Check out my ebook I wrote on this topic!
A caveat: I didn’t go to grad school right out of undergrad. I waited 3 years. I worked in health care, middle grades education, and corporate America. However, each of these experiences were formative in directing my career to this point.
When the economy is tough and jobs are tough to come by, common advice is to go back to school and get your masters degree. I’ve been there. I know the gut wrenching feeling that you’re not going to get a job and the only thing you seem qualfied for is entry level menial work. I know how you feel.
My advice though is to take a job, ESPECIALLY if you don’t know what you want to do with your life. Grad school is not the place to be if you don’t know where you’re going. If you can’t decide whether you want to be a businessman or a lawyer, I would thoroughly not recommend plowing through grad school.
The main reason is that despite your best efforts, grad school is draining and frustrating enough that you will want to quit or become a garbageman or join the Peace Corps at some point; it just comes with the territory. Unless you had a specific vision and direction when you started school, you will be completely lost during those hard times while you’re in school.
Take any job you can. Find something that pays bills and gets you out into the work world. You will see things about your particular job and your particular field that will help to direct your career and give you a purpose when/if you decide to pursue further education. For me, I found that the parts that I loved about my previous jobs were what I could do full-time if I pursued a degree in student affairs. Sure, it’s not perfect but the graduate degree was the next logical step for me in finding a job that I wanted.
While taking these jobs, try to pinpoint the individual tasks that give you the most fulfillment as an employee. Pursue opportunities, whether volunteer, at your company or even a 2nd job that give you more of a chance to do these tasks. You’re looking for confirmation and direction, remember!
I’m going to use one of my students as an example (no names)…
She was working towards optometry school and stated to me one day “i have no idea why i’m doing this”. I told her to not stop the direction that she was going until she had a specific idea of what she was going to do. Six months passed before it was mentioned again. She told me that over those six months, she realized how much she loved a lot of the thigns that she was studying (biology, health) and remembered her passion for them. But she also realized how much she loved the work that she had done with the activities board and event planning. She thought she could connect these two by doing community health. After researching jobs and careers, she realized that one of her best methods of getting into this work was to go on to grad school.
She had a specific direction and a passion for where she was going. I gave her my full recommendation to go and get it.
Don’t make the mistake of just diving in to something without knowing where you’re going. Grad school is too much of a time and money investment to do it haphazardly. Just because the economy is tough and jobs are scarce doesn’t mean it won’t get better. Focus on direction and trying to apply yourself to whatever you do, and the economy won’t stop you from getting ahead.
Check out my ebook I wrote on this topic!
