Whether you have consciously done so or not, you have been making decisions for many years about what direction your life should take. As a child you probably fantasized about becoming a professional athlete, an internationally acclaimed entertainer or artist, or perhaps the more traditional fireman or nurse. As you grew older many of these fantasies were replaced by career aspirations more closely linked to your particular talents and interests. Now, you are a college student and your career path has taken yet another turn. As an undergraduate, you have entered a critical stage of career planning that goes beyond simply choosing an academic major. An academic major is only one part of your academic program, and your academic program, although very important, does not comprise your entire undergraduate experience.
Rather than provide you with a specific body of knowledge or a narrow set of skills, an education in the humanities is designed to provide you with a broad general knowledge that you can channel in many directions. Its primary purpose is to assist you in building and broadening certain fundamental skills. These skills should include, above all, the ability to write intelligently, to analyze and solve problems, to digest and understand a diverse range of data and to communicate effectively. These skills will also arm you with the ability to understand and assume an active role in our complex society. And, finally, the skills of a liberally-educated individual will provide you with the most valuable commodity in our ever-changing job market. You will be able to express yourself clearly and concisely through both writing and speaking, and you will be able logically to identify problems and creatively determine solutions. These skills will give you great flexibility. As a graduate in the humanities, you will be able to convert your skills into many viable jobs. First you must acquire these skills and therein lays the importance of good program planning. An academic schedule is as strong or weak, as challenging or repetitive as you make it. If you wish to possess the skills we have just discussed, consciously look for a broad range of courses.
Read the descriptions of courses found in this website. Explore the course offerings in other colleges on campus as well. Make an informed decision about each course, each semester, and each year of your undergraduate education.
Remember, when you are planning your academic program and future career, diversity and flexibility are of prime importance. Seldom will you make a final choice when it comes to careers. Most college graduates will change jobs at least six times during their lifetimes according to the United States Department of Labor. Career planning is, therefore, an on- going process which will continue for most of your student and working life.
Many students in the humanities are unconvinced of the merits of a liberal education and feel they must pursue an engineering or business degree if they are to have a competitive edge in today's labor market. Before you panic and choose a major based on the fear of an unfulfilling and unsuccessful career we would like you to consider several myths about academic program planning and career decision-making.
Most liberal arts majors are not vocationally specific; hence the greater proportion of liberally educated people find themselves choosing work which is not directly related to their major field of study.
Many thousands of liberal arts graduates are prominently employed in business, social service, government, publishing, and elsewhere, without having acquired advanced educational credentials. This does not mean that an advanced degree will not enhance your chances. It definitely will.
As a new college graduate, you are hired primarily for your potential to learn and advance within the organization rather than for your existing work capabilities or experience.
There are methods which you can use outside of the classroom (during college) to investigate career possibilities, and these methods do not require special vocational knowledge.
The career paths of most people are filled with zigs and zags, and sudden changes of direction. People do not reach their ultimate career decisions when they are 21 because the experiences they gather in one type of work change their attitudes about careers and have application to many other kinds of work (e.g., news reporting and interviewing can be adapted to later work in social service, management consulting and public relations). People are seldom aware of the extent to which their past job experiences gave them flexibility in pursuing future jobs and the degree to which these experiences acted to change their career needs. But this versatility is openly expressed in their own career paths. There are social workers who have become city planners, advertising writers who have become management consultants, mortgage loan brokers who are now magazine writers and so forth. Ask people who are 35 what they were doing when they turned 21 and you may be amazed to discover that, in many cases, they are doing work that is worlds apart from their current job. And these people will say, "I just had a lucky break." They are unaware of the inherent fluidity of the career development process, the degree to which their own needs change through experience and the ways in which their past experience is used in their jobs.
On the contrary, you can change career directions whenever your talents and needs dictate, because these attributes are in a continual state of being changed and reshaped by vocational experience.
By the time you are 18 or 20 years old, you have developed identifiable abilities that can be applied successfully to a wide variety of occupations.
There are numerous job situations in which your talents can be equally applied, and the nature of these possibilities will expand as your work experiences accumulate.
Most jobs except highly technical and specific talents. These skills can be acquired and utilized in a variety of ways by people who possess different sets of capabilities.
People in positions having the same title are very often performing different tasks or performing similar tasks according to very different styles. Very often their job responsibilities differ because of the varying capabilities of the people who inhabit the positions.
(Taken from Howard E. Figler, Path: A Career Workbook for Liberal Arts Students. The Carroll Press Publishers, 43 Squantum St., Cranston R.I., 09290. 1975.)
Remember, when you are planning your academic program and future career, diversity and flexibility are of prime importance. Seldom will you make a final choice when it comes to careers. Most college graduates will change jobs at least six times during their lifetimes according to the United States Department of Labor. Career planning is, therefore, an on- going process which will continue for most of your student and working life.
