It’ll Be Over Before You Know It
Alas, even something as wonderful as college cannot last forever. Before you know it, you will join the ranks of alumni dodging solicitations from your alma mater. It is a mistake to be so completely preoccupied with life after college that you miss opportunities you’ll only have as a student. But it is also a mistake to ignore planning for the future (or to put it off until after spring break of your senior year).
Students determined to get the best out of college can take steps even as early as their freshman year to position themselves for maximum success as college graduates. The key is to develop a plan that not only flexes with natural growth but that also has planted enough beacons along the way to form a discernible path.
Planning your life after college while you are still in college is relatively easy since it’s all about theory. Theoretically you are willing to live on less than your colleagues to teach in the inner city because it’s something you’re passionate about. Theoretically you don’t mind postponing marriage and kids until you’re done with grad school.
These choices work in theory, but not always in practice. We have seen people show uncanny foresight and map out a plan they actually follow. We have seen others get ambushed by surprises—some happy, some not so.
College offers a brief season to test out new ideas and adventures. It’s not that college is four years of risk-free anonymity where consequences are minimal; instead, it is four years of intense focus on building your future.
The wise student will find a way to strike a balance between preparing for potential careers early on and recognizing that those careers are not the irrevocable fate of a Greek tragedy. You are not doomed to one and only one future. Our priorities change as we age, and for most there are many job changes and interludes between “passing go” and “game over.”
It’s the old cliché from the strategic planning business: it is not the plan, it is the planning. The real value in thinking ahead is not in developing some detailed and rigid blueprint that actually charts your course. Rather, it is that in developing that plan (or plans!) you go through a series of steps—self-inventory, self-discovery, exploration—that stand you in good stead whatever happens.
College offers a brief season to test out new ideas and adventures. It’s not that college is four years of risk-free anonymity where consequences are minimal; instead, it is four years of intense focus on building your future.
In this season of exploration and risk, we encourage you to weigh some reasonable life choices, and once you have landed on a couple, test and countertest them. Are you interested in becoming a lawyer? Sign on to be a paralegal for the summer. Spend the following summer as a construction worker to see if you prefer working outdoors. Over time, the back-and-forth between possibilities should help you file down your choices.
In terms of social choices, be wary of taking on too many risks since they will influence the rest of your diligent plan. Once the consequences start rolling in, some students find that they have experimented too vigorously in sex, drugs, or alcohol, which constrains their options postcollege. This four-year interlude doesn’t suspend the law of reaping and sowing. Even activities that are totally innocuous in one setting could be problematic for some jobs. For instance, some positions in the intelligence community are supposed to be so apolitical that membership in any politically oriented clubs as an undergrad will raise yellow flags on your application. And yes, joining the Make Weed Legal Club is going to make for a rough interview should you apply to the FBI.
One alum named Brad recently told us about how he had never completely bought into the precept of “your past will find you” until the day he went before a judge to be admitted to the bar in New York. As Brad’s name was called, the judge listed off many of his inane escapades during college that had resulted in fairly minor disciplinary action. Brad was at first stunned by the retelling of his glory days, which then turned into horror when the judge asked him to wait outside the courtroom until the other candidates for the bar had been considered. At the end of the review, he was called back into the courtroom, where the judge said, “Don’t worry, you passed—I just wanted to scare you a little bit.” It worked. Brad told us he reeled with panic while he waited in the foyer, wondering if all his hopes for his career and future would be terminated. He realized then just how stupid his entertainment choices in college had been. If you have erred by experimenting where you should not have, the game isn’t over. While you won’t be able to shrug off the outcome entirely, now’s the time to begin writing the next chapter of the story that shows a strong response to those mistakes in your narrative. You are not rewriting the past; you are writing an alternative future, one that puts the past in a more favorable light.
Making mistakes during your freshman year (which is largely preventable, especially if you’ve read this book) is more “acceptable” than making those same mistakes as a senior. Should you find you have an evil to explain away, your story will hopefully be “I goofed around the first semester of my freshman year and then realized I was ruining my college career so I reformed. During my junior year, I got interested in working for the CIA and that summer interned for a think tank in DC.” It’s not that you should give yourself carte blanche as an underclassman to do what you will in the hopes you can apologize and reform later. Success may not feel in the mood to be merciful when she calls your number. That said, everyone makes mistakes, and the mark of those who succeed is that they have learned from their mistakes. Where students find poor choices especially hard to disown is when episodes occur during spring break of their senior year, proving to the outside world that in four years at college they haven’t grown up at all.
How rigid will your future career be in its demands? That’s hard to say. Far better to be narrowing your choices for yourself than to have them narrowed for you because of your choices.
On a personal note, Dean Sue admits that her expectations would have been different had she extended her professional network early on as an undergrad to query a variety of colleagues who had gone before her. Would College Sue have been able to fully understand the costs of her career path, financially and especially personally? Hard to say. Going through the exercise of imagining and planning out various hypothetical scenarios and talking them through with someone five and ten years ahead of her certainly couldn’t have hurt.
In Sue’s case, one particular mentor played a key role in helping her sort through many of the initial demands and opportunities of her career. To this day, how she prioritizes work or responds to professional relationships has been profoundly influenced by that former mentor, both for good and bad. She credits a lot of her great work tactics (such as time management and organization) to him as well as some of her misconceptions about the balance between professional and personal life. Because her mentor seemed to be at work all the time, Sue thought she needed to do the same thing to be successful. In spite of the fact that Sue loved her work (and still does), it was not healthy to spend as much time at work as she did. She reached a point where she was not able to distinguish between work and play since everything in her life seemed to be related to her work. And, although being passionate about one’s work is a good thing, there needs to be some balance.
Unfortunately Sue says that this sense of balance was not something her mentor was able to model for her (and even today, Sue warns her younger colleagues NOT to look to her as a role model for establishing balance between work and play). This is another good reason why it may make more sense to have a “board of mentors” instead of relying on just one. In that respect, Sue (with seconds from coauthors Peter and Anne) encourages you to choose your mentors carefully. While mentors may not mentor you in your personal life, still note how their career has influenced their home life and weigh their words on that topic carefully.
Counselors, colleagues, mentors, and alums from your school are all excellent resources, and you may find yourself surprised at their wealth of wisdom and eagerness to share it. Many successful adults have more advice to give than they have time to give it—but they also have more advice to give than they have people asking for it. Some schools have compensated for this by hosting lunches solely for the purpose of encouraging students to engage with faculty, notable alumni, and administrators. Should you find yourself in a conversation with them—and you should, if you have been following the advice in this book—and if your listener seems agreeable to it, work your way up from a discussion of the weather to questions like “What personal sacrifices are required of a woman who wants to be a professional in your field?” or “How is it possible to be an international leader and yet raise a family?” or “How does one go about rebuilding a department and yet not be engulfed by its demands?” Most people enjoy telling their stories or giving advice, as long as the questions aren’t too intimate.
This can be valuable on a number of fronts. First, it makes you an interesting conversationalist—most people like to talk about themselves and may consider you witty just for prompting such soliloquies. Second, the more you engage them in meaningful conversation, the more you will see the wisdom of the “many roads up the mountain” aphorism—that is, that there are many different ways to reach your goal. Third, so many of life’s lessons are age-and-stage-related, so talking with people at different ages and stages will give you insights that your peers simply don’t yet have. It doesn’t matter how smart your roommate is, chances are she does not have deep personal insight into the “biological clock versus promotional clock” problem.
KNOW THYSELF—OR AT LEAST MAKE A FORMAL INTRODUCTION
Looking Ahead to Potential Careers
When it comes time to consider a career, oddly enough, the career center can be a helpful resource. Here are some questions that counselors generally ask which you might consider even now:
• Do you expect to make a lot of money?
• How important is your standard of living, and what would that look like?
• Where do you expect to live—a large city, on the East or West Coast, another country?
• What level of commitment do you plan to make in terms of having a family?
• What kind of work schedule do you prefer—one with flexibility or dependability?
• Have you thought about working various shifts, and could you be nocturnal if your job required it?
• In what sort of schooling are you willing to invest?
• What does it mean to you to sacrifice one of these priorities for another?
The value of the various tests at the career center is not necessarily in what the computer spits out as the single “correct” answer for your future. (One of us actually took a test that recommended becoming an assembly-line worker. After deleting and inserting commas on a couple hundred pages during the last round of edits of this book, maybe that test was right.) The value of career-center testing lies in what the results teach you about yourself and what they make you consider as you go through the process.
Peter remembers how one of the most perceptive and piercing things anyone has ever said to him came from a retired cabinet secretary who talked to him for less than five minutes at a cocktail party. In that brief time, the gentleman sized him up and pointed out some weaknesses that Peter admits he has guarded against ever since. People who are deeply wise may be able to say deeply wise things, even in a brief encounter.
So talk to lots of people, and then winnow down their ideas. It’s probably better not to start the conversation with “Will you be my mentor and teach me how to find success?” Jumping in too quickly can be a little embarrassing—for both of you. Simply enjoy the conversation and you never know—a mentor might emerge or, if not, perhaps at least an invaluable insight.
Shelves of books have been written on the topic of home life versus advancing career, and it is a matter of ongoing, painful debate. No gender has it easy, but the ever-ticking clock seems to hit female graduates harder. Many women want to establish themselves in a career before starting a family, and so they postpone having children until their mid- to late thirties. Seems smart enough.
However, women who adopt that strategy must confront the reality that the risks of complications or birth defects rise significantly once the mother ages past thirty-four. Doctors are frequently surprised at how many highly educated women in their forties walk into their clinics expecting some miracle fertility treatment to work. Miracles can happen and certainly have, but there are many sad cases where they haven’t. Medicine has yet to outsmart the clock completely.
This dilemma then transfers to the men, who may expect to marry later in their thirties yet also hope to travel and enjoy the “five-year plan” with the new wife before starting a family. Once the kiddos do arrive, today’s dad is expected to do far more hands-on parenting than dads of yore, and when he’s nearing fifty and driving a car of kids to soccer practice, he wonders if he’s too old to have kids this young. There is a proven link between the age of fathers at the time of conception and biological and developmental risks in infants—it seems we have all swallowed a ticking clock.
We aren’t trying to scare you. Each of us—Peter, Sue, and Anne—has made our own choices on the matter, and they are all different. Plus, it’s not like you can schedule meeting your soul mate. The point is to understand your expectations around career and family and, to what extent you can, plan accordingly.
Unless you have a beefy trust fund that can only be spent on schooling, it is probably a mistake to view graduate school as “the thing you do when you don’t know what to do after college.” Graduate school would be better thought of as a strategic investment. Well chosen and well timed, it has huge payoffs. Poorly chosen or poorly timed, it’s a waste of money and, even more precious, time.
There is an almost irresistible undertow that whisks college seniors away to grad school. Try your best to fight the impulse to jump straight into grad school if it feels anything less than totally authentic. Give yourself a couple of years to get out into the real world, to figure out who you are, and to let your ideas about your future percolate.
Hans—recent grad, Duke U
Grad school probably warrants a whole other book. Here, all we can say is this: imagine your toughest seminar, then imagine taking only those kinds of seminars for all your courses every semester; think of the smartest peers that left you a bit intimidated in class discussions, then imagine taking a class where most if not all of the students are just like them. Welcome to grad school. Yes, grad school still has the perks of an academic calendar (though summers involve far more work, usually). And yes, grad school does give you access to many of the social amenities of college. But you will have less time—and less willingness to risk time and probably even less money to indulge those risks—in grad school. Another senior year it ain’t.
What we are seeing more frequently is that those students who are considering grad school for the right reasons usually plan to do something else before going to grad school. Some students apply in the hopes of deferring enrollment, and in many cases that is permitted. Should you decide to consider this an option, get your test scores in place (while your brain is still toned) and your recommendations written (while your name still summons a face) and then perhaps delay applying as long as your scores will permit. For ideas of what to do with this time off, see our “Delayed Entry” section in chapter 10.
The three summers in between your undergraduate years are some of the richest pockets of time you will have as a college student. Spend that time wisely. Too many students fail at this in one of two ways: either they waste the time by treating it as three solid months of recuperation via TV reruns, or they panic and try to secure an internship at The Company I Will Work at for the Rest of My Life. The former is a clear waste of time, but the error in the second is that by trying to start their professional life too soon, they miss the chance to try something they otherwise would not have had time to explore, such as study abroad, an outdoor job with the Forest Service, short-term volunteer work overseas, or an internship that gives back to the community.
For some companies, a summer internship is an extended interview, particularly in the business sector. You’ll find your summer to be a delicate balancing act between using the time to test out a few career options and laying the necessary groundwork for whatever that career will be. It’s worth investigating by speaking with your major advisor as well as folks in that industry. The career center may be particularly helpful in connecting you with alums in that field.
If you can afford to work for free during the summer, you have even more options available to you (and many of them admittedly cooler than the paying jobs). A time-honored path for college students is working as interns in DC for any one of countless think tanks. While this sort of job typically isn’t paid and may not necessarily lead to a career on the Hill, it adds sparkle to your narrative and creates a small professional network to draw from later.
Should you decide to go a more traditional employment route, summer is not so much a testing ground for a specific company as it is for an industry in general, as well as an opportunity to socialize and meet people in your potential field. It is rare to find a quality internship as a freshman, though it’s been known to happen. Don’t stress too much about the wow factor of the job you take the summer after your freshman year. If possible, develop a financial plan that will allow for an impressive (aka unpaid) internship the summer before your senior year.
If you can’t afford to work for free ever, there are still some incredible paying summer jobs out there, but they’re few in number so apply NOW. Even if it’s a year or two away, you’ll rarely apply too early. If you find you’ve already missed the deadline for applying to work at Disneyland two summers from now, there is no shame in taking any job that pays. Waiting tables of needy patrons can be a wonderful training ground for learning how to deal with demanding clients.
Clocking in at an average sort of job has its own perks as you develop the reputation of a trustworthy and responsible employee and learn how “the rest of America” works. Sue—yes, the dean who wrote this book—was a waitress for two summers. To this day, she tidies up her own table at restaurants because she knows how hard the job can be. There’s a lot to be said for the value of empathy derived from the everyday experience, and it can make for a compelling interview when you recount how you spent your summer.
Study abroad and summer school are alternatives. We tend not to recommend the latter unless you’re in an academic or financial pinch, since you need some time to decompress from campus life (and many of your top professors will be on vacation), but it is the right choice for some. Study abroad is a much more tempting possibility—after all, how often can you earn credit for traveling the world? It’s like being paid to eat dessert. More on that topic in chapter 10.
Okay, so we’ve sold you on the benefits of planning. How about a list of what to do when? If you’re coming into this chapter after your freshman year, it would be worth your time to read through all the headings in case there is something earlier on that you missed. However, if you’re reading this as a newly minted freshman, we recommend that you read your section below as well as the other three while you’re at it. Then, at the end of each school year, review the upcoming section once more and revisit it during the year as necessary.
The biggest advantage freshmen have is more lead time for engaging in academic experiments and for considering future careers.
Develop a working strategy. Jot the plan down, but not in permanent marker. A fair amount of maturation occurs in college, and what excites you socially or academically as a freshman may not get your wheels spinning as a senior. Included in this strategy is revisiting the boundaries and goals you established for yourself in chapter 5 (charting an academic sketch of what you’d like to accomplish and identifying people you’d like to know better). Figure out a way that all these goals can flow seamlessly together.
Explore with some distant goal in mind. For now, your job is to keep in mind the notion that you will graduate someday soon, and to take steps toward that end without letting it consume you. Take a rich romp through a variety of courses, disciplines, and jobs; be leisurely about it if you like. But have some end in mind to provide your exploration with structure so that you have a sturdy narrative when you are through instead of your resume shouting, “I had no clue and was purposeless in my decisions at all times.”
Begin scouting professors. You may want to reread chapter 6 on professors and take some notes on how to start grooming some relationships that can generate strong letters of recommendation. Look for either a deep appreciation for how a prof handles the subject matter or some sort of personal chemistry as you begin your search for professors you’d like to know better.
Research sophomore perks. Some colleges offer unique seminars or programs available only to sophomores that you need to register for as a freshman. Since this is largely dependent on your college, we must remain vague. Stop by your advisor’s office or career center to see if there’s anything more you should be taking advantage of this year.
You know you’re a sophomore when you begin to recognize a whole new set of acronyms.
Study for the GMAT, MCAT, LSAT, or GRE. These tests tend to be taken later on, but it is not too early to squirrel away some time now and begin your test prep. The standard procedure for preparing for these exams is to take workshops specific to your test to help you prepare not only for the knowledge base but for the unique test structure you will encounter with your sweaty #2 pencil (or mouse) in hand. It’s not abnormal to attend a session two to three times a week in the evening, even as early as your sophomore year, especially if you plan to take a course or social overload or study abroad your junior year. By planning ahead, you will have more chances to retake the test should your initial scores not be as high as you hoped.
Explore MFA, MBA, or MDiv programs. If you are interested in pursuing a graduate degree, make an appointment with a professor in that field whom you already know. With his help, sketch out what you need to know and what your future may require of you should you pursue further education in this field. You might consider getting to know a few grad students in this field as well, since they will have recently finished one or more of those whopping entrance tests and will know the process of getting accepted to grad school. You’ll also want to check in with your career center at this point to see what exactly will be required of you as an undergrad (in terms of courses, tests, and internships) to apply to this field for future study.
End with a BS or BA? What if you aren’t considering grad school as a postgraduation option—should you be? Not necessarily. Grad school isn’t for everyone, especially if you don’t think your future career will be able to shovel you out of school debt very quickly (such as if you become a public high school teacher). If you are fairly certain that grad school is not for you, breathe a huge sigh of relief.
Apply for SI. No, not Sports Illustrated—student internship. Use your summers to discern what careers might be of interest to you by interning in similar areas. Perhaps you already know what you want to do—even better. Intern for a summer in that line of work; next year, intern in something completely different to be sure the first career is what you had in mind. Remember Frances and her med school mistake we mentioned earlier? Had she spent a summer volunteering in a hospital as an undergrad, she might have discovered her true preferences earlier on. The career center will be able to give you some suggestions as well as make other connections you may have missed (such as seminars, workshops, or upcoming guest lectures) in teasing out potential careers.
Tabulate GR1, GR2, GR3, GR4, and GR5. Graduation requirements tend to vary in name from college to college, but the shudder feels about the same. Now would be a good time to take a gander at what you have left to cover in your general and departmental graduation requirements so you aren’t caught off guard. Don’t feel obligated to complete them all by Christmas, but do begin to look for ways to knock a couple out in the next year.
See the world. No acronyms needed for that one. If you haven’t done study abroad yet and still want to, fall of your junior year is your best remaining option (which most often means you have to apply as a sophomore). Many majors offer programs to study abroad, but even if they don’t, there are often national programs available that offer accredited courses which are transferable. We offer a veritable feast of information on the subject in chapter 10, in the event the topic sounds delicious.
Some say this is the hardest academic year (assuming you don’t continue on to grad school) that you’ll ever face, but if you’ve been following along with us since day one as a freshman and have your ducks in a row, it may turn out just, well, ducky.
Wrap it up. Junior year is a great time to finish up any standardized test preparation and take your GMAT, GRE, LSAT, or MCAT. Once you feel well prepared, take the test as soon as you can. Not only will your mind be sharper, but you will also have a larger window of time to retake the test in the event your scores aren’t beefy.
Revisit those reqs. It is well past time to review those graduation and major requirements so you are on track for completing them. It’s not necessary that you know exactly which term you will take what, but by the beginning of your junior year, you’d better have more than a general idea of how much is ahead of you (and whether or not you can get a two-fer by overlapping some requirements).
Research your future. If you haven’t been to the career center yet, shame, shame. Take some time and invest in your future. Trust us. At worst, you’ll waste forty-five minutes on a rainy afternoon; at best, you’ll save yourself from some catastrophic career move that otherwise would have cost you significant time, money, or both!
Challenge your course load. If at all possible, schedule an intensive seminar or tutorial with a professor early in your junior year. Not only is it a memorable learning experience, it is also good timing for requesting a letter of recommendation that reflects your ability to maintain a focused engagement with a faculty member. This is especially important if you are planning to apply to graduate school. Since grad school applications are due in late fall of your senior year, most of the material in the letters of recommendation will be based on work you did in your junior year or before.
Start planning for next summer now. The summer between your junior and senior years will be the most critical for your next career move. If you can manage to secure a solid internship or job, or some other notable experience, it will give you plenty of rich material for your job interviews. We can almost guarantee they’ll ask what you did last summer. Many of the desirable or impressive internships have big lead times in their application process, so you’ll want to start yours in September or October—almost a full year in advance.
Effectively this long “to do” list turns the first few weeks of your junior year into a serious brainstorming session. Should you decide to study abroad during the fall of your junior year, you’ll need to back your strategizing up even further, to be completed at the end of your sophomore year, since life won’t wait for you to get back and unpack.
If you’ve played your cards right, there shouldn’t be an unmanageable load left for your senior year. Don’t be surprised if you see comrades scurrying to finish their test prep and quickly take the GRE, or folks just realizing they have more major requirements to fulfill than time. These things happen. But you are on the ball, so you have the whole year to look forward to.
What do you want to be when you grow up? It is not uncommon for seniors to quickly come to hate the question “What will you do after you graduate?” It will become increasingly annoying by winter of your senior year. Most of the time the question is being asked by people who don’t know what else to talk about but who would like to strike up a conversation with you; as a result, the question can easily be redirected into talking about a course you enjoyed and will pursue in your free time, a new hobby you’d like to develop, or travel plans. However, what many seniors hear in the question is either “What do you want to be when you grow up?” or worse, “What do you expect to do with the next forty-five years of your life?”, which leaves them in a tailspin. And who wouldn’t be flummoxed? It’s an unreasonable question, and most folks aren’t even asking it. If they are, buy them a drink and aim them toward a different corner of the party.
Expect the future to intrude on the present and adjust accordingly. Senior year is a tough balance because you want to enjoy it to the hilt, but you also need to attend to some academic requirements that require an intense amount of focus. It may even feel reminiscent of your senior year in high school, only the intellectual opportunities are richer and the cost of checking out early is significantly greater.
At this point in your career, interviewing for jobs is itself almost a full-time job. It’s easily as much work as an additional whopper of a class, what with all the research, applications, interviews, and maybe even distant interviews on location. Many classes that are frequented by seniors have attendance requirements because professors know how hard it is for seniors to keep up with their course work when their futures are calling—so shop for courses carefully if you think your interviews will have you traveling off campus frequently. Choose courses that meet the fundamental priorities for your education but that will also have attendance requirements that are realistic, given your schedule. This issue typically affects the fall semester the most, since that is when the competition for top-notch jobs is most intense.
The goal is to arrange a course schedule that will allow you to both interview at companies and pursue your classes. Hopefully there will be some flexibility with the potential employer so that you can request to interview on Friday instead of Tuesday. Be willing to investigate whether or not there is some leeway, and don’t assume that by asking for a different date you are ruining your chances of getting the job. We talked with Colin (an executive of a well-respected international consulting firm that has particularly stringent recruiting habits—at times the firm requires seven interviews from a single candidate before offering a position!) and queried him on this very topic.
Colin said, “Were a student unable to arrive for an interview due to a course schedule, the best action to take would be one of honest professionalism. Explain to the recruiter why you cannot miss the course, whether it be limited absences allowed or a test that cannot be moved, and ask if it is possible to come at a different time. And—this part is critical—be accommodating. Offer a few times that work for you, but show you are also willing to go out of your way to take red-eye flights or drive at odd hours to make it work for the company. Most firms recognize you have a life beyond the application process, and how you handle the situation could reflect positively on your application.”
It should go without saying—but we will say it anyway—make sure you keep your professors apprised of your interview travel and any other distractions from your studies. Professors will be more accommodating if you’ve been courteous by informing them in advance that you will be absent. However, that doesn’t necessarily mean they will be indulgent. Actually, the advice offered above from the executive could just as easily come from the professor in terms of making absences work, as much as possible, for everyone involved.
Understand that you are not making “forever” decisions. As you search for the perfect job, try not to stress out too much about signing your life away: “What if my first job is a disaster? What if I don’t like it? Will it look bad if I change jobs too quickly?” The bottom line is that you can always change, and if you’re like the average American, you will—many, many times. PJ is a recent graduate who—though he was a promising student—could only find a job selling Internet satellites when it came time to graduate. It wasn’t his dream job. Three years and two job changes later he is working in higher-level management in a prestigious bank and loves it. How, you ask? Short of Providence, the best reasoning PJ gives is that each job change highlighted a set of talents or strengths he wanted to develop in himself—as opposed to staying in a field simply because the job training was similar. So even though the industries varied, the leadership skills he was honing at each company improved from one move to the next.
Take workshops that will prepare you for life after college. One last thing to look for are workshops geared toward seniors and life after college. Many colleges offer brief forums on topics such as medical insurance, how to buy a house, how to handle credit cards responsibly, and how to plan for retirement. Most often these sorts of practical life courses are offered in … where else? The career center. (It’s too bad you don’t get a dollar every time we mention that place. Your college loans could be paid off by now.)
Early in my senior year, I had an assignment to contact fifteen industry professionals in my chosen career path and ask to interview them about their experiences. In my case, these were complete strangers, and not only that but intimidating strangers. Many of these folks had the power to move my career forward or halt it, and I had to introduce myself to them by asking for a favor! I had dreaded it since the day I saw it printed on the syllabus, but when I finally started making the calls, I found that nobody minded helping out a college kid who had a great deal to learn about the industry. Their advice has saved me from many common pitfalls and rookie mistakes that I would have paid for dearly.
Rebecca—recent grad, Point Loma Nazarene U
Until now, we have focused on positive things you can do to position yourself for success after college. You also need to play some defense, avoiding mistakes we have seen too many recent graduates make.
As much as it may pain you to hear this, don’t rush out and buy yourself a “happy graduation” car. Even as a gift, a car involves major ongoing expenses. We’ve seen it before. The happy graduate heads to the dealership and signs up for a car he can barely afford, which in turn limits his options because he can only take jobs that ensure that he can meet those payments. Many exotic jobs involve low pay in the beginning and often open tremendous doors later on.
An all-too-common trap for recent graduates is trying to live by their parents’ standard of living. This may seem reasonable because they grew up with it, but this standard is in fact not reasonable at all—at least, not for a recent college graduate.
The twenties is a great time to be relatively poor. (It’s certainly a lot easier than attempting it later, should you be married with kids.) We’ve been encouraging you from the beginning to experiment, and this is another place to take a calculated risk. Try out something you’ve always wanted to do that may involve low pay now but that has a long-term payoff. The job that provides great professional networks or learning experiences or public exposure can be risky but rewarding—more so than the job with a higher starting salary and dead-end prospects. As you head into your job search, draw up a budget of what you think you need to earn, given your spending habits (and what you’d like to save). If jobs aren’t available with that sort of pay scale, adjust the budget as needed—or consider different jobs.
ALUMNI CLUBS
Fancy Bumper Sticker or Future Investment?
If you attend a large university, your alumni website will most likely have information to connect you with alumni and alumni clubs across the world, and if you are moving to a new city, it could be a helpful resource in building some new networks. Even if you attend a small college or an elite university, your alumni office will probably keep files on alums and their careers, which could be useful in the event you need a few introductions.
The alumni office is a great resource. In addition to helping you connect with other alums wherever you live, it may also offer discounts on extras like travel or car insurance. Since the network you develop in college is almost as valuable as the college itself, keep your contact information current in their files.
Don’t worry about giving them your phone number either. Most colleges know better than to beleaguer recent grads with requests for money.
There are numerous books and seminars on the topic of financial planning, so we won’t go into all that here. We will, however, draw your attention to two important facts that seem to underscore their point:
• The miracle of compound interest means that saving in your twenties is turbocharged when compared to saving in your thirties, forties, and fifties.
• Good financial management is 90 percent discipline and habit and 10 percent wisdom and luck. You can’t control luck, but if you are wise enough to set up properly disciplined habits, then your investments (and dividends) will most likely reflect that.
Health insurance can be another doozy, and with all of the changes in US policy, our best advice is to research this further. Happily, as a college graduate, you know how to do this.
Health insurance can be one of the toughest things to nail down since you don’t know what insurance plan your prospective company will have, if any, and you won’t have access to that information until you receive an offer. Figure that if you’re going into a traditional career, it’s likely you’ll have some sort of coverage. If you are in the fortunate position to have multiple offers, take a close look at their benefits when evaluating compensation.
Regardless of what your insurance plan turns out to be, we strongly advise against having a lapse in coverage. We repeat: there should be absolutely no window of time when you are not covered by some policy, first and foremost because of the major risk to your health (though some hospitals will treat you even without coverage), and second because of the crippling financial burden it would become should you become seriously injured or ill. Your life can change for the worse in an instant if you have no insurance to provide for those unforeseeable situations. The good news is that you are exactly the kind of person insurance companies are looking for: young and thus more likely to be healthy (which makes for a great policyholder from their point of view). At your age, it makes sense to have major medical coverage. Unless you have a chronic condition (and if you don’t know whether you do, get yourself checked out while still at college and covered by good medical insurance), you probably won’t need a gold-plated policy.
Another surprise to meet head-on is saving for retirement. It may seem like eons away but before you know it, you’ll be of age to retire. When you turn to look for that nest egg, will it be shiny? Cracked? Egg, what egg? That depends. It’s never too early to start investing. Once you earn an income, be sure you pay your future self immediately. What that means practically is that each time you earn a paycheck you contribute as much as you can either to a retirement plan or a savings account that you don’t touch. It’s not that we expect you’ll be making a lot of money early on. Heck, you may only be able to put in $5 a month. The value of that $5 goes beyond the principal to the principle: you are cultivating an important lifetime habit that will have positive returns for years to come.
Just as we’ve said that it’s not so much where you attend school as what you accomplish while you’re there, we reassert that it’s not so much what your first job is as how you perform in that job. Good recommendations (and bad) will follow you wherever you go.
We knew of one businesswoman—let’s call her Matilda—who directed an online start-up company, which we will call LousyBusinessPlan.com. Despite her initial goodwill, she turned out to be a snake and sold the company downriver, making off with the profits and leaving the employees out in the cold. It was infuriating and the rest of the management team was helpless. A year or so later, Matilda applied for a prestigious role in another company—the sort of position she’d been working her whole career to reach. In looking over Matilda’s impressive profile, one of the board members of that company happened to recognize the name LousyBusinessPlan.com (his son’s best friend was the former COO). Wouldn’t you know, that board member got an earful when he gave the former COO a quick call, and Matilda lost out on a major career move. Your performance has a way of keeping track of you. Make that a good thing.
As hard as you have worked to put yourself through school these past twenty years, and as hard as your parents have worked to support you in your ventures, don’t kid yourself: that you are standing here today on your way to receiving a college diploma is still Providence. You have just won the genetic lottery. No, it’s not irrelevant that you were up all night preparing for your anthropology midterm or merely luck that you passed your biochemistry class.
What we mean to say is that none of us chose to be born into this state of privilege. None of us selected our family or our upbringing. None of us even selected the era in which we would live. But somehow we were born here and now, and there you stand ready to begin your bright future, having already been given more than most individuals in this richly populated world will receive in a lifetime. You have been given vaccinations, taught to read, trained in a healthy lifestyle, given clean air to breathe. And you are now blessed with a life’s education. It really is awesome when you think about it.
Find a way to financially or personally give back to the world a portion of what you have taken thus far—it will never be easier to give back than it is now. You have a lifetime to cash in on the prestige that comes from being in the upper echelon of educated people in the world. For now, use your innate talents and your college-honed skills to right someone’s wrong, to confront a global challenge, to create a new opportunity, or to meet a local need. Who knows, this sort of giving back may become a wonderful addiction. And someday, when you are feeling nostalgic and looking back on your journey, you’ll be glad you were not just another well-fed person on the sidelines pointing out problems; you were part of the solution.