Dear Editor:

Welcome to college. You've worked hard. It'll be fun, challenging, and rewarding, but beware.

Avoid drugs and unsafe sex. Control weight, alcohol, and food. Never drink and drive. Get enough sleep, study, and exercise time. Maximize your grades, but also prepare for your career.

Early planning is important, especially if you have student loans and/or special needs.

You may feel secure in dorms and cafeterias with pizza, Internet, road trips, sports, arts, and cable TV, probably paid by student loans. There are also intellectual stimulation, great (boy/girl)friends, and charismatic, dedicated, and smart professors.

However, you may have neither experienced the job market nor had to pay most/all of your own bills. You can see professors, but not their cohorts who didn't succeed. Your parent(s) may have (a) college degree(s) and may be successful, but the relationship between education and employment/income is very complicated with rational reasons, irrational prejudices, discrimination, and luck. If you grew up with plenty and security, it probably came from decades of hard work, and you might not have been aware or alive while s/he/they were struggling to succeed. Likewise, your early years will be hard, too.

Mine were. I overcame Asperger's syndrome, an interpersonal learning disability similar to autism, which is characterized by up to 95% un(der)employment despite normal or higher academic intelligence. I got my computer and web skills and job primarily from voc rehab, not my BS and MA in sociology.

Sociology is a good major. Liberal arts majors with information technology (IT) skills may have good communication and thinking skills and be able to interact with both computers and people. My company mentor was cited in Computerworld as seeking sociology majors with IT skills. Sociology/psychology help build productive, harmonious work environments with customer relationship management, emotional intelligence, and diversity. Demography helps marketing and social work helps society. Sociology helped me overcome my disability. Sociology is fun, too: Cold War history and social mechanisms, but I couldn't pass 30+ interviews in applied research without IT skills.

Almost is not good enough. For 3 years with an MA, I depended on my mother for food, housing, etc. I made $5-$8 an hour, at best a PT temp university research job, at worst, FT temp manual labor. I overcame cancer without insurance and paid thousands of dollars. I may have lost $147,000 for not studying IT first and my $17,300 student loan may eventually cost $33,000. I got Food Stamps, Medicaid, rehab therapy, and unemployment. I paid emotionally too: having personal rejection after interviews and the same occupational status/income as a mentally-retarded person (as I was called in HS). In my only big job before IT, I was unsuccessful, but my overeducation hurt/angered my less educated boss, who in turn hurt me. I was close to suicide once in that job and twice the year I got my MA.

You need to find a good match between your career, major, strengths, weaknesses, and interests. I believe that career planning mistakes are preventable.

First, examine your self and goals. Take career aptitude tests. Learn about job requirements and hiring/salary trends in various careers. Evaluate your strengths, weaknesses, and interests. Measure the cost of living after graduation. Improve job search and interviewing skills. The career center might know this. Ask for advice from the career department, faculty, and current students, seniors, and graduates in your proposed major.

Listen to your parent(s) too: s/he/they has/have invested more money and time, if not love, in you than anyone else involved. Although no one's legally required to help you after graduation, s/he/they probably will.

The Learning Disabilities Association of California strongly recommends early identification of learning disabilities, comprehensive assessments, individualized educations, vocational education, career training, transitioning skills, and accomodating employers. ERIC Digest #447 indicates that poor social skills can derail a promising career. ERIC Digest #62 also recommends how parents can help and why you should listen to them, too. If you have ever been in a separate, smaller grade school class, as I have, consider yourself to possibly have special needs a career counselor must know. The psychology department may be able to double-check and refine your diagnosis, and provide services.

Second, when you make a choice, make sure you get what you need, even if you have to change courses, majors, or schools to get the skills you need. Your future employer will use your skills learned now to fulfill an objective, possibly to make a profit above your salary. You may compete with others, and if you do, one will win only if another loses. Try to get work experience to demonstrate that you can apply skills to work. Develop your whole person: time/stress management, extra-curricular activities, social/emotional health. Try to minimize any student loans.

Third, after you graduate, survive until you find a suitable job and have worked in it for several months. Get a short term job, rent with parent(s), defer student loans if unemployed, use public transit, save money, and look hard for a job. Learn how to write a resume, network, interview, and present a business image (ironed clothes, shined shoes, haircuts). Your parent(s) and the career center may help, but this may not compensate for earlier planning mistakes. You might need more education and student loans. You won't have a steady stream of income for up to a month after you start your big job.

It's less costly to build a career or a web site right the first time than to retrofit it later. Do it right the first time.

Although you are responsible for making choices, the college and alumni are responsible for informing you of choices and preparing you for careers you choose. When you choose a road, we must make it shorter, with less potholes.

chris.marsh@excite.com
Further info at http://www.angelfire.com/md/chrismarsh/getjob.html
Christopher Marsh
Junior Webmaster
DTI Associates, Arlington, VA
Shepherd College 1992
Marshall University 1996
Greenbelt, MD alumnus
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