Life After College Full of Questions
Jul. 16–Leslie Allison is in a peculiar position, the same position that haunts the country’s 15 million other college students. She is trying to comprehend and prepare for life after college, aka the real world.
Allison plans to graduate from Auburn University in May 2006 with a bachelor’s degree in English. She admits that she has mulled over common quarter-life crises questions: “Will I make enough money to support myself? If I move, where (am I) going to move? Am I going to live by myself?” While she might not have that all figured out just yet Allison has prepared herself for the post-college life that awaits her.
Allison is pursuing a career in education.
“I’m really interested in helping low-income kids and struggling readers,” she said. This summer she is helping students at Houston Hill Junior High School with reading and English through a government education program called 21st Century Community Learning Centers.
Most college students make sure they have at least some kind of job experience before they graduate.
“There are students who haven’t had any work experience, but it’s kind of rare,” said Sharon Brooks, director of the Career Development Center at Auburn University Montgomery.
“A majority of our students who come to look for work are already working,” or at least volunteering, Brooks said.
An increasing number of students are following Allison’s example. Not only do they look for jobs and internships, but they seek those that are related to their undergraduate majors or future careers.
In a study conducted by the U.S. Department of Education National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), 77 percent of 1999-2000 bachelor’s degree recipients had jobs in 2001 that were somewhat or closely related to their undergraduate majors.
Charles Oji is a biology major at AUM who will graduate in 2006. During the week he takes classes at AUM, and on the weekends he works 33 hours at Rite-Aid as a pharmacy technician.
After spending more than two years as a cashier at Rite-Aid, Oji decided to apply for a technician’s license from the Alabama Board of Pharmacy. His new position offers “better experience (and) more pay,” he said.
Oji has plans to attend pharmacy school. Most likely he will spend next summer applying to schools and taking the Pharmacy College Admission Test so he can enroll soon after he graduates from AUM. “With a biology degree, you don’t have many options,” he said. “It’s either med school or you go on to pharmacy studies.”
NCES found that 27 percent of 1999-2000 bachelor’s degree recipients were enrolled in graduate school within a year of graduating and 50 percent reported having plans to enroll in graduate school in the future. Only 17 percent reported having no plans for graduate school.
Allison, like Oji, said she is almost positive she will go to grad school. For her, “the question is which type of grad school,” she said. Allison will wait at least a year after she graduates to pursue a higher degree.
“I want to be absolutely sure that’s what I want to do before I pay more money,” she said. Allison also is considering Teach For America, a federal government program that recruits college graduates to teach in urban and rural public schools.
Allison went through a series of trial and error before deciding her career goals. “I’ve done various work-study jobs,” she said, anything from food service to her school’s psychiatry department to the financial aid office to baby-sitting.
None of those jobs seem to be related to Allison’s current career ambitions, but they have given her opportunities to figure out what she doesn’t want to do and earn a little cash on the side. A onetime psychology major, Allison switched to English after discovering her work in the psychiatry department didn’t interest her. Eventually she began volunteering at her school’s English Center, where she helped other students with their writing.
As for the summer after she graduates, “I’ll probably hopefully be working with (21st Century) again,” Allison said.
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