T here’s a question all of us students have been thrown at one point or another, and we all develop a rehearsed answer for: “What do you plan to do with that degree?” I don’t run into it much anymore, but I still remember the mild tension when my parents asked where I thought my double major in the social sciences would take me. However difficult that was, I put it in perspective — for example, what was it like for a young Dr. Seuss to explain he was majoring in English at Dartmouth in hopes of writing about green eggs and ham one day ?
The concern for where the product of our college years will get us has only grown over time and understandably so. The career opportunities anyone with a college degree could once take for granted no longer exist, and the fallout from the Great Recession has done little to help. During this juncture in our lives when we’re given greater freedom of choice than any time before, we all feel outside pressure to pursue “something practical.” But what is practical?
Society has identified certain fields as especially practical that it affirms through high employment rates and high salaries. I have no doubt that many of us have had dreams of working in these careers since our childhoods, but when I see so many students rushing on to medical school, law school, that consulting job in New York or any other “practical” choice, I can’t help but wonder: Who are these choices most practical for?
Like most things in life, I think the answer is those around us whom we compare ourselves to. Whatever you might read in this little column in a college newspaper, the vast, vast majority of people you hear on the radio, see on TV and listen to over the dinner table who see the end game as an upper middle class life is more than enough encouragement to follow suit. Almost everything we’re told and shown tells us that the more money you have, the more fulfillment you’ll get.
But it’s misguided. Study after study has found that, after achieving an income of $50,000 to $75,000, bringing home more money ceases to matter in overall life satisfaction . Instead of adding to our fulfillment, many high-paying jobs take away from it. College interns in the banking industry are routinely made to work longer than 12-hour days, and that’s just the beginning of their careers, and too many others, that are long on work hours and short on family time . Certainly, some of us are fulfilled by plugging 0s and 1s into Excel in the dead of night, but I’d bet they are few.
What is truly practical is to waste no time in our one brief life and pursue work that gives us meaning. We must seize this time in college to craft our own ideals, let them take root and allow them to guide us in this pursuit. There will be plenty of time after for the outside world to temper our inner idealism, but only if it’s there to begin with.
