Not Everyone Is Smart Enough To Study Engineering, Accounting, or Computer Science (alternative, interview)
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So you are saying the professional thing to do is go into a career I have no aptitude or interest in and compete for promotions against people who love the career, just because there is lots of jobs available?
Well, there are certain careers that no one loves... I would use my career as an example of this; if anyone is truly passionate about banking compliance I question their sanity. All of us are here to make money and go home to our real lives. That's it. Some people are better suited to the boredom than others, I guess, but I don't think anyone here really enjoys the work at all.
So you are saying the professional thing to do is go into a career I have no aptitude or interest in and compete for promotions against people who love the career, just because there is lots of jobs available?
You just can't be too picky today. Each year you delay finding a real career "soul searching" is a year of potential retirement savings gone. And as you get older you will be competing for entry level jobs with young people fresh out of college.
1) Landing some general entry level administrative type work and climbing the ladder
2) Management trainee, insurance udnerwriter type programs- often they just want a college degree regardless of major,
3) Call center
4) Finding a company/program WILLING to train. I have a few friends in IT who did not graduate with a IT, computer science type degree but through luck,skill, perhaps just knowing the right people etc... found a company willing to take them on and train them.
5) Go back to school for a "real" degree-whether that is a 2 year program, a masters, 2nd bachelor's, certifcate program etc...
Although I work in a white collar environment, many seem to disregard the hard labor such as plumbing, or HVAC which will allow you to make a decent living. The horizon in my area is offering a $1000 sign on bonus for HVAC Techs, can you say the same about your job? A simple $700 six month certification will allow you to earn nearly $17/hr full time. That sounds like a smart ROI.
So you are saying the professional thing to do is go into a career I have no aptitude or interest in and compete for promotions against people who love the career, just because there is lots of jobs available?
Yes. You need to develop skills that have some value in the real world & can pay your bills. I would love to comment on these forums all day but no one is going to pay me a salary or benefits for that. There are very few naturals in any field. Rest of us have to just work harder to be good at our jobs. You dont need to compete for promotions. Many people retire from the same job & its alright. If you really like something thats not much in demand, then take a few months break & try it out. If you are not successful, keep it as a weekend hobby. Our hobbies are the things we would like to do full time but they dont pay well so we have to limit them. Do you think nurses enjoy cleaning wounds, or engineers love getting their hands dirty on greasy machines or programmers have fun writing thousands of lines of code everyday or accountants have a blast doing calculations all day or construction workers want to work in sun all the time or Tom Cruise wants to spend rest of his life doing life-threatening stunts like dangling from Burj Khalifa or soldiers have a passion to fight overseas away from their families? 10-20% is inspiration, rest is perspiration. World changes very fast & we all need to adapt. Your skills might be suddenly obsolete & you will have to learn a new skill to make yourself marketable again. Check out some threads on this forums about 40+yr old interns. None of them chose to be interns in midlife out of passion for the field. Atleast in this country we have welfare & unemployment programs so you can survive without a job but outside usa you dont have these privileges. You ar lucky to have just any job.
So you are saying the professional thing to do is go into a career I have no aptitude or interest in and compete for promotions against people who love the career, just because there is lots of jobs available?
Going into a career that you have no aptitude for whatsoever is crazy, and I think it's the root of the problem here. Your average English major is unlikely to be able to "switch gears" and become a moderately successful accountant, or pick up a math-heavy trade like CNC machinist. However, I think "having the type of intelligence that is valued by the job market" is something that is being conflated with intelligence level here. I could've pursued an uninteresting (to me) & math-heavy major, but then I'd have half of a useful degree, instead of two whole useless ones. There's a happy medium, however, where you find a position where you have high aptitude and maybe mild interest, or moderate helpings of both. In some special cases, the rewards that come from being very good at your job may be enough to suffer perpetual boredom at work.
Quote:
Originally Posted by palomalillie
Some people go into certain careers because of math avoidance. They don't want to take a lot of math courses, or avoid it completely. In fact, many people go to law school because there are no math courses in law school.
This was my backup plan, but then law school became an incredibly unsafe choice.
I tried having a major in Accounting when I was in college and after two courses that were so boring and incredibly complex, I dropped my plan for a degree in Accounting. I had also looked into a degree in one of the STEM areas but just looking at the text books in the bookstore put me to sleep. I could not picture myself reading those books for 8 hours a day so I could get a marketable major.
I think you hit on something. I was always decent at math but bored to tears by the silly weird problems word problems with parabolas. I can't tell you how many boy toss ball or Pelican drops fish problems were in Me York State Regents prep because there was A LOT of them. I became a business management major and I saw better problems.
I too hated accounting (though I did rather well in it anyway) because it it's rather dense (most people who have done it will agree) though I can look at the financial data and get a decent analysis out of it with the ratios when compared with other companies or past years.
A lot of these majors aren't sexy or interesting to many of us. But say going to school for language arts to become a writer is sexy (just look at the praise we still give dead poets and writers.) A student athlete being a fitness major is sexy (though it requires a basis in health). Being a teacher is sexy (though not so much the pay). We need to make STEM "sexy" rather than nerdy or geeky. I like Verizon's ad about girls into science but we need more.
The main reason why people get useless degrees is because the curriculum is easy and basically a joke. The fact of the matter is that not everyone has the intellectual capability and commitment to get a degree in engineering, accounting, or computer science.
Common graduate programs that people with useless degrees tend to purse is JD, PsyD, MBA, Master in useless subject.
If you have a useless degree and don't want to do sales, what are your options at a good paying white collar job?
These threads get old after a while. One does not need to get a STEM degree in order to make decent money. In fact, there are lot's of people that have a Stem degree that don't make jack****. Guess how useful a bachelors in biology, chemistry, or physics is in our current job market.
I think what a lot of you bozos don't understand is that the reason most people avoid getting a STEM degree isn't because of the hard classes, it's because 90% of those degrees lead to boring jobs that most people have no interest in. One of my best friends is an engineer. He spends 50 hours a week behind a desk figuring out how much concrete and other materials it's going to take to build parking lots and other structures. His job would totally suck for most people, and he only makes about 75k a year, so it's not as if he's loaded. My ex was a CPA manager. She makes about 90k a year, but She hates her job with a passion. She's literally waiting to retire, and she's not even 40 yet. Did either of these people do better than my neighbor that got a degree in English/criminal justice and now makes 60k a year as a state trooper and absolutely loves his job. His wife has a degree in addiction studies and makes about 40k doing what she loves as well.
The whole purpose of going to college is to pursue a career in something that you have interest in. If one's only interest is to make money, than any idiot can throw their morals out the window and work 60 hours a week at a slimy sales job that requires no education.
I tried having a major in Accounting when I was in college and after two courses that were so boring and incredibly complex, I dropped my plan for a degree in Accounting. I had also looked into a degree in one of the STEM areas but just looking at the text books in the bookstore put me to sleep. I could not picture myself reading those books for 8 hours a day so I could get a marketable major.
So sorry....guess no one ever explained to you that college classes and textbooks aren't for entertainment! Of course, we all need some fun in our lives, but you don't get your "fun fix" in an accounting course!
BTW, I have a degree in Accounting---with honors---and I never read such textbooks for 8 hours a day
We are now raising students to expect to be constantly entertained wherever they are at. I've seen it with my own kids. They always start the first few weeks of school with a party-like atmosphere--make school fun and they will be willing to engage. Of course, people are always willing to engage in "fun". Then, school tries to get down to business, and the kids wonder where the party went. Then, they get fidgety, don't want to get "with the program", keep reaching back for the party-atmosphere, don't want to sit still and concentrate, then, they must have ADD, quick, put them on pills, or blame the parents for not raising them right We reap what we sow, but no one wants to admit and take responsibility for it
A lot of the "studies" majors are pretty useless. Womens' studies, cultural studies', world religions, etc. Sociology and psychology have some of the highest unemployment rates consistently. Fashion design is a useless major because job for people with these degrees are quite rare. Art, on the other hand, can be a very useful major because its very broad and you can branch off into many different things, like graphic art, commercial art, etc.
Some people go into certain careers because of math avoidance. They don't want to take a lot of math courses, or avoid it completely. In fact, many people go to law school because there are no math courses in law school.
Just an FYI but there are certain graduate degrees in psychology that require very heavy stats and mathematics. The measurement techniques in structural equation modeling (for example) is based off of linear and matrix algebra so in order to understand it you have to understand linear and matrix algebra. My brother majored in mathematics and computer science and he did not even take linear algebra as an undergrad. There is also the BS version which is a lot more stats/math heavy than the BA version.
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