and teach, but I figured I’d be stuck behind a desk and I wanted to be more active and conduct in-the-field research. That was when I decided I wanted to be an archaeologist. It’s hard to get into archaeology with a history degree, and I wish I did archaeology or at least anthropology because it would have helped me get my foot in the door for most schools or jobs I’m looking at.
2. What were your expectations of yourself before, during, and after college?
In my first semester, I thought I wanted to go into criminal justice but I didn’t like the intro class I took. I took an early world history class and that made me want to become a professor of history. Later on in college, I realized I wanted to have my boots on the ground doing hands-on research. I took an archaeological field school, and I found out that fieldwork was enjoyable for me, so I want to do that for sure, and then maybe teach later on in life. Now that I’m out of school, I focus on looking for opportunities where I can do research and gain experience that will help me get into a grad school program that is geared toward my emphasis in archaeology.
3. Advice for people like me?
You need to realize the actual range of use your degree provides. Figure out what your degree can and cannot do for you. Chances are you’re limiting yourself and you need to talk to knowledgeable people—not me, because I’m just starting out, like you are. Talk to professors, professionals. I have found that has helped me quite a lot.
4. Do you like your current job?
Yes, but I’m not using my natural talents or my skills that I learned from school. I didn’t see myself doing this after college, and it’s low on the totem pole for professionalism so it seems like a stagnation rather than progressing forward. I love being outside in nature, but I want to use my brain, and right now I feel like I’m just doing a bunch of grunt work. My talents are wasted at this job.
5. How did you begin to formulate a plan to achieve any post-college goals you had in mind for yourself? Where does someone like me begin?
I didn’t formulate a plan. There is no formula. I imagined myself being where I wanted to be and I steered myself in that direction in school. I knew I had to do well in school, and now I need to apply to grad schools because that’s how I’ll ultimately end up in the field I want. I don’t have a plan, plan. It’s just stuff I know that needs to be done.
