Any parents out there who paid $200K+ for college, kid did great, and now can't find job?
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Anonymous
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English majors, good luck with your 'networking'. |
Anonymous
(Kenyon College ?) OP: If your kid is making $80,000 a year as a tutor, that is outstanding ! Why not continue tutoring while earning a master's degree in English or in Education ? Could be lucrative if your son/daughter opens up a tutoring business. Congratulations !!! |
Anonymous
Maybe someone already linked this earlier, OP, but: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/10/26/living-home-family-post-grad/ "Living at home after college is not a failure to launch" (you should be able to see this one article without hitting a paywall, I think). This is an opinion piece and from the perspective of cultures where it's far, far more common for adults in their 20s to live in their parents' home after college for a time. I know, that's not the DCUM way, on this board, but it's a good perspective to consider. I have not read the entire thread so sorry, OP, if you've been down this path here already, but: Can your DC put together, for now, projects, jobs, internships, tutoring, even unpaid volunteering that is at least "career-adjacent"? Things which are near enough to the field of interest that they keep DC engaged and happy, and also add new experiences to the resume? My own DC is at home now after graduating in May and is, like your DC if I read it right, in a humanities/arts field, not the vaunted STEM stuff over which DCUM obsesses. DC is working one paid internship related to DC's field, 20 hours a week, and another short-term paid job in DC's field about 10 hours a week, while also looking constantly at other opportunities for when those two jobs conclude. Can your DC find things that build up the resume while looking for FT jobs? And I note that you mentioned publishing early on in the thread; I would not expect publishing jobs to be there like they were in decades past. That was a field where I had several friends in NY and Chicago and it has cut way back. One close friend, who had been a very senior editor who had spent more than a decade with a speciality publisher, has been 100 percent freelance editing for several years now after her employer drastically reduced staff size including senior staff. And the issue wasn't anyone's work, or loss of revenue (nonprofit publisher); the issue was that they moved to a whole new business model. Just FYI. The field is not "Move to NY and work 'in publishing'" like it was when we parents were graduating from colleges. |
Anonymous
Where do you find out about these conferences? Are they free? Are there good and bad ones? |
Anonymous
I think this could be a great option. What did your child want to do? Since she has an income now, she could take this time to go back for some type of grad degree or an additional bachelors to hone in on her future. She could probably keep the tutoring on the side. If she has no debt from undergrad then she should have savings to find it. I was thinking what about looking at education and/or entrepreneurship and she could really work at opening a tutoring business. She can expand into doing summer camp, school’s out camps, etc. I think she’s in an excellent niche that could be really be successful if she gets some additional schooling and makes a business plan. My other thought is to look at higher education positions. She could set an appointment with her school’s career center and get some guidance on where to go from here. If teaching is an option and her tutoring clients are all after school, maybe she could get on the substitute teaching list and see if teaching is a career she might like or get a camp counselor type job for the summer and see if she likes that and sees how the set up is to expand her business. Unless she hates it, build from where she is. |
Anonymous
What's the issue with English major and "networking"? |
Anonymous
| Law firms hire college grads for paralegal positions and pay fairly well. If $ is what your child wants., |
Anonymous
? that's not the same as getting interviews. They used their connections to get those interviews. OP's DC doesn't have those connections, so what would good social skills do? |
Anonymous
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I know several HYPSM grads turned tutors bcs out of college. Charging more (but giving up some to the "house"). Issue is, you do it too long and now you're 30 and a tutor. Money is okay but there's an upward limit and ... is this the life you wanted?
I'd be careful doing this more than as a side hustle that doesn't go on your resume. Unless it's a career you want to dive into and then great! |
Anonymous
DP. If you have good social skills, you will do well at technology conferences and have plenty of opportunities there. You just need to work harder to find/establish connections than someone who played lacrosse in college. |
Anonymous
would've been a lot simpler to major or minor in some tech field. |
Anonymous
| Temp work. Clerical, filing, working a full day here and there. Your kid will get exposed to a number of different work environments. A lot of young people get FT jobs this way, OP. |
Anonymous
Exactly! Kid can continue to tutor, take business classes on the side and perhaps open their own tutoring company. This is a very lucrative business in most major metropolitan areas. Your kid has a meaningful, well paying job, that they can easily turn into more if they want. Or they can continue to do the tutoring while they pursue an advanced degree, but I highly recommend them figuring out what they'd really like to do. No point in a MA in English if the tutoring company is what they want to purse. So work the tutoring gig and do an internship (for low or no pay ) in publishing/ editing to see if that's what they really want to do. Here's the thing, most people with a BA in English do NOT "use their English degree" directly for their career...they use the fact they have a BA and ability to write/critically think to pursue whatever interests them. |
Anonymous
How so? |
Anonymous
Yes... when you have obviously failed, time to double down... 
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