By Ayana Jefferson, Jai-Leah Gracia, and Anne Smith
Graduating into your dream job never works out the way you think.
Taking a look at previous college students who have graduated and searched for jobs in their major, have most of them been successful? Or has all the hard work been put to waste as they face career insecurities and doubts of ever attaining their desired position?
We will be considering if people usually get into the job of their dreams after going through college and graduating. Finding your passion, seeing available job opportunities within that passion, and realizing you may not end up in what you wanted to do are all aspects that play into this exploration of career success.
Even though the system doesn’t always fail, it’s a shame that people who get their degrees find it so hard to get a job sometimes. Going to college is so pushed by teachers, family, friends, and society, that most people automatically say yes. Being sold the fantasy they will go to college, getting a degree and a career within that, however, this isn’t how it seems to actually go anymore. We will have thoughts from people who already graduated to get their perspective on the topic. Asking them questions like does college guarantee success? Or is college asking for more than people are able to manage?
With these people we have chosen to interview, they have attained degrees, attempted to get experience for jobs, but have been turned down for various reasons. We are told to “try, try, try again”, yet for these two interviewees it’s been years of fluctuation for them, and that’s a scary thought.
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Starting with our first interviewee, Molly, 29, who attended Virginia Wesleyan University, and graduated with a degree in Criminal Justice. We chose to interview Molly because of how she is currently working in a career that is completely different from what she originally graduated from. While this tends to happen, especially for many who are just graduating college, Molly’s experience was a bit more of the common story that we all hear. It can be very difficult to find the experience that we want despite post undergrads reaching out to their dream jobs. We agreed that this is an unfair advantage, especially for us.
Our Interview Audio Here:
Our thoughts on Molly’s perspective:
Jai-Leah: It's something that I've always thought about, you know, I thought when coming in, I would just get my degree, go to grad school, you know, whatever, continue on, but hearing everyone have these trials and tribulations getting so close to the goal, but then not achieving that.
Ayana: One of my biggest worries is looking back at the age of 20, 30, 40 years later and realizing that all I have is this degree that I never got to use. Or I'm not going to be in my dream job. So I basically wasted so much of my life, time, and money.
Anne: So I would just say, it does create a different outlook. I don't know if it's regret, necessarily, but it's definitely confusion, for sure.
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The next person we interviewed was, Mrs. Banita Morris, who is 33 years old, and attended John Tyler Community College and Liberty University. We chose to interview Mrs. Morris because we found her points about needing work experience is sometimes more valuable than a degree itself. She also gave her thoughts that for many individuals who graduated college and have spent many years looking for a job related to their degree it can be difficult to find opportunities. For some, when opportunities do appear it can be a difficult choice to make when many of these people have families and other priorities they have to factor in.
Our Interview Audio Here:
Our thoughts on Mrs. Morris perspective:
Jai-Leah: It's just more of this, I guess, false fantasy, a false reality that it's given to us. And I think that's just something that us college students, even us as adults, learn and grow from it. So there are those future fears still prevalent.
Ayana: So it definitely is fearful. I'm still, you know, looking forward to graduating, and I still feel comfortable with my degrees. While at the same time it will be something I keep in mind after graduating college and feel secure in a career.
Anne: I would say that it causes self-doubt. Even when we're at this point where most of our college career is gone? Not enough time, we can't make a huge difference about what we're doing and changing in one semester that's left.
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Our Final Reflection: We have a takeaway to wrap up with overall concluding thoughts about the topic of getting your dream career after graduating from college.
Ayana: It's a little jolt of fear. We only interviewed a few people, so it's not like we have a whole statistic. But this definitely adds to my list of concerns. I'm such a heavy planner, and I like things to go, (I don't want to sound like a brat), my way. I know we are still young, we haven't had too many of our own experiences, but we still have so much to go through in life. I think being open-minded, in opening other doors is definitely very important. You know, for a very long time, I wanted to be a vet, and I was very stubborn about that. Now I'm realizing with biology, it's really broad, and I should have backup plans.
Anne: As we just heard, things can always change down the road, there are so many different combinations of what can happen. People could go to school, know exactly what they want to do, and end up in it. Or they could change but say, I am so happy I went to college because it showed me this other avenue. I just think success has different definitions, it's not always about money or position. It’s more about what you've done for yourself, regardless of whether you went to college or not.
Jai-Leah: The world is very colorful. And, you know what, as long as your dream job makes you happy, even if it's not the dream job that you want, as long as it makes you happy at the end of the day, that's all that really matters.