Recommend A Career/First Job for Me

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I had a very meandering career path and ended up in corporate comms. I'm not saving the world but the money is great, I get to use my skills, I like my coworkers. It helps to actually like and use the product that your company sells (vs. AWS like you said). I have a lot of career mobility to move around to other companies if necessary. It's a nice, solid career path and I recommend you look into it!

Curious to see AI's effect on corporate communications, especially for entry-level.

- Signed a nervous Communications major

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I had a very meandering career path and ended up in corporate comms. I'm not saving the world but the money is great, I get to use my skills, I like my coworkers. It helps to actually like and use the product that your company sells (vs. AWS like you said). I have a lot of career mobility to move around to other companies if necessary. It's a nice, solid career path and I recommend you look into it!

I was going to suggest communications or similar.

[Anonymous]

New poster: I would say to any recent college grad that if you don’t know what you want to do, apply to entry-level corporate job jobs in every kind of industry.

In the DC area, some of our major employers include the hotel companies like Marriott, Hilton and Choice, Nestlé is in Arlington, VW and Audi, navy federal credit unit on, capital one, aarp, geico, etc.

There’s also corporate healthcare jobs like AstraZeneca in Gaithersburg.

There are also tons of associations that have entry-level jobs. Washingtonian puts out a list of top companies every year.

Part of me thinks you’ve only tried two careers:medical research and Amazon tech sales. That’s two I wouldn’t choose either. I work in a big corporate company today and I would never work for Amazon just because it’s gigantic and its mission and corporate culture don’t inspire me at all.

You don’t have to pick a career path right now. Maybe try another job and see if you like it. It might take a few years to figure out exactly what you like.

Being able to write and have had a good liberal arts education will serve you well in the long run, trust me

[Anonymous]

I would recommend trying to find a psychologist who specializes in career counseling. I think a deeper dive one on one with someone would be helpful. Dr. Lynn Friedman in Chevy Chase does this. (She's not cheap but even a few sessions may help you significantly to hone in on what you value and what the options may be). You don't know what you don't know. It may be a worthy investment and save you time in the long run. Good luck to you.
-a clinical psychologist

[Anonymous]

Some questions to ask yourself:
Do you like making decisions or hate it?
Can you work hadd for long stretches of time when you’re really interested in something?
Do you prefer work where you interact with people?
What are the things you think you’re better at thab most people?
What’s more important to you, money, prestige, or work life balance? At best you get to pick two.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:What is wrong with teaching? Why do your parents advise against it

The OP’s parents are teachers, so they know what has happened to the profession. Teachers are fleeing because the job is emotionally, physically, and mentally exhausting. Teachers work long hours with few breaks during the day and then they go home to finish work in the evening. Each year more responsibilities are piled on to the point that the job simply isn’t sustainable.

[Anonymous]

I think you might have a great personality for being a doctor.

[Anonymous]

School psychologist.

[Anonymous]

OP, what is the point in writing a lengthy post asking for help and then completely disengaging from the discussion. Can’t stay on task?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Hi all,

I found this website back in March while I was trying to find housing in NoVA for this summer. I'm a rising senior in college who's living in Arlington this summer for an internship at the Amazon office in Crystal City. I applied to this internship in software sales at AWS because it seemed like one of the few ways to leverage a relatively impractical humanities major into a lucrative career. To give some background information about myself:

-I'll be a senior in the fall at a good, but not super selective, liberal arts college (think Haverford or Wesleyan level, not Williams or Pomona)
-Majoring in English and minoring in Creative Writing and Psychology; I don't regret my major/minor choices since reading and writing literature are the biggest loves of my life, but sometimes I wish I chose something more pre-professional since I don't have any generational wealth
-From a very middle class background (both of my parents are teachers); I'm only able to afford attending my school due to a generous merit scholarship, and my parents can't afford to support me financially post-grad (whether that's through paying my rent after graduation or paying for grad school)
-Not a very competitive person; I ran for the varsity cross-country team at my school for my freshman and sophomore years, but I quit after my sophomore year because I wasn't a fan of the intense, competitive environment (even though it was only D3). I play a club sport at my school now and am a lot happier.
-Previous work experience includes an NSF-funded REU in Clinical Psychology (more on this later) and working as a backpacking trip leader at an outdoorsy summer camp (which I adored, but not really something I can make a career out of)
-Not good at math and would dislike a quantitative career
-Not interested in law school (probably stems from my dislike of intense, competitive environments)

I entered college with the hopes of majoring in English and Psychology with the goal of going to graduate school in Clinical Psychology. Everyone kept telling me how competitive graduate admissions is in Clinical Psychology (1% acceptance rates, harder to get into than med school, etc etc). So imagine my surprise when at the end of my sophomore year of college, I was awarded a summer research job (commonly called an REU) funded by the National Science Foundation in Clinical Psychology. The first day of my summer research program, the program director told us that we were one of a dozen students selected out of 300 applications, and that if we were able to get accepted into this competitive program, then we were competitive for grad school in Clinical Psych if we kept working hard and making strategic career moves.

Cue to the end of last summer. I hated my research job, and my entire summer felt pretty bleh. I found the environment of academia to be way too intense and competitive for my tastes, and I learned that I really disliked Clinical Psych research because it was WAY too quantitative for my tastes. I spent the entire summer hunched over my laptop either coding or conducting literature reviews when I was only really interested in Psychology due to its potential in interacting with other humans (in a therapeutic way or not). I decided that I wasn't interested in grad school in Clinical Psych, which started an internal crisis in me. What was I supposed to do, then, as an English major at a strong but relatively obscure SLAC? I had already decided that there was no way in hell I'd go to law school, so I didn't know what I'd do next.

Last fall (the fall of my junior year), I applied to over 100 internships in random fields -- marketing, sales, communications, etc. I somehow managed to land a summer internship in software sales at Amazon Web Services. Before I started my summer internship in tech sales, my advisor, friends, partner, and acquaintances all told me that I would hate tech sales. "It's just not very you," they all told me.

I was determined to prove them wrong, and I suspected that part of their dread for me was based in my progressive SLAC's hatred of Amazon and Corporate America in general. I came into this internship with a positive attitude, but I found that my friends and advisor were right. I really do hate tech sales. I hate staring at a screen all day, and I hate that my only human interaction is centered around something I couldn't care less about (selling software packages and meeting my sales quota).

This website is going to flame me for being a spoiled brat for saying this, but working in tech sales does really feel soul-sucking. I'm definitely an underperformer in my internship cohort, and I doubt that I'll be able to snag a return offer for post-grad. But even if I did magically receive a full-time offer here, I'd be pretty miserable.

Does anyone have any suggestions for potential careers or first jobs out of college for me? I was thinking about maybe applying to Peacecorps/Teach for America/Americorps/Fulbright, although my parents really discourage me from being a teacher (and seeing what their jobs are like post-COVID is really scary). I guess there's always law school, but I think I'd hate being a lawyer.

Or are there really no other options for an English major? TIA.

Written by a helicopter parent?

[Anonymous]

New poster here. I’m an English (and political science) major who was diagnosed with ADHD in my early 30s (about 15 years ago) and find a lot of what you write relatable. I hopped around potential majors in college (started out thinking I wanted to do chemistry) and felt fairly lost upon graduation from a very good liberal arts college that sends a lot of its graduates onto things I didn’t want to do - like investment banking.

If I had things to do over, I would do more to figure out my strength areas and interests (Clifton Strenghs Finder, the book “What Color is my Parachute” etc) and careers that were a good fit for those. For instance, I considered medicine and was worried about sleep deprivation but those assessments and others often point toward fields like emergency medicine.

During college one summer I worked in a shoe store. Another summer I interned with a state representative. I think I nannied the other summers. During the school year I worked in the school publicity office writing press releases.

Post college I stumbled around - I lived with my sister for the first summer and worked in a coffee shop. Then I lived with my parents while working as a nanny for about a year. Then my dad’s accountant needed an admin assistant so I did that for a year. My friends in DC knew I hated my job, and they needed a roommate and I’d saved money for two years living with my parents so I quit my job and took a 3 month (very barley paid) internship in international relations. I did that 4 days a week while spending one day sending out applications and going on interviews. I probably sent 150 applications and landed in a new nonprofit doing all sorts of jobs - I was hired to design their website and do press releases but ended up moving to support their fundraising and budgeting efforts.

After that, I applied to grad school (public policy) and ended up with full academic scholarship offers at all three schools I applied to - I didn’t even know that was a possibility. I would not recommend paying full tuition for a MPP but it’s been a great degree for the low cost. I worked for a professor doing research while there.

That research connected me with an organization that does project based work. I have an entirely new topic and set of colleagues every year or so and it’s like being paid to go to grad school. I’ve done that for over 15 years now! It has its ups and downs, but I get to write a ton, wear many hats, and jump around different tasks and projects all of which works well. Also, because of the ADHD, I’ve gotten really good at needing to project plan and use tools. My managers repeatedly comment on my planning abilities and ask me to train / mentor others which I enjoy but find somewhat ironic because it’s just about the need to have these tools and use them! (I think others don’t need as many tools but then their plan is in their head and not as well communicated to the team.)

[Anonymous]

I would find a basic higher ed job - work as a case manager/receptionist in the Title IX office, the Disability Office, Student Affairs, international center, etc, where you clock in, clock out, and get good vacation time but also feel like you have an opportunity to help people day to day (sounds like you are looking for something with meaning). Use the tuition benefits to get a master's degree. You don't have kids yet- you have plenty of free time to do both even if you don't realize it yet, especially since entry level higher ed jobs will be relatively low key. You will get to see what types of roles are out there - public relations, grant writer, instructional design, HR roles - things you won't really have any frame of reference for having not worked in a career yet.

[Anonymous]

Try only fans.

[Anonymous]

Hi there! Fellow liberal arts major.

I also had no idea what I wanted to do when graduating, so applied to a bunch of random jobs. The titles I remember were things like ‘technical writer’, ‘business analyst’, ‘marketing coordinator’. I ended up getting a job working business proposals (so kind of sales) at a federal contractor. They cleared me and made it easier to get other jobs. I ultimately moved to another role at the company, then jumped to a large consulting firm.

Federal government proposals can be a lucrative job for a liberal arts major and present future opportunities.

[Anonymous]

Boarding school teacher