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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]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. &quot;It's just not very you,&quot; 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. [/quote]
Please don’t go to law school. You described exactly what I hated about it. You will be miserable.

Have you considered going into recruiting or human resources? Americorps/Peace Corps —&gt; Fed Gov is another route, though I’ve heard Americorps sucks.[/quote]

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