Lies People Tell You About College, Part II

Continued from "Lies People Tell You About College".

2. "It doesn't matter what you major in. You'll end up doing something completely different anyway."
I kept hearing this over and over. Art history and film students going directly into finance, English majors into... uh...... Anyway, the common saying that your major does not matter is a lie! In reality, if you have little to no "real" work experience (like most recent college grads) and your major is not highly related to the jobs you are applying for, employers will consider your degree irrelevant and worthless. When you can't get a job, any job, then you won't end up doing anything at all. Oh well.

The only exception to this is if your major is super quantitative and/or technical, and the average Joe or Jane will never be able to amass your amazing skills and knowledge. In other words, your amazing skills and knowledge must be in high demand but in short supply. Only then will you have numerous job opportunities across various positions and industries. It sounds like common sense now, but I couldn't change my major (not much, anyhow). Plus, I assumed that if English and art majors could jump right into profitable lines of work, I could too with a Bachelor of Science. (Apparently not. In general, be wary of any success story/anecdote you hear.)

3. "Your first job doesn’t matter at all."
True, 30 years from now when you're about to retire, your first job will (hopefully?) seem insignificant. That is, if you get a first job at all. If you have been unable to get a job for quite some time after graduation, then it will feel as if your entire life and livelihood depends on that first job. I mentioned in Lie #1 that most "entry level" job openings require 2-3 years of experience. So how would you get a first job with no experience? How will you get experience without a first job? (My 4 internships only add up to about a year. And that's counting the rest of this summer.)

4. "It doesn't matter where you go for undergrad. It's grad school where name recognition matters."
Ummm... who has the extra money (and sanity) for grad school anymore? (See "College Debt Nightmare".)

5. "Major in a subject you're passionate about, one that you truly enjoy studying."
I did. Now what?

6. "Don't be another liberal arts major."
But I thought we were supposed to follow our passions... Either way, I have a Bachelor of Science. I technically was not a liberal arts student, yet I might as well have been since I would have ended up unemployed either way. Actually, some liberal arts majors are really employable. More so than the Bachelor of Science degree I have, apparently.

7. "Stay in school! (Especially if you don’t have a job offer.)"
(See explanation to Lie #5.) Well, undergrad is over for me. But certainly, if you pay for my tuition, living expenses, and a 2 year supply of Red Bull, then I'll gladly go to grad school. Only to risk graduating unemployed again.

8. "Enjoy college before it's over!"
Why? So once it's over you can suffer in unemployment? And when you're graduated and unemployed, you can obsess over every tiny detail from the past 4 years in an endless, futile attempt to pinpoint where exactly you had you gone wrong. It kind of sucks all the enjoyment out of the formerly cheerful memories.

9. "College is a time for finding yourself."
I found myself unemployed. *Insert sad face.*



You have thus been warned.