The WTF are u doing with your life thread

[dismalfuture]

Considering saying fuck it all, teaching english in Korea for a few years after I graduate, and then traveling the world. When else will I ever be able to do something like that?

Does not pay well, is soul-crushing; if you have other options, exercise them.

[BRICK DOM]

No girl, crappy job, no real career choice, no money, & I dont even want to goto school anymore. But for some reason im chillin. Can't explain it but im kinda diggin life right now.

This is pretty much me, though my job is aight, and I feel whatever about school. Honestly though, I have no idea where I'll be in 2 years when I graduate, but strangely enough, at this very moment right now ... idgaf. Don't really have any big plusses in my life, but I don't have anything to complain about either.

[into the rain]

I'm applying to graduate school for English in the fall. Hoping either UCLA or UT Austin. The plan is to be an English professor.

yo i would strongly advise you to reconsider this. i just have way too many friends in humanities graduate programs (mostly eng) who are really regretting the decision. do this if you cannot see yourself doing anything else for a living.

[broneck]

Going back to night school for "strategic marketing". We'll see.

[capa]

yo i would strongly advise you to reconsider this. i just have way too many friends in humanities graduate programs (mostly eng) who are really regretting the decision. do this if you cannot see yourself doing anything else for a living.

why do they regret it?

[playdisonlyatnight]

neuroscience

meh

[automaton]

I am half way through a web design/development program. It's going pretty good and unlike my history degree, it actually has practical applications.

[albinolove]

Does not pay well, is soul-crushing; if you have other options, exercise them.

I was under the impression that pay was pretty decent if you landed the right job. That not the case?

[Goslett]

Trying to find a job and failing.

Taking lots of photos.

[Pavlov's Bell]

Going back to night school for "strategic marketing". We'll see.

I love keeping track of how many times people say "strategy" and "key" during pitches. Vague business terms FTW

[Bona Drag]

I was under the impression that pay was pretty decent if you landed the right job. That not the case?

ive heard the same, had a bunch of friends who did it and loved it

maybe the economy has changed things?

or drew knows somethin we don't

[brohymn]

summer internship at SpaceX and then back to the grad school salt mines

[po_boy_fuuma_hatesbargerz]

Does not pay well, is soul-crushing; if you have other options, exercise them.

aeglus' many leathers say otherwise.

[but i'm pretty sure he's trustfundy or something, english teachers in JAP don't make shit]

[scientifick]

playing cards

scraping by in school; trying to finish it now because if i do i know i'll never go back... 2ish years to go, studying english

mostly playing cards tho

[squirtlepk]

yu gi oh cards?

[borkborkbork]

why do they regret it?

because everyone goes into graduate programs in english convinced they'll land a tenure-track professorship.

but that is the white-person version of hood kids who think they're going to be NBA stars.

i hate to say it but unless you're in a top-five program in the humanities - ESPECIALLY english - your job prospects are severely limited. your best-scenario outcome is probably perma-sessional work, teaching a 4-4 courseload, often between multiple shitty community colleges, where your work and job can disappear at the drop of a hat if enrolment drops or budgets get cut. but you say 'well okay but if i dont find academic work, i'll just go work in industry, my job prospects will be no worse than if i hadn't done a phd'. except YES, yes they will be. because you'll have a 6+year hole in your resume and nobody wants to hire a phd. don't believe me? look at the size of the cohort admitted at your school of choice. then, go hang out at a convocation and count the number of graduates. then ask those graduates when they started, and what they're doing now. schools always publish where their students have placed ("oh, our grads are now working at uc-davis and swarthmore!") but they never provide real tracking statistics for the fate of the cohort as a whole. ugh there is so much to say here but REALLY please proceed with caution.

update i just realized this was all really grim and discouraging, so to try and leave on a happier note here is a kitten in a box

[evisu 2000]

the only reason i know what day of the week it is is because of what tv shows are on

[CBM]

Studying Journalism and Law. Only have one more subject left for Journalism and about a year and a half to two years left for Law. Working part-time for an insurance brokerage, which pays pretty well but is mighty stressful. I have a lot of responsibilities there, have to check my e-mail from my phone on my days off, etc.

Trying to decide whether to quit that job and get a less stressful job so I can focus on nailing my last couple of years of uni.

What do you guys think?

[t3hcoke]

dont quit unless you got another job, having a paycheck has too many benefits...

[corey trevor]

the only reason i know what day of the week it is is because of what tv shows are on

get netflix and you lose track of that

[fang]

studying abroad for a fall semester in Berlin, Germany

other than that, nothin' much!

[into the rain]

psychology is a waste of time, IMO. and the material in general is really boring. and you certainly wont get a "career" out of psychology with just a bachelors anyway. at minimum, you need a masters for any kind of "serious" career in that path.

unless you are going into a business or engineering school, go into college trying to learn instead of trying to get a career out of it. you will have plenty of time to think about that after undergrad. but really, the best thing to get out of college in terms of "skill" is critical thinking. i know it's a really generic/broad term thats thrown around a lot, but it's something you really have to develop, and also something most people lack both before and after college.

and i dont think the humanities path is necessarily bad, but it can be if you just cruise through it for four years with just bare minimum effort. just do something that involves a lot of reading and writing. like i said, if you arent going into something specialized as an undergrad (business, architecture, engineering and so on), those two skills are the only ones you should focus on cultivating.

[t3hcoke]

haploid, I will drink with you.

[ohsnap]

some internship at this kids' books publishing company just popped up.

what to do, what to do. it's mostly bitchwork, though.

[blackfuture]

Wasted my time in high school, skipped out on scholarship/college day in favor of sleep and/or skipping school to smoke weed. Took a pathetic amount of time to finish my AA degree while working a couple of jobs. The last job bummed me out so much that I was blessed with the motivation to say "fuck this" and finish college. I move back out in August to complete a degree in Computer Science.

I guess I got a nice, new, reliable car out of the years wasted, but living paycheck to paycheck to blow it all on a shitty apartment with shitty roommates and shitty weed is not the most financially-sound way to go in your early 20's. Oh but do continue to buy jawnz.

[rgray]

i dont think the humanities path is necessarily bad, but it can be if you just cruise through it for four years with just bare minimum effort.

I think what you have articulated here is really accurate. I especially agree about critical thinking. However, I think in that regard you could be

selling psychology short. Definitely in North America getting a psych degree is probably pointless unless pursued to the Master's or Post-Doc level but I think studying psychology in conjunction with another subject can be extremely valuable. I have been studying Security and Conflict for a few years now and have recently began trying to incorporate psychology and sociology far more than before. I find that my area of study is stagnant in these areas making it interesting to study it outside of university (as in not taking classes) because I can offer a different perspective than my peers. I have gotten the impression that my area of study is not as critical as it should be in looking at systemic causes of conflict, especially because we try to stay within a political context. In this regard, analyzing something with psychological/sociological theories can offer a lot more insight.

anyways..

I have pretty much accepted that since I am not studying something like engineering, architecture - in general something that can be directly applied to a job after graduation - that it will be more difficult to get a job (or a job that I really love). So as into the rain said, if you are going to do something, just make sure you love it/find it interesting so that you put in a good effort.

I hope I can stay within academia for a long time.

[borkborkbork]

here's my basic hit list of things in a BA that are worth taking in terms of making you a smart, rigorous thinker with some reasonably practical skills for the job market.

start by taking a few economics courses -- at a minimum, some intro micro and macro. they're useful for signalling purposes, if nothing else. they show you can do some basic math, and employers are under the mistaken impression that economics is like 'business'.

take all the social psych you can get. judgement, decision making, persuasion, social influence, attitude change. these are useful in almost any career you can think of.

stats. take your stats courses in a psych department, because they'll teach you how to do experiments and run statistics, but the profs' baseline assumption will probably be that you're innumerate and can't do math to save your life (which is nice).

philosophy. logic. symbolic logic, particularly. this is usually offered in a philosophy department. sometimes it's joint with computer science. difficult but teaches you to think really rigorously. also, get an ethics course or two. business ethics or biomedical ethics are great. they are useful (every firm deals with social-responsibility issues), and they tend to be easier than the regular ethics classes, because they're filled with business or medical students who want simple, practical stuff instead of high-octane metaphysics.

sociology. don't cop out and do the "sociology of modern fashion" bullshit ones. do something like sociology-of-health or sociology-of-education. you're going to get similar training (ooh, social structures!) in either, but the latter makes you look less flaky. do the 'sociology of science' or 'sociology of knowledge' course because it will be hard but make you a more critical thinker.

history. blah blah blah doomed to repeat it. plus, in general, the essays for history classes teach you to write clearly and persuasively.

political science. take something on international trade or int'l institutions, and something on public policy. if you ever want to be a civil servant, everyone in washington took polisci as a major and likes to pretend it's useful training.

business. don't major in business, ffs. but take one or two intro courses. they're easy, and they'll make you look somewhat employable. (if you can take an operations or optimization class, do it. if you're good at math, at least.)

computer science. maybe. i dunno. half the time, you'll just learn pseudocode, and it requires a shit-ton of math. if you want a tech job, you can teach yourself some python or ruby or something in your spare time instead. i dunno, whatever.

communications. see business, above. these courses are scraping the bottom of the academic barrel (seriously, have you ever met a communication major with two brain cells to rub together?), but there's signalling value, and you'll likely get a little practical "public affairs/public relations" type training.

so let's say that you take 4 courses a term, two terms a year, times 4 years? that's like 32 courses. take the ones above to make yourself slightly less useless, then use the other half to study things that you really love/enjoy/are passionate about. (oh and pick a major carefully, just because employers actually look at it like it matters, despite it not really mattering at all).

[boy better know]

i got 99 problems but a degree in humanities aint one

[Bislane]

about the psych thing hap, I would go for it if it's something that even remotely stands out against its alternatives. definitely as practical as history, english etc, if not more...

at my callcenter tech support job, the coolest person I've come in contact with so far was a guy with degrees in psych and business from a po-dunk school, like three kids, and with less years than 50% of the people he works with. He's the site manager or something and while I'm sure he doesn't love what he does a ton, he seems chill and happy to interact with any of the randos he sees daily.

[freecat]

going to Goethborg in Sweden next year for my 3rd year at Toulouse School of Economics.