Global Experiences focuses on helping college students and young professionals get a competitive edge through an international internship program experience. Every week we speak to hundreds of people starting out in their career and we think a lot about what advice to give and how to provide people with the best experience possible. Our goal isn’t just landing a job, it is helping our Alum have happy and successful lives, in the broadest sense.
The traditional method of determining your ideal career started with matching academic success at school with a professional category. Good at Math then consider accounting or finance, good at science then how about medicine? Artist may consider architecture etc. But this is old school and the future is shaped by constant technological change, faster than even a millennial can keep up with. At the same time as this college is slow to adapt and a good education is hard to find to the point that a degree is almost irrelevant for many careers and practical internships and skills development are more important on your resume. So how do you give good advice to someone in college looking at a bleak landscape of 50% unemployment among college graduates?
College students are not alone as recent polls from the Gallup Organization acknowledged that while health and a happy family life were most important to people only 47% of the US population consider themselves happy. Economic pressures and systemic issues have seen the US economy double, but the happiness stay the same since 1960. At Global Experiences we have seen a steady shift over the past 12 years from students interested in studying art, Italian, fashion with a desire to learn foreign languages to a preference for finance, business, and English speaking environments in an attempt to strategically get ahead by making what may seem a more secure choice.
But the one thing you can’t buy and can’t fake is passion and enthusiasm for what you love. There are no sure things with any degree path, except maybe engineering, so rather than try and mitigate risk by being conservative and tactical with your choices, how about take a risk and follow your dreams. This doesn’t mean be reckless and in-danger yourself it just means take time to really think about what makes you tick and what you love to do, be around, and take notice of when time just passes by and when work doesn’t feel like work.
What if doing more of what you love was the only goal you needed for a happy life and a good job.
But being happy isn’t easy and creating and finding a career that doesn’t feel like work is hard for college aged student as it requires introspection and developing a 3D image of themselves in the future that will help provide Hope and guide them through adversity and obstacles that often re-rail risk taking. Shane Lopez in his recent book ‘Making Hope Happen’ , points to Hope over other factors as the biggest determinant of an individual’s path to a happy life.
Parents are often keen to save their children from failure with classic advice like ‘maybe you should come home and get a job nearby rather than try and make it in fashion in NYC’. ‘You have to have health insurance so you can’t start your own business’. ‘You have student loans so you can’t afford to travel overseas’.
It takes a lot to keep faith in your own vision and hope for the future, but it is the best chance you have for a happy life and successful career.
Stay tuned for our top 10 ways to have a career you love.
