What should I do?My parents are dead-set on choosing my job for me. (father, sister)
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For God sakes, all this bashing of Liberal Arts degrees. Millennials are not lazy or lack character. After the 2008 recession, entry positions have NEVER come back to their pre-recession levels.
For new college graduates in 2018/19, this is the reality:
First, job searching is done on the internet sites like indeed.com and idealist.com. It may take a full year to find your first job. Going to a temp agency is a good idea. The competition for temp jobs is tremendous.
Second, you can work while submitting your resume online. You will have to call in sick for interviews.
Third, serious why are you paying your parents rent? Is the rent to cover their payment of student loans? Do they just want you to be more responsible?
My son graduated in May with honors. He has applied to over 300 companies online. Beginning in July, he took a position at a supermarket. In December, he had an interview with a temp agency which claimed to have numerous positions which he would be great for. He wrote a thank you letter and emails the agency weekly. They are still working on finding him a position. From Linkin, he had inquiries from companies with extremely high turnover. He's still looking.
My daughter's unpaid internship turned into a full time paid position. If my son finds an unpaid volunteer or internship position, I would be happy with it.
Honestly, I wouldn't ask any of my children for rent until they were 25.
I also will not ask rent from my kids, because one day after graduation from hs they will be kicked out of the house. I'm not going to tolerate basement dwellers.
I also will not ask rent from my kids, because one day after graduation from hs they will be kicked out of the house. I'm not going to tolerate basement dwellers.
Something tells me they won't want to stay anyway.....
Maybe he needs advice in a different way...I get where he is coming from. Believe it or not, I graduated 4 years ago with the same mentality...kind of.
I have a very high paid salary now...coming a few years ago, I had no clue what I wanted to do. I had a job, but it was not paying enough, that is for sure. Not going to write every detail of my life, but what I feel is important.
But if I can do it, so can you....I had a tough life...seen a lot of sh*t. prison, house arrest, you name it. Smart? I dont think so, but a lot of people consider me incredibly intelligent, but I dont find myself that way. Dropped out of school, then went back.
Only difference is I moved out 21 with a GF. Then we broke up and I moved out with my new gf after, who is my wife now. We have a great life now....almost can buy anything we want with no stress what so ever. My suggestion, get up off your a** start putting more experience under your belt. Move out on your own and get started. In this life you what you put in is what you get.
While I was in college, I taught myself what companies wanted to see. I went outside of what college was teaching me; also helped I went for a degree that is in demand.
One thing I have learned, NOTHING in life is easy. YOU need to figure out what you want, where to go in your life and move out an move on. I personally think living in your moms house because "rent is too high" is a dam excuse. I thought the same thing while I was in college, working, and living with my gf (wife now) wondering if I can even get anything in this dam stupid city where rent was 3k a month and average salary was 40 - 50k a year. Im like fck it, im not going too let it stop me.
As years went on, I continued educating myself with what college does NOT teach you. eventually I graduated and put my a** in work mode and started applying outside of different states. and it is true, this generation is a bunch of wimps who cant stand on their own that thinks the world is never in their favor. But I am living proof anything is achievable. Sure I had a hard life, went to prison, always in trouble with the law growing up....yet here I am living better than most people in their 40s and 50s.
My advice to you is, get off your a** move on your own and be your own person. You are living with your parents after graduating and stop making excuses as I was in your shoes once. Educate yourself, research companies on what they want, what skills do they want, what are they looking for? I lived in a piece of crap shed on my own with my gf for 1400 a month before the life I have now....only YOU can make changes
Something tells me they won't want to stay anyway.....
That is a good thing. Your kids should not be living with the parents into their late 20's and into 30's like so many do now. I would think any rational person would want their kids to NOT want to stay and get out on their own.
You should take the job not because your parents are requiring you but because you need to be a responsible person who contributes.
What else are you going to do? Sit on the couch all day? Take the job so you feel productive and part of society - I mean what are you holding out for...an offer for a CEO? Take it and keep looking for something you like.
Frankly, I don't understand how someone can feel ok about themselves if they need $ and a job presents itself and they say no. You would not be alive very long without your parents...who are doing the right thing by encouraging you to live and grow into a responsible person.
MinivanDriver, what job did you get with the Liberal Arts degree, if I may ask? Seems like you could be a manager or maybe do web design?
I perform strategic market planning and communications for a wide array of clients around the country. Sometimes it's advertising, sometimes it's brand development, sometimes it's sales force development, and sometimes it's crisis management. In all situations, I am required to come into a company, learn the industry top to bottom, focus on a wide array of concerns from supply chain to finance to customer interaction, and develop a workable solution. Because, by choice, I focus on planning as opposed to day-to-day maintenance, I work with a wide array of clients from the military to banking to apparel to furniture. My current clients include a winery, a large manufacturer, a national charity, a branch of the military, and several minor ones. My past clients recommend me and often come back to me for repeat biz. I'm pretty sure that bunch of engineers I presented to last week would be surprised to learn that my degree was in English with an focus on 18th Century poets such as Swift.
The point of all that self-aggrandizement? Liberal arts actually did a good job preparing me for this unexpected career of mine. Because liberal arts stresses abstract thinking, it teaches one to come into a situation, learn the ins and outs, digest a great deal of information, and spit out a workable solution. So when someone such as the OP says, "Well, I have a liberal arts degree" with unspoken implication that he can't earn a living, I tend to roll my eyes. It's not the degree that matters. It's the person with the degree.
Last edited by MinivanDriver; 01-14-2019 at 12:06 PM..
I also will not ask rent from my kids, because one day after graduation from hs they will be kicked out of the house. I'm not going to tolerate basement dwellers.
You strike me as young.
Mind you, my wife and I harp on self-sufficiency all the time. We had our epiphany watching Ken Burns' documentary The War. We realized that the people who were flying planes, building bridges, and going into combat were 17-, 18-, and 19-year olds. So we made sure that they understood that making your own way in the world is non-negotiable. My oldest daughter has paid her way through her master's degree without a dime in debt, and is now applying for Ph.D. programs. Both my sons are in the beginning stages of their college degree, but both work and earn their money. So there are no freeloaders in my family.
I was in a position just like you - I had majored in an ostensibly "practical" field but hadn't done any research or internships or especially impressive projects during college, so when I graduated, it was back to living at my parents' house and listening to them nag me nonstop during the few hours each day that I wasn't working my minimum-wage fast food job. On social media, I watched the people I knew in high school that I thought were slated to be failures in life getting successful while I languished behind the deep-fryer. There were points where I was borderline suicidal.
I eventually did get out of the morass - I did a coding boot camp a few states away, which I parlayed into a software development career. I didn't especially care about programming, but as far as I was concerned it was a way to get the hell away from my parents for good, and you didn't have to pay for it (there are other cons, but the point was I didn't have to ask my parents for more money).
I'm not gonna implore you to take the same path I have - it's involved a lot of luck - but what I'm saying is that if you want to improve your situation, you need to be relentless in scoping out opportunities that lead you in the right direction, and not just complain that your life isn't the way you want. It's not your fault - colleges' job, in a way, is to mislead students about their work prospects, and it's a lot worse now than a couple decades ago - but that's the world we live in.
I was in a position just like you - I had majored in an ostensibly "practical" field but hadn't done any research or internships or especially impressive projects during college, so when I graduated, it was back to living at my parents' house and listening to them nag me nonstop during the few hours each day that I wasn't working my minimum-wage fast food job. On social media, I watched the people I knew in high school that I thought were slated to be failures in life getting successful while I languished behind the deep-fryer. There were points where I was borderline suicidal.
I eventually did get out of the morass - I did a coding boot camp a few states away, which I parlayed into a software development career. I didn't especially care about programming, but as far as I was concerned it was a way to get the hell away from my parents for good, and you didn't have to pay for it (there are other cons, but the point was I didn't have to ask my parents for more money).
I'm not gonna implore you to take the same path I have - it's involved a lot of luck - but what I'm saying is that if you want to improve your situation, you need to be relentless in scoping out opportunities that lead you in the right direction, and not just complain that your life isn't the way you want. It's not your fault - colleges' job, in a way, is to mislead students about their work prospects, and it's a lot worse now than a couple decades ago - but that's the world we live in.
Yep. The single most reliable predictor of success isn't what you major in. It's how proactive you are in pursuing opportunities, whether in employment, networking, or professional education. Heck, I'm not even the most successful person in my graduating class of English majors at my small liberal arts college. One served on the board of an oil company not too long ago. He's retired and hitting golf balls in Monterey.
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Seems like you could be a manager or maybe do web design? 
