Paper Two

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PROJ EC T 2

Choosing a Career

The career you choose to prepare for in college will make an enormous difference in your life. It will have a major effect on how happy you are, how satisfied you are, how much money you make, how good or bad you feel about what you spend your life doing, and how proud you are to tell others what you do for a living. On average, you will spend 36 percent of your waking hours at work, so choosing a career is a big decision; yet most of us make it without enough information, without enough investigation, without enough thought.

In this project you will think about the kinds of careers you’re interested in; gather information and investigate various career options; and write about what you find, which jobs most appeal to you, and why.

Getting Started: Exploring Career Opportunities Project 2 begins with an activity that asks you and your classmates to develop a list of all the benefits you would like to receive from a career. Then you will explore several websites that provide information about salaries, employment outlooks, and educational requirements for a wide range of careers. As you explore these websites,

ProStockStudio/Shutterstock

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PROJECT 2 | Choosing a Career30

you will select three different careers that you might want to pursue and write brief summaries of what you learned about each of the three.

Exploring, Thinking, and Writing about Ideas In this section, you will read an article about a woman who has chosen the lowest- paying major in the nation, an article that raises important questions about what motivates people to choose a major besides the amount of money they will make. You will also read several short articles that explore the relationship between peo- ple’s majors and the jobs they end up doing, as well as an article that provides fasci- nating data about which careers provide the highest salaries and which are the most meaningful. Finally, you will read an article with a surprising attitude about the com- mon advice that you should “do what you love.”

As you work through these materials, you will discuss your thoughts and find- ings with your classmates, reflect in writing on what you have read, and write short papers in response to specific articles. You will also complete activities related to the readings that ask you to practice specific skills, such as previewing, annotating, sum- marizing, analyzing, thinking critically, researching, synthesizing sources, and more. According to directions from your instructor, you will work independently and/or in small groups to complete them. In addition, your instructor will assign relevant topics from other parts of The Hub that relate to writing, reading, research, and life issues that will address other important skills.

Bringing It All Together This project concludes with three assignments that ask you to use the tools and ideas you encountered in the project to make some tentative decisions about career direc- tions. Your instructor may assign the first, the second, or the third; may give you the choice among the three; or may even ask you to complete more than one.

The first assignment asks you to select one of the three possible careers you identified in Investigating Career Opportunities (2.3) and to imagine you have an appointment with a career counselor. The essay will be addressed to the counselor and will explain why you have chosen the career you have selected. The second assignment asks you to write an academic essay, appropriate for a class in education, business, or sociology. In this essay you will suggest what a student should consider when choosing a career.

The third assignment is a multimodal composition—perhaps a narrated Power- Point, a website, a blog, or a video—that will report in detail the steps you took to arrive at the one career you are considering pursuing at the end of this project. This composition will be made available to students who are trying to make their own deci- sions about careers. Because this composition will be a narrative—telling the story of how you made your decision—it should follow the normal conventions for narrative. You may want to review these in Strategies for Writing Narratives (18.10, p. 526).

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The final writing assignment, Reflecting on Project 2: Choosing a Career, asks you to reflect on what you have learned as you have worked through this reading/ writing project.

Navigating Project 2 Below is the table of contents for Project 2, which you can use to easily locate the units you have been assigned to work on by your instructor. Several of these units ask you to connect to the internet to watch videos or explore websites. If you find that any of the search terms provided do not work, there is a list of URLs available at https://bit.ly/33IIHtf.

Getting Started: Exploring Career Opportunities 33

2.1 Activity What’s Important to You in a Career? 33 2.2 Activity Average Salaries for Different College Degrees 34 2.3 Writing Investigating Career Opportunities 37

What Matters Most When Choosing a Career: Salary? 41

2.4 Activity Analyzing Author, Audience, Topic, and Purpose in “What It’s Like to Graduate from College with the Lowest-Paying Major” 41

2.5 Activity Previewing “What It’s Like to Graduate from College with the Lowest-Paying Major” 42

2.6 Reading “What It’s Like to Graduate from College with the Lowest-Paying Major,” Danielle Paquette 44

2.7 Activity Thinking about “What It’s Like to Graduate from College with the Lowest-Paying Major” 47

What Matters Most When Choosing a Career: Your Major? 48

2.8 Reading “Six Reasons Why Your College Major Doesn’t Matter,” Ashley Stahl 48

2.9 Activity Looking for Facts in “Six Reasons Why Your College Major Doesn’t Matter” 53

PROJECT 2 | Choosing a Career

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32 PROJECT 2 | Choosing a Career

2.10 Reading “Want to Do What You Love and Get Paid for It?” Christopher Ingraham 53

2.11 Activity Thinking about “Want to Do What You Love and Get Paid for It?” 58

What Matters Most When Choosing a Career: Doing What You’re Passionate About? 59

2.12 Reading “Introduction: Life by Design,” Bill Burnett and Dave Evans 60 2.13 Activity Annotating “Introduction: Life by Design” 62 2.14 Activity Thinking about “Introduction: Life by Design” 62

Bringing It All Together 63

2.15 Writing Research into What It’s Like to Be a ____________ 63 2.16 Activity Class Discussion of Possible Careers 65

2.17 Real World Essay The Advantages and Disadvantages of a Specific Career 65

2.18 Academic Essay Priorities for Students Making Career Decisions 66 2.19 Multimodal Composition A Process for Students Making Career

Decisions 67 2.20 Activity Getting Started on Your Essay or Composition 68

2.21 Writing Reflecting on Project 2: Choosing a Career 68

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33Getting Started: Exploring Career Opportunities

Getting Started: Exploring Career Opportunities

▲ What do you know about possible career opportunities? ProStockStudio/Shutterstock

2.1 Activity What’s Important to You in a Career? To start this activity, your instructor will give you some time to think about what you hope to get out of your career. Salary is certainly important. So are job opportunities in the field. What else matters to you? What else do you want to get out of your life’s work besides salary and job security? Make a list of what’s important to you about your career.

Next, your instructor will organize the class into groups of three or four. For the next ten minutes or so, each group will consolidate these individual lists, adding any new ideas they come up with.

At the end of this activity, your instructor will collect all the group lists, consol- idate them, and give everyone in the class a copy. With the benefit of all this discus- sion and after looking at all the ideas from your class, make a new, more thoughtful list of what you consider important about a career you might follow. This list will be helpful when you work on Average Salaries for Different College Degrees (2.2, p. 34) and Investigating Career Opportunities (2.3, p. 37).

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2.2 Activity Average Salaries for Different College Degrees Have you ever wondered what the average salary of an architect is? Or of a chef? Or of someone with a two-year associate’s degree?

Where to Go and What to Do

In this activity you’re going to explore a chart that gives information about the average salaries for people with a variety of college degrees. You are going to work by yourself, and your instructor will let you know when and how to turn in the results of your work.

1. To access the chart, type “hamilton project career earnings by major” into your browser. (If these search terms do not work, there is a list of URLs available at https://bit.ly/33IIHtf.)

2. When you arrive at a website like this, one of the first things to do is find out who owns the website.

Questions: What can you find out about who owns the Hamilton Project website? What kinds of biases might you expect on this website? What kind of an audience does it seem aimed at?

3. Now you’re going to explore how the website works. For this activity, you’re going to look only at the chart at the top of the page, the one titled “Annual Earnings.” (If you are interested, you can take a look at the chart at the bottom of the page, the one titled “Lifetime Earnings” as well, but all the questions in this activity refer to the “Annual Earnings” chart.)

The Hamilton Project at the Brookings Institution

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35Getting Started: Exploring Career Opportunities

There is a series of small gray numbers across the bottom of the chart, starting with zero and increasing by fives.

Questions: What do these numbers indicate? Along the left edge of the chart is another series of small gray numbers. What do these numbers indicate?

4. Before going any further, go to the top of the screen and check the box labeled “Include Full-Time Workers Only.” This means you will see the salaries only for people with full-time jobs. Do not check the box labeled “Include Graduate Degrees.” This means the salaries you will see will not include those people with graduate degrees.

5. Across the top of the chart are four boxes, each with a different color tab on the left. Go to the box on the right and use the drop-down menu to select “High School Degree or GED.” (It may already be selected when you arrive at the web- site.) Notice the orange line on the chart. This line represents the average annual income for a person with a high school diploma. As you move your cursor around in the chart, a blue line appears and a box telling you what the average annual salary (in thousands of dollars) is for a high school graduate each year since they started working.

6. Now go to the second box from the right at the top of the chart, the one with a purple tab, and use the drop-down menu to select “Associates Degree.” Notice a purple line appears on the chart indicating annual salaries for people with an associate’s degree.

The Hamilton Project at the Brookings Institution

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36 PROJECT 2 | Choosing a Career

Question: After five years of working, how much higher is the average annual salary of someone with an associate’s degree compared to that of a high school graduate?

7. Now go to the box at the top with a blue tab and use the drop-down menu to select “All Majors.” This is the setting for people who have a four-year college degree in any major.

The Hamilton Project at the Brookings Institution

Question: After ten years of working, how much higher is the salary of a graduate with a four-year degree than that of someone with an associate’s degree?

8. Next, explore the salaries for various careers using the left-most box, the one with a green tab. Using the drop-down menu in the green box, select aerospace engineer as a major. You will see that the average aerospace engineer, after working 33 years, will be earning $134,000 annually.

• Explore the list of majors in this box, and find at least five majors for which average salaries will be more than $100,000 at some time during a worker’s career.

• Next, find at least five majors for which average salaries will never be more than $60,000 during the course of a career.

Question: What do you think these statistics reveal about our society?

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37Getting Started: Exploring Career Opportunities

2.3 Writing Investigating Career Opportunities For this activity you are going to use two US government websites to investigate three careers that you might be interested in pursuing. As you investigate, be sure to take notes. Later, you will be asked to do a short writing assignment summarizing what you learned about the three occupations you investigated.

Exploring the Occupational Outlook Handbook Website

1. To complete this activity, you will need to visit the Occupational Outlook Handbook website sponsored by the US Department of Labor. Start by typing “occupational outlook handbook” into your browser.

2. One way to locate careers on this website is to use the list of Occupation Groups on the left side of the page.

Select one of these clusters that you might be interested in and click on it. On the left side of the next page is a list of occupations in the cluster you selected, a brief job summary, a list of the education level required, and an indication of the median annual pay. Here is an example of what the Arts and Design Occupations page looks like:

U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics

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38 PROJECT 2 | Choosing a Career

Clicking on these tabs will lead you to much more information about the occupation you are investigating.

5. At any time, you can return to the home page of the Occupational Outlook Handbook website by clicking on OOH HOME marked with a red arrow below. Do this now.

Now you should be back on the OOH HOME page. This time you are going to locate an occupation on the Occupational Outlook Handbook website using a different search method. To use this method, you need to know a job title you might be interested in; then follow these directions:

• Locate the A-Z Index located near the middle of the OOH HOME page. It looks like this:

3. Scroll down and select a specific occupation you might be interested in and click on it. This takes you to the summary page for that occupation, where you will see a lot of brief nuggets of information about the occupation.

4. Notice, also, at the top of page, a series of tabs:

• Click on the first letter of the occupation you want to investigate. (For example, if you are interested in being a veterinary technician, you would click on the letter v.) This takes you to an alphabetical list of occupations starting with the letter you clicked on. Scroll down until you find one you are interested in. Clicking on it will take you to the same kind of summary page you looked at earlier.

U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics

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39Getting Started: Exploring Career Opportunities

This would be a good time to look at the lists that you and the class constructed during What’s Important to You in a Career? (2.1, p. 33). Now that you are familiar with how the Occupational Outlook Handbook website works, take some time to explore careers you think you might be interested in.

Exploring the My Next Move Website

Now you’re going to explore a second website that may help you identify potential careers—My Next Move, also sponsored by the US Department of Labor. Start by typing “mynextmove” into your browser.

1. In the middle of the home page for My Next Move, you will see three boxes, which will take you to three different sections of the website.

(photo credit) This page includes information from My Next Move by the U.S. Department of Labor, Employment and Training Administration (USDOL/ETA). Used under the CC BY 4.0 license. O*NET® is a trademark of USDOL/ETA.

You’re going to use the one on the right, labeled “Tell us what you like to do.”

2. Click the start button, which will lead you to the O*NET Interest Profiler, a series of questions designed to identify the kinds of careers you might like to pursue. After clicking through four screens of instructions, you will arrive at a survey. Answer these questions as honestly as you can. The entire survey, sixty questions, should take no more than ten minutes.

3. When you have answered all the questions, the next screen allows you to go back and review your answers if you want to or to review the questions you responded to that you were “unsure” about. You can change any answers at this time.

4. Once you are sure about your answers, click Next, and the next screen gives you your Interest Profiler Results in a chart that looks something like the one that follows on page 40. The Profiler analyzes your responses to the survey

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40 PROJECT 2 | Choosing a Career

in six areas of interest: realistic, investi- gative, artistic, social, enterprising, and conventional. Your score for each area is represented by a number and a bar on the bar chart at the top. The higher the number or the higher the bar, the more interest you have in that area.

5. Next the website wants to know how much preparation you plan on putting in before starting your chosen career in a series of questions in the Interest + Job Zones = Careers section. The website analyzes prepa- ration in terms of five “zones,” ranging from “little or no preparation” to “extensive preparation.” Preparation includes education but also experience and training. The website suggests you answer in terms either of how much preparation you have at this moment or how much you plan to have in the future. For the purposes of this activity, answer in terms of how much preparation you plan to have in the future.

6. Click through the three screens explaining these zones and explore them as much as you would like. Then select the preparation zone you are most likely to achieve. The website will then combine your interests and the amount of preparation you are likely to make and identify a series of jobs that someone with your interests and preparation is likely to succeed at.

7. Read over the list and click on the jobs that sound interesting to you. That will take you to a page of information about that career, including salary, education needed, what people in the career do, and job outlooks. Near the bottom of the page is a link labeled “See more details at O*NET OnLine.” Be sure to click on that link for even more information including specifics about salary and job outlook in your state.

Activity: Summarizing Three Potential Occupations

As you explored these websites, you may have identified more than three occupations you are interested in. Select just three of these occupations and write a summary of what you learned about each of them.

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41What Matters Most When Choosing a Career: Salary?

What Matters Most When Choosing a Career: Salary?

▲ Does it make sense that careers in child development, early childhood educa- tion, child and family studies, human services, and elementary education are the lowest paid careers? Why are services that are so important to society so under- valued in terms of salary? Cayla Calfee

2.4 Activity Analyzing Author, Audience, Topic, and Purpose in “What It’s Like to Graduate from College with the Lowest-Paying Major” As long ago as classical Greece—300 BC or so—thinkers have been aware that four important components exist for every text: the author of the text, the audience for

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42 PROJECT 2 | Choosing a Career

the text, the topic of the text, and the purpose of the text. Thinking about author, audience, topic, and purpose should help you prepare to read a text.

• Author. Don’t simply find the name of the author. What else can you learn about him or her? What evidence is there that the author really has some expertise? What biases might the author have? Is the author part of an organization? A corporation? What else has the author written?

• Audience. Whom does it appear that the author intended to be the reader or readers of this text? Whom was he or she addressing? Were there other, more secondary, audiences?

• Topic. What is this text about?

• Purpose. What does it appear that the author intended or, at least, hoped would happen as a result of this piece of writing? What did the author want the effect of this text to be on its audience?

Analyzing Author, Audience, Topic, and Purpose

Working in your group, write a brief response—a paragraph is plenty—about each of these components—author, audience, topic, and purpose—for “What It’s Like to Graduate from College with the Lowest-Paying Major” (2.6, p. 44).

2.5 Activity Previewing “What It’s Like to Graduate from College with the Lowest-Paying Major” When you set out to read a book, an article, an essay, a blog, or a web page—when you set out to read any text—your strategy may be simply to dive in, to start reading at the beginning and plow your way through to the end. With the limited time in most of our busy lives, simply diving in can seem like the quickest way to get something read.

Here’s a different approach. Most experienced readers have found that taking a few minutes before diving into a text to get a sense of what the text is about and how it is organized will actually save them time and make their reading more effective. This does not mean you have to spend hours previewing and predicting; just a few minutes will be very helpful when you start to read.

Working Together to Preview

For this activity, work in groups to examine the text as outlined in step 1. Then answer the questions listed in steps 2 and 3. Later, working by yourself, answer the questions in step 4.

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43What Matters Most When Choosing a Career: Salary?

Step 1: Examine the Text

Every text is slightly different—some may be significantly different—so not all of the following items will apply to all texts, but look for as many of them as you can when you read Danielle Paquette’s article “What It’s Like to Graduate from College with the Lowest-Paying Major” (2.6, p. 44).

• Take a look at the title.

• If the text is a book, look over the front and back covers and the table of contents, if there is one.

• If the text has headings for different parts, read these.

• If the text starts with an abstract or executive summary, read it.

• Read any introductory material.

• Read the opening paragraph.

• Read the final paragraph.

• Take a look at any illustrations, charts, tables, or videos.

• Look to see if there are citations, endnotes, or a works cited list.

• Check to see how long the text is.

Step 2: Analyze the Rhetorical Situation: Author, Audience, Topic, and Purpose

As long ago as classical Greece—300 BC or so—thinkers have been aware that every text has four important components: the author of the text, the audience for the text, the topic of the text, and the purpose of the text. These components make up the “rhetorical situation,” the context in which the writing takes place. You don’t need to remember the term rhetorical situation, but thinking about author, audience, topic, and purpose should be part of your previewing and predicting process. (For more details, see The Rhetorical Situation [9.3, p. 327].)

• Author. Don’t simply find out the name of the author. What else can you learn about him or her? What evidence is there that the author really has some exper- tise about the subject? What biases might the author have? Is the author part of an organization? A corporation? What else has the author written?

• Audience. Whom does it appear that the author intended to be the reader or readers of this text? Whom was he or she addressing? Were there other, more secondary, audiences?

• Topic. What is this text about?

• Purpose. What does it appear that the author intended or, at least, hoped would happen as a result of this piece of writing? What did the author want the effect of this text on its audience to be?

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44 PROJECT 2 | Choosing a Career

Step 3: Predict What the Text Is About

Predicting what a text might discuss, using background knowledge or personal experiences or information from previous reading, can also prepare you to better understand the content. While not every text will reveal information about all of the following questions, every text will provide answers to some of them. Before launching into reading a text, use the steps listed above to preview the text to help you answer as many of these questions as you can.

1. What is this text “about”? What is the major topic or subject?

2. Does the text take a stand on this topic?

3. Does the author seem to make any assumptions about the subject?

4. What evidence is there that the author of the text has at least some expertise about his or her subject?

5. What do I know about the publishers of the text or the sponsors of the website?

6. How difficult will the text be to read?

7. How much time will I need to read it?

Step 4: Think about Yourself in Relation to the Text

Another way to connect to a text is to consider what you already know about the subject—that is, your prior knowledge. Thinking about what you know before you read helps you to understand and remember the material better and can make it more interesting to read. Ask yourself the following questions.

1. How much do I already know about the topic?

2. Have I had experiences that are related to this topic?

3. Have I read other texts about the same topic?

4. How do I feel about the text’s stand on the topic?

5. What is my purpose for reading this text?

6. How similar or different am I from the intended audience for the text?

2.6 Reading “What It’s Like to Graduate from College with the Lowest-Paying Major,” Danielle Paquette In the following article, which appeared in the Washington Post, Danielle Paquette thinks about what it’s like to graduate from college with the lowest-paying major. First, take a few minutes to preview Paquette’s article; then read it.

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45What Matters Most When Choosing a Career: Salary?

What It’s Like to Graduate from College with the Lowest-Paying Major danielle paquette

Danielle Paquette graduated from Indiana University with a BA in journalism in 2012. She was a crime reporter for the Tampa Bay Times in St. Petersburg, Florida, before becoming a journalist at the Washington Post in 2014, where she focuses on national labor issues. Her articles have appeared in the Huffington Post, the Los Angeles Times, the Independent, the Chicago Tribune, and a number of other newspapers and media outlets.

◀ Preschool teacher Cayla Calfee would not trade her dream job for one that pays more. Cayla Calfee

september 29, 2014

1 The preschool teacher walked a 4-year-old student to his apartment in Rogers Park, a neighborhood in Chicago where many straddle the poverty line. On this September evening, Cayla Calfee, 23, met the boy’s mother, a full-time nanny for two families. They discussed the boy’s goals, the application process for a competitive kindergarten. 2 The boy, comfortable between the women, handed his teacher a motocross toy. The toy was a casualty of play, with snapped handlebars. He was eager to share now. When class started four weeks ago at the Howard Area Community, he barely held eye contact. 3 These moments, however slight, are why Calfee keeps education theory text- books on her coffee table. It’s why she signed up for the 12-hour workday, why her biggest splurge now is a carton of frozen yogurt. ▶

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46 PROJECT 2 | Choosing a Career

4 The sacrifice of this lifestyle, she said, is a privilege. Not everyone can afford to be a preschool teacher. 5 Calfee graduated last year from Indiana University with a bachelor’s degree in early childhood education—the major with the lowest lifetime pay, according to a new study. 6 Researchers at the Brookings Institution’s Hamilton Project recently set out to answer: As student debt rises—and devours our wealth—how do the high school students of today, feverishly applying to colleges this fall, decide what they can afford to study? 7 A college degree, in any major, significantly increases your lifetime earning potential, the study found. Some do more than others. But all do more than Calfee’s. 8 The financial stakes have never been higher: About 70 percent of workers with bachelor’s degrees have some amount of student debt, said co-author Brad Hersh- bein, a labor economist at Upjohn Institute for Employment Research and a visiting fellow at Hamilton. The average student with debt graduates with $33,000 in loans, according to a recent analysis by Edvisors. 9 Calfee, who grew up in a Chicago suburb, has no debt. Her family financed her college education. Students in early childhood education at Indiana, she said, were not allowed to hold jobs during unpaid student-teaching semesters. 10 “I was lucky to be able to pursue my dream career,” Calfee said. “Economic barriers keep talented students out of this field. It’s hard to pay for school, housing and food on your own.” 11 And she was fully aware of the average annual pay after graduation: $27,000. 12 The Hamilton Project researchers analyzed career earnings for 80 undergradu- ate majors from the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey and found that, at every career stage, college graduates as a group fare better than workers whose educations didn’t continue after high school. What’s less obvious, and perhaps more useful when picking a major: Median lifetime pay for college graduates varies greatly, depending on what they studied. 13 Hershbein hopes high school and college students will snoop through the proj- ect’s salary database, which is being released Monday. 14 “The intent is not to induce people to pick a certain major or deter them from another one,” Hershbein said. “Study what you like, what you’re good at—and then plan for how much money you’ll make, how you’ll be able to pay off student debt.” 15 One year after graduation, Calfee makes $48,000 per year, which puts her in the top 10 percent of earners in her field. She lives with her boyfriend in Evanston, Ill., pays $900 per month in rent and bikes nine miles to work each day. She’s saving to buy a car.

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47What Matters Most When Choosing a Career: Salary?

16 After reading Jonathan Kozol’s Savage Inequalities, which details the challenges students face in low-income areas, Calfee pledged to spend her career helping inner-city kids shape brighter futures. 17 “Your Zip code or the color of your skin should not determine the quality of your education,” she said. 18 The value of her college education should not be measured in dollar signs, Calfee said. Her coursework inspired her teaching philosophy—the same teaching philosophy she says helped the 4-boy-old boy ease out of his shell. 19 Calfee hopes that more scholarships become available for college students who want to study early childhood education but can’t shoulder tuition costs. The work will always be a privilege, she says. It shouldn’t, however, be restricted to the privileged.

2.7 Activity Thinking about “What It’s Like to Graduate from College with the Lowest-Paying Major”

For this activity, your instructor will let you know which parts you should do at home and which parts you will do in groups in class.

After you’ve read the article “What It’s Like to Graduate from College with the Lowest-Paying Major” (2.6, p. 44), answer the following questions.

1. At the end of paragraph 1, Paquette reports that she discussed with one of her student’s mother “the application process for a competitive kindergarten.” Explain what this means. What is a competitive kindergarten? What do you suppose the application process is like?

2. In paragraph 2, Paquette tells us that her student made “eye contact” with her when she was visiting his home and that he hadn’t four weeks earlier. What’s the point of this talk about “eye contact”?

3. In the fourth paragraph, Paquette laments that “[N]ot everyone can afford to be a preschool teacher.” What does she mean by this assertion?

4. In paragraph 17, Calfee asserts that “Your Zip code or the color of your skin should not determine the quality of your education.” It seems that when she says this, she is thinking that sometimes your Zip code or race does determine the qual- ity of your education. In the article, does she provide any support for this opinion?

5. What do you learn about Cayla Calfee in this article?

6. What is the thesis of this article?

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What Matters Most When Choosing a Career: Your Major?

▲ Graduation day is one of joy and celebration for students and their families. But what comes next? Will the subject you majored in actually prepare you for the job you end up in, or will it have little to no relationship to that job? Lev Dolgachov/Alamy

2.8 Reading “Six Reasons Why Your College Major Doesn’t Matter,” Ashley Stahl Below is a short article followed by a graphic representation of some data from the Census Bureau that examines the relationship between what you study in college and what career you end up in.

Be sure to take a few minutes to preview before you dive into reading this article. (For a refresher on previewing strategies, look at Previewing a Text [20.2, p. 575].)

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49What Matters Most When Choosing a Career: Your Major?

Six Reasons Why Your College Major Doesn’t Matter ashley stahl

Ashley Stahl graduated from the University of Redlands with a BA in a triple major: French, gov- ernment, and history. She earned master’s degrees at the University of Santa Barbara (spiritual psychology) and King’s College, London (war studies). After working as a counterterrorism profes- sional, she became an entrepreneur, launching businesses related to her passion for career leader- ship. As well as being a career coach, she founded CAKE Publishing, which helps produce content to inspire the customers of companies and influencers, and the Job Offer Academy, an online busi- ness that helps people around the world find jobs.

Forbes Website

august 12, 2015

1 “So, what’s it going to be?” 2 My advisor looked at me expectantly, as if I was simply at a McDonald’s need- ing to make the simple choice between a Big Mac or a Quarter Pounder. 3 “Let’s run through the options,” she continued. “Government is a solid choice if you’re thinking about law school. English would be a smart decision if you’re inter- ested in publishing or teaching. Communications is useful in most fields. . . .” 4 “Women’s studies?” I ventured, hoping she would run off a list of career doors that would open to me if I chose this particular field of study. 5 Instead, she cocked her head to the side, chewed her pen cap and looked at me as if I was a unicorn. 6 Next, her eyes lit up: “You can always find a job as a nanny!” 7 That meeting took my stress levels to unprecedented heights. In hindsight, I realize that she had all of the best intentions with her “let’s choose a major that increases your employability” approach. It seemed reasonable enough at the time, but after helping thousands of job-seekers land multiple offers through my online coach- ing program, I’ve come to realize that your declared major has nothing to do with your success. 8 Unfortunately, that realization hasn’t caught on in the mainstream yet. 9 According to a recent study, 82% of 2015 graduates researched their field of choice before determining what major to pursue in college. When you look at this sta- tistic through the lens of student loans and the 2008 recession, it comes as no surprise that students want to pursue careers that will enable them to pay off their hefty debt. 10 If your degree alone guaranteed a job, this kind of strategic long-term planning would make sense. And yes, there are certain jobs that require the skills affiliated with specified degrees, such as engineering, architecture, and computer science. But ▶

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50 PROJECT 2 | Choosing a Career

by and large, your college major is unlikely to have any bearing on your career suc- cess. I’ve coached math majors who later chose to pursue careers in comedy, and I’ve seen plenty of Elle Woodses come through my door, so I know firsthand that a fash- ion merchandising degree doesn’t affect your ability to get accepted to law school. 11 Plus, look at me: I’m a political science graduate and counterterrorism profes- sional turned career coach. 12 Here are a few points to consider about why our attachment to the idea that majors matter should be put to rest.

1. Your degree is a prerequisite for the competitive workforce; the topic is irrelevant. It used to be important and special for someone to have a degree, and now it just stands as a prerequisite in the workforce. While your job will most likely require a Bachelor’s degree, it probably won’t matter what field it is in. According to recent research, 62% of recent college graduates are working in jobs that require a degree, yet only 27% of college graduates are working in a job that even relates to their major.

2. Certain fields yield higher incomes, but your major does not need to align with the industry. The individuals who dedicate their undergrad years to their field of choice (business, medicine, law) don’t necessarily end up achieving greater success in the field than those who arrived there with a completely unrelated major. For example, history majors who pursued careers in business ended up earning as much as business majors, according to one study. You don’t have to study English to be a writer, you don’t have to study business to be a consultant, and you don’t have to study politi- cal science to go into government. The real world doesn’t care about your degree as much as your work ethic and attitude.

3. Your experience, be it on the job or off the job, is what people notice. Take advantage of the opportunities you have as an undergraduate to pursue interesting internships, get involved in student organizations, and volun- teer for causes you are passionate about. These lines on your resume are so much more powerful than your major because they tell employers that you are motivated, passionate, and involved. Best of all, they allow you to “cre- ate” your experience that employers request of you.

4. Think soft skills, not major topics. Employers want to know that you will be able to learn quickly, fit into the workplace environment, and be responsive to the task at hand. For these reasons, 93% of employers believe that critical thinking, communication, and problem-solving skills are more

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51What Matters Most When Choosing a Career: Your Major?

important than a job candidate’s undergraduate field of study. Furthermore, 95% of employers are looking for candidates whose skills translate into out-of-the-box thinking and innovation, as many of the jobs being filled today come with challenges that are more complex than in the past. Per- haps this explains why Silicon Valley is starting to favor employees who studied liberal arts, versus those who took the more “typical” tech path as software engineers. Soft skills are the skills of the future.

5. You’re a better performer when you’re aligned with your purpose. As a career coach, I hear from countless clients who feel energetically zapped by their jobs. When I help them get more clear on their purpose, it’s as though a new, powerful energy takes them over. . . . Why? Because purpose gives you unprecedented energy. If you major in a field you’re truly interested in, you will give it the effort, attention and enthusiasm that translates into success. Stellar performance—in any field—is what translates into career success. Studies show that a happy brain is engaged, motivated, and pro- ductive. In other words, our happiness drives our success, so think twice before committing to that math major: Many roads lead to business school, so you might as well take the one that will make you the happiest.

6. Your network matters way more than your college major. You can choose a major that correlates with a high-paying job in the real world . . . you can hunker down and score A’s in your classes and graduate with a perfect GPA . . . but without a solid network of contacts, you’re missing a huge piece of the puzzle. If no one knows who you are, no one will care how smart you are. This is why it is so important that people who truly want to be successful put just as much effort, if not more, into networking as they do into their studies. You can start doing this right now, simply by building relationships with your professors, participating in internships and volunteer activities, and even by reaching out to strangers who fasci- nate you. I’ve seen it with my own clients, many of whom have received multiple job offers: authentic flattery goes a long way.

13 Your major is not going to pave a yellow brick road for career success. Scoring straight A’s in your prelaw coursework is not always the golden ticket to a million- dollar payday. . . . If you don’t believe me, ask a lawyer. 14 Whatever you choose to study, make your own personal development the true goal of your undergraduate career. Use your undergraduate years to learn about yourself—your unique brilliance and your passions—not to learn everything there is ▶

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52 PROJECT 2 | Choosing a Career

to know about the branches and functions of foreign governments that don’t interest you in the belief that doing so will land you a job in politics. 15 We’ve all worked with the genius intern with the perfect resume who couldn’t make it to the office on time (ever); the one who spoke six languages but teamwork wasn’t one of them. Likewise, we’ve all known the colleague from the never- heard- of-it college who hustled harder than anyone else on the team and flew up the ladder with blink and you’ll miss her speed. 16 As Arthur C. Clarke said, “It has yet to be proven that intelligence has any survival value.” 17 What has been proven is that the most successful leaders are motivated by a purpose.

Share of College Graduates Working in a Job Requiring a College Degree or Related to Their College Major As the chart below shows, we find that close to two-thirds of college graduates in the labor force work in a job requiring a college degree, while a little more than a quarter work in a job that is directly related to their college major.

Source: Jaison R. Abel and Richard Deitz, “Do Big Cities Help College Graduates Find Better Work?” Liberty Street Economics, May 20, 2013.

College Degree Match College Major Match

62.1%

27.3%

Data from U.S. Bureau of the Census, 2010 American Community Survey; authors’ calculations.

Note: Individuals with graduate degrees are not included in the calculation of college major matching because the information available on majors relates to the undergraduate degree.

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53What Matters Most When Choosing a Career: Your Major?

2.9 Activity Looking for Facts in “Six Reasons Why Your College Major Doesn’t Matter”

The article “Six Reasons Why Your College Major Doesn’t Matter” and the graphic from the Census Bureau that accompanies it (2.8, p. 52) present information about the relationship between college majors and careers. For this activity, working in your group, read the article and examine the graphic chart with one specific purpose: to find out what percentage of people working today are working in a field related to their college major. Once you’ve answered that question, evaluate the credibility of the data you find. Do you know where the data came from? How recent it is? Who produced it?

NOTE: Before doing this activity, you may want to take a look at Purposes for Your Reading (19.5, p. 565), which discusses different approaches to reading depending on your purpose.

2.10 Reading “Want to Do What You Love and Get Paid for It?” Christopher Ingraham Read this Washington Post article “Want to Do What You Love and Get Paid for It?” Don’t forget to spend some time previewing the article before you dive into reading it. (For a refresher on previewing strategies, look at Previewing a Text [20.2, p. 575].)

Want to Do What You Love and Get Paid for It? Choose One of These Majors christopher ingraham

Christopher Ingraham graduated from Cornell University with a BA in religious studies and worked at the Brookings Institution and the Pew Research Center before becoming a reporter for the Washington Post. He writes about topics related to data and makes “charts, maps, and interactive things” to illustrate information, such as the geographic distribution of rejected absentee ballots in Georgia or who controls redistricting. He is particularly interested in gun and drug policies.

▶

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october 2, 2014

1 We often think of our careers as a tradeoff between doing something we love, and doing something that pays the bills. But new survey data released by salary firm PayScale.com shows that some college majors lead to careers where you really can have it all—while others might land you a job providing neither good pay nor a sense of purpose. 2 Careers in healthcare and engineering ranked high in both meaningfulness and average pay. At the other end of the spectrum, people who had majored in art and design or humanities fields reported low pay, little sense of purpose, and they were relatively unlikely to say that they’d recommend their major to others. Somewhere in between, the bulk of college degrees resulted in some degree of tradeoff between working to live, and living to work. 3 For a sense of the relationship between meaningfulness and salary, look at the following graphic. I’ve plotted PayScale’s 207 bachelor’s degree categories by respon- dents’ mid-career salaries, the percent of respondents saying their job is meaningful, and the percent who say they’d recommend their major to others.

PayScale, Inc.

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55What Matters Most When Choosing a Career: Your Major?

4 The dark lines mark the median mid-career salary and the median share of respon- dents saying their job is meaningful. This divides the chart into four quadrants—majors that lead to high pay and high meaning, high pay and low meaning, low pay and high meaning, and, worst of all, little pay and little sense of meaning. There’s a degree of arbitrariness at play here—there’s probably little practical difference between a reading that’s a few points above or a few points below the median. But the divisions provide a useful framework for exploring the relationship between salary and sense of purpose. 5 As you might expect, there’s a slight negative relationship—college majors that lead to more meaningful jobs generally don’t pay as well by your mid-career. But the relationship isn’t particularly tight. 6 PayScale surveyed 1.4 million college graduates who provided information on the school they attended, their choice of major, and their current job and salary. It asked respondents whether their job makes the world a better place, and whether they’d recommend their undergraduate major to others. While the survey respon- dents are all PayScale users, and hence a somewhat self-selective sample, it’s worth nothing that PayScale’s earnings figures comport closely with separate research released by the Brookings Institution’s Hamilton Project . . . , which is reassuring. 7 93 percent of pastoral ministry graduates said their work was meaningful— even if, on average, they only make about $46,000 by the middle of their careers. Nurses, on the other hand, report a mid-career salary of $73,600—slightly above

The 10 Most Meaningful Majors

PayScale, Inc. ▶

Rank Major % High Meaning

1 Pastoral Ministry 93%

2 Nursing 83%

2 Clinical Laboratory Science 83%

4 Child Development 80%

5 Athletic Training 78%

5 Early Childhood Education 78%

5 Sports Medicine 78%

5 Medical Technology 78%

9 Special Education 77%

9 Therapeutic Recreation 77%

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56 PROJECT 2 | Choosing a Career

the median. 83 percent of them say their job is meaningful, and 85 percent would recommend the degree to others. 8 “Finding a career path at the intersection of high pay and high meaning is kind of the holy grail, and we’ve generally seen that often you have to give up one to get the other,” PayScale’s Lydia Frank told me. “Of course, there are always exceptions, and healthcare seems to be a big one. Careers in healthcare can be very lucrative and workers in the field also tend to have a strong sense of purpose.” 9 Another notable exception? Engineering. The upper-right quadrant of the chart is dominated by engineering fields—nuclear, chemical, aerospace and the like. These jobs pay exceedingly well, and people are generally happy with them. One of them— petroleum engineering—pays so well ($176,000 by mid-career, on average) that I had to omit it from the chart. 70 percent of petroleum engineers say their work is meaningful, and 85 percent would recommend it to others. 10 Aside from actuarial mathematics, every one of the top 10 best-paying majors is in engineering.

PayScale, Inc.

The 10 Best-Paying Majors

Rank Major Early Career

Salary Mid-Career

Salary

1 Petroleum Engineering $102,300 $176,300

2 Actuarial Mathematics $60,800 $119,600

3 Nuclear Engineering $67,000 $118,800

4 Chemical Engineering $69,600 $116,700

5 Electronics & Communications Engineering $64,100 $113,200

6 Electrical & Computer Engineering (ECE) $66,500 $113,000

7 Computer Science (CS) & Engineering $66,700 $112,600

8 Computer Engineering (CE) $67,300 $108,600

9 Aerospace Engineering $64,700 $107,900

9 Electrical Engineering (EE) $65,900 $107,900

11 On the other hand, there are a fair number of jobs that pay well, but that may not give you a great sense of purpose. Statisticians and computer scientists, for instance, report 6-figure paychecks, but less than 40 percent of them say their work is meaningful. Only half of government majors say their work is meaningful, even though they tend to make well above average.

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57What Matters Most When Choosing a Career: Your Major?

12 The least meaningful major, according to PayScale? Film production. Only 23 percent said their work made the world a better place. Artists and graphic designers also reported a surprisingly low sense of purpose. 13 Finally, in the lower-left quadrant we come to majors that provide the worst of both worlds: low pay, and little sense of purpose. Art, design and media majors dominate this section. Liberal arts and humanities majors also make a strong showing. Accounting and business majors also show up in this quadrant, but just barely. 14 But by and large, the lowest-paying majors don’t show up in this quadrant. Majors at the absolute bottom of the pay scale are at least somewhat compensated by the sense of purpose they bring. As Danielle Paquette reported in Storyline this week, many people who’ve chosen these career paths say they’re well worth it, and that the financial sacrifice is a privilege. 15 It’s also important to put these numbers in context—for the vast majority of people who graduate college, regardless of degree, the financial returns are well worth it. Recent research from the Brookings Institution’s Hamilton Project con- cludes that “a college degree—in any major—is important for advancing one’s earnings potential.”

The 10 Least-Meaningful Majors

▶

PayScale, Inc.

Rank Major % High Meaning

207 Film Production 23%

206 Fashion Design 27%

204 Fashion Merchandising 29%

204 Graphic Communication 29%

203 Advertising 30%

202 Pre-law 31%

200 Classics 32%

200 Marketing & International Business 32%

199 Radio/Television & Film Production 33%

196 Art & Design 34%

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58 PROJECT 2 | Choosing a Career

The 10 Lowest-Paying Majors

16 But the PayScale data comports with the Hamilton Project’s other main finding, which is that earnings potential varies wildly by degree. And they shed some light on an aspect of college education that often gets overlooked in abstract discussion about earnings and returns-on-investment: the sense of fulfillment that some careers provide relative to others.

2.11 Activity Thinking about “Want to Do What You Love and Get Paid for It?”

Working in groups, discuss these questions about Christopher Ingraham’s article, “Want to Do What You Love and Get Paid for It?” (2.10, p. 53).

1. In the first paragraph, Ingraham suggests that one reason to select a particu- lar career is because you love it. The other reason is because it pays well. By the end of that paragraph he has substituted another concept for what he first called love. He talks about a career that provides a sense of purpose. And in the next paragraph he switches to the term meaningful. Do you think these three terms—a career you love, a career that provides a sense of purpose, and a career that is meaningful—mean the same thing?

PayScale, Inc.

Rank Major Early Career

Salary Mid-Career

Salary

207 Child Development $32,200 $36,400

206 Early Childhood Education $29,700 $38,000

205 Child & Family Studies $31,200 $38,600

204 Early Childhood & Elementary Education $32,300 $40,400

203 Human Services (HS) $33,800 $41,300

202 Elementary Education $33,600 $45,500

201 Athletic Training $35,000 $45,900

200 Pastoral Ministry $36,300 $46,000

199 Social Work (SW) $32,800 $46,600

198 Special Education $34,500 $46,800

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59What Matters Most When Choosing a Career: Doing What You’re Passionate About?

2. Ingraham seems to argue that there are two reasons to select a career: for the salary or for the fuzzy idea of meaningfulness. Do you agree that these are the two biggest goals for a career, or would you suggest something else?

3. In the article, Ingraham provides charts listing the ten most “meaningful” majors and the ten least “meaningful” careers based on a survey of 1.4 million college graduates by PayScale.com. Based on the information in those charts, what does he seem to think makes a career “meaningful”?

What Matters Most When Choosing a Career: Doing What You’re Passionate About?

▲ What makes you happy? Can you pursue a career that allows you to do what you most care about? How important is it to have a job doing what you love? Should personal happiness be a factor in considering a career? Gustavo Frazao/Shutterstock

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2.12 Reading “Introduction: Life by Design,” Bill Burnett and Dave Evans Below is an excerpt from the book Designing Your Life: How to Build a Well- Lived, Joyful Life. In it, Bill Burnett and Dave Evans discuss how to apply Stanford University’s principles of design to find a meaningful career and build a satisfying life by approaching challenges and major decisions the way a designer would. Take a moment to preview it before you start to read. (For a refresher on previewing strategies, look at Previewing a Text [20.2, p. 575].)

Introduction: Life by Design bill burnett and dave evans

Bill Burnett graduated from Stanford University with a BSE and MSE in product design and mechanical engineering. He worked at Apple as a program manager and at D2M Inc. as presi- dent and senior fellow. He has worked at Stanford University as a consulting assistant professor for thirty-five years and as the executive director of the Design Program there for twelve years.

Dave Evans also obtained his BSE and MSE in product design and mechanical engineering from Stanford University and worked at Apple as a manufacturing engineer. He was director of design at Lytro Inc. and Playground.Global and is now an adjunct lecturer at Stanford University and vice president of design at Essential in Palo Alto, California.

1 Ellen liked rocks. She liked collecting them, sorting them, and categorizing them according to size and shape, or type and color. After two years at a prestigious university, the time came for Ellen to declare her major. She had no idea what she wanted to do with her life or who she wanted to be when she grew up, but it was time to choose. Geology seemed like the best decision at the time. After all, she really, really liked rocks. 2 Ellen’s mother and father were proud of their daughter, the geology major, a future geologist. When Ellen graduated, she moved back home with her parents. She began babysitting and dog walking to make a little money. Her parents were con- fused. This is what she had done in high school. They had just paid for an expensive college education. When was their daughter going to turn magically into a geologist? When was she going to begin her career? This is what she had studied for. This is what she was supposed to do. 3 The thing is—Ellen had realized she didn’t want to be a geologist. She wasn’t all that interested in spending her time studying the earth’s processes, or materials, or history. She wasn’t interested in fieldwork, or in working for a natural-resource

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61What Matters Most When Choosing a Career: Doing What You’re Passionate About?

company or an environmental agency. She didn’t like mapping or generating reports. She had chosen geology by default, because she had liked rocks, and now Ellen, diploma in hand, frustrated parents in her ear, had absolutely no idea how to get a job and what she should do with the rest of her life. 4 If it was true, as everyone had told her, that her college years were the best four years of her life, Ellen had nowhere to go but down. She did not realize that she was hardly alone in not wanting to work in the field in which she had majored. In fact, in the United States, only 27 percent of college grads end up in a career related to their majors.

* * * 5 Many people operate under the dysfunctional belief that they just need to find out what they are passionate about. Once they know their passion, everything else will somehow magically fall into place. We hate this idea for one very good reason: most people don’t know their passion. Our colleague William Damon, director of the Stanford Center on Adolescence, found that only one in five young people between twelve and twenty-six have a clear vision of where they want to go, what they want to accomplish in life, and why. Our experience suggests, similarly, that 8o percent of people of all ages don’t really know what they are passionate about. 6 So conversations with career counselors often go like this:

Career Counselor: “What are you passionate about?”

Job Seeker: “I don’t know.”

Career Counselor: “Well, come back when you figure it out.”

7 Some career counselors will give people tests to assess people’s interests or strengths, or to survey their skills, but anyone who has taken such tests knows that the conclusions are often far from conclusive. Besides, finding out that you could be a pilot, an engineer, or an elevator repairman isn’t very helpful or actionable. So we’re not very passionate about finding your passion. We believe that people actually need to take time to develop a passion. And the research shows that, for most people, passion comes after they try something, discover they like it, and develop mastery— not before. To put it more succinctly: passion is the result of a good life design, not the cause. 8 Most people do not have that one thing they are passionate about—that singular motivator that drives all of their life decisions and infuses every waking moment with a sense of purpose and meaning. If you’ve found that studying the mating habits and evolution of mollusks from the Cambrian period until the pres- ent day is your purpose for living—we salute you. Charles Darwin spent thirty-nine ▶

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62 PROJECT 2 | Choosing a Career

years studying earthworms; we salute Charles Darwin. What we don’t salute is a method of approaching life design that leaves out 8o percent of the population. In truth, most people are passionate about many different things, and the only way to know what they want to do is to prototype some potential lives, try them out, and see what really resonates with them. We are serious about this: you don’t need to know your passion in order to design a life you love. Once you know how to proto- type your way forward, you are on the path to discovering the things you truly love, passion or not.

2.13 Activity Annotating “Introduction: Life by Design”

In Unit 2.12 (p. 60) you are asked to read an article entitled “Introduction: Life by Design.” For this activity, you will need to print out the article and then annotate it—add comments, questions, symbols, underlining, and highlighting to indicate your reactions, thoughts, and questions about the text.

To annotate is more than just highlighting the important ideas. It is an activity that automatically increases your engagement with the text you are reading. When annotating you mark what seems important, but you also may mark words you don’t know, mark passages you find puzzling, ask questions about the text, argue with the text, and mark places you think are well written. If you need a little refresher on the concept, take a look at Annotation Explained (20.6, p. 583).

2.14 Activity Thinking about “Introduction: Life by Design”

Your instructor will let you know whether you will be working in groups or working individually on this activity. Either way, answer the following questions about the excerpt from “Introduction: Life by Design” (2.12, p. 60).

1. What was the most interesting idea or information you found in the text?

2. How do you fit into this article? Have you, like Ellen, chosen a program or major to follow in college without really knowing what kind of work that program or major will lead to? Is there some one thing that you are passionate about? Do you believe that you should try to find that one thing you could be passionate about so you can move forward in your life?

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63Bringing It All Together

3. In the last sentence of the article, Burnett and Evans claim, “Once you know how to prototype your way forward, you are on the path to discovering the things you truly love, passion or not.” What do you think they mean by the word prototype, which they use as a verb?

Bringing It All Together

2.15 Writing Research into What It’s Like to Be a _____________ In earlier activities in Project 2, you investigated the practical issues involved in various careers: employment outlook, salaries, necessary education. But you haven’t really looked at the “what it’s like to be a _____________” question. For example, if you’ve been thinking about being a physical therapist, how could you learn more about what it’s like to be a physical therapist?

▲ Once you have an idea of the kind of job you would like after graduation, how do you find out more about it? What do you need to know? Who can you ask? Where can you look for information? Tashatuvango/Shutterstock

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64 PROJECT 2 | Choosing a Career

Activity: Gathering Information on a Potential Career

For this activity, you’re going to try to do just that, to gather some information about what it’s like to be a person working in the career you are considering pursuing. There are several ways you might be able to gather this information:

• Interview someone working in the field.

• Interview a faculty member who teaches in the field.

• Find out if your school has an office for career guidance or career counseling. If so, visit that office and see if the staff could put you in touch with someone working in the field.

• Look in the library for books or articles about working in the field.

• Look on the internet for sites set up for people in the field. See it you can get in touch with someone to interview through these sites.

Preparing for an Interview

If you decide to conduct an interview, be aware that the person you are interviewing probably has lots of other things to do. He or she is being generous to agree to an interview. It’s important that you keep this in mind and do everything possible to respect your interviewee’s time. Follow the following guidelines.

1. Set up a time for the interview well in advance. Nothing is more inconsiderate than asking someone for an interview and telling them you need to do it tomorrow because the paper is due the next day.

2. Be flexible about how and where the interview is conducted. The most common approach is for you to go to the interviewee’s office and ask him or her questions face-to-face, but interviews can also be conducted in another place (a coffee shop, a quiet room on campus, etc.), on the phone, or even through an email exchange. Find out what the person you are planning to interview prefers.

3. Ask in advance whether it is okay to record the interview. If it is, come prepared and check that your recording device is working before you arrive.

4. Research your subject. Find out as much as you can about the interviewee before the interview, so you don’t have to waste time asking for his or her job title or where he or she went to college. This information is probably available on a website.

5. Plan what you will ask. Make a list of questions ahead of time so you don’t waste time at the interview and you don’t forget to ask about something important.

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65Bringing It All Together

Of course, during the interview, you may ask follow-up questions depending on what you learn during the conversation, but you should arrive with a thoughtful list of the main questions you plan to ask.

6. Make notes. Especially if you were not able to record the interview, try to sit down and write up your notes as soon as you can afterward.

Writing about What Your Chosen Career Would Be Like

After you’ve completed your research, write a short essay—a page is plenty—in which you discuss what it would be like to work in the career you’ve researched. Include in your essay the advantages and the disadvantages of working in that career.

2.16 Activity Class Discussion of Possible Careers

This class will consist of a discussion of the short writings about possible careers that you turned in, focusing particularly on what you and your classmates identified as strengths and weaknesses of various careers.

2.17 Real World Essay The Advantages and Disadvantages of a Specific Career This essay will build on the work you have been doing exploring careers.

Essay Assignment. In Investigating Career Opportunities (2.3, p. 37), you summa- rized three occupations, careers, you were interested in. At this point, focus on one career that you might want to pursue. Don’t worry. This is not a permanent decision; in fact, one perfectly reasonable outcome of writing this paper might be that you decide this is not the career for you!

For this essay, you will discuss the advantages and disadvantages for you of the career you have chosen. Think back to the list of what’s important in a career that you compiled in What’s Important to You in a Career? (2.1, p. 33). That should help you think about what you want to discuss.

Think or your audience as a career counselor. You have an appointment in a week or two, and she has asked you to write an essay explaining what career you currently are thinking about pursuing. She will use your essay to help you with advice and guidance, so it is important that you write as thoroughly as you can about

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66 PROJECT 2 | Choosing a Career

your current thinking. Be sure you use the information you acquired about the career you choose to support your decision.

If you want to use your sources most effectively to support your argument, it’s not enough to simply include them as a series of unrelated sources; you need to tie them together, explain their relationships with each other, and express your conclusions about them. This process is called synthesizing, and it is discussed in more detail in Synthesis (22.14, p. 648).

Because your essay is an argument, you will want to follow the conventions for arguments. You may want to review these conventions in What Is an Argument? (18.1, p. 513), The Features of Effective Arguments (18.3, p. 513), and How to Answer Counterarguments (18.5, p. 514).

Documentation. If you do quote, paraphrase, or summarize material from the texts you have read for this project, be sure to provide appropriate in-text citations and include a works cited list or list of references at the end of your essay. If you need to review how to provide this documentation, refer to MLA Documentation (Topic 23, p. 650) or APA Documentation (Topic 24, p. 687).

2.18 Academic Essay Priorities for Students Making Career Decisions This essay will build on the work you have been doing exploring careers.

Essay Assignment. Building on the reading, writing, discussing, and thinking you’ve been doing about career decision-making, in this essay you will propose and defend what should be the highest priorities for students making a decision about careers. Think of this as an academic essay you might write for a class in education, business, or sociology.

First, make a list of what you think are the ten most important things students should consider when making career decisions. Then explain and argue for the list you have compiled. For each of the ten items, you will explain why it is important and then give advice about how a student might carry it out.

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67Bringing It All Together

Documentation. In this essay, be sure to provide appropriate citations for any words you quote, paraphrase, or summarize from the texts you read and include a works cited list or list of references at the end of your essay. If you need to review how to provide this documentation, refer to MLA Documentation (Topic 23, p. 650) or APA Documentation (Topic 24, p. 687).

2.19 Multimodal Composition A Process for Students Making Career Decisions Building on the reading, writing, discussing, and thinking you’ve been doing about career decision making, in this assignment you will narrate the process you followed to make your tentative career decision.

Assignment. This assignment will be multimodal—perhaps a narrated PowerPoint, a website, a blog, or a video—your choice. It is designed for students who are already competent at PowerPoint, website design, blogging, or making a video.

In this multimodal composition, you will describe in detail the process you followed to arrive at the career you are considering pursuing now that you are at the end of this project. The audience for the composition is students who are trying to make their own decisions about careers. The idea is that by describing the process you followed, you will help them figure out a process they will follow.

Because this composition will be explaining a process, it should follow the nor- mal conventions for process writing. You may want to review these in Strategies for Process Writing (18.12, p. 530).

Documentation. Be sure to provide appropriate citations for any words you quote, paraphrase, or summarize from the texts you read and include a works cited list or list of references at the end of your essay. If you need to review how to provide this doc- umentation, refer to MLA Documentation (Topic 23, p. 650) or APA Documentation (Topic 24, p. 687).

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68 PROJECT 2 | Choosing a Career

2.20 Activity Getting Started on Your Essay or Composition

During this class period, you and your classmates will begin working on your assignments (see Real World Essay: The Advantages and Disadvantages of a Spe- cific Career [2.17, p. 65], Academic Essay: Priorities for Students Making Career Decisions [2.18, p. 66], or Multimodal Composition: A Process for Students Making Career Decisions [2.19, p. 67]).

You may use this time to start brainstorming or to begin your research online. You may want to write an opening paragraph or two, or to review what you’ve already read and written in this project. You may want to compare notes with a couple of classmates or ask a question or two of your instructor. If you are compos- ing a multimodal project, you may want to talk to others who are doing the same to compare approaches. The idea is that you will use this period to, at least, get a start on the essay.

2.21 Writing Reflecting on Project 2: Choosing a Career Reflective writing is different from most writing you do in college. Reflective writing asks you to think back, to “reflect” on an experience—an essay you have written, a major change in your life, a time when you didn’t have success at something you wanted to do, a semester’s work in a course—and to examine how you now think and feel about that experience. What effect has the experience had on you? How have you changed? How will you be different in the future?

Now you’re going to reflect on all the reading, thinking, discussing, and writing you have done in this project on choosing a career. To do this, you may want to review any short reflective writing you did as you worked through the project. Then, in a short paper—a page or so—reflect on this experience:

1. Report on what you learned about choosing a career. What were the most important or most useful ideas you encountered?

2. Describe how you feel about the experience and what you think about what you have learned.

3. Report on what you learned that will make a difference for you in the future and why.

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