Answer for question 4497.

[sabotabby]

[Error: unknown template qotd]Do what you love and follow your dreams because either way, you're going to be mostly unemployed, and it's cheaper and also less disappointing to be an unemployed artist than an unemployed engineer. There are no jobs for anyone. Welcome to the grimdark post-work future where the majority of you will not quite earn a living in an informal, unstable economy rooting through garbage dumps for scrap metal.

Unless you can luck into a trades apprenticeship, in which case, do that. They haven't quite found a way to replace plumbers yet.

You can guess by my cynicism that I chose what, at the time, was a practical major in university guaranteed to net me a good stable job, just as the dot com bubble burst and left my entire graduating class scrambling for scraps.

(I think this is why they didn't let me give the valedictorian speech in high school.)

Comments

[browngirl.livejournal.com]

This is good advice.

[sabotabby]

I give it to all my kids.

That's why they don't let me be a guidance counsellor.

[the-siobhan.livejournal.com]

Hey, I went into sciences.

I probably would have been employable in my field if I'd stuck it out for my PhD, but then I would have to deal with academia. I'm not sure which is worse.

[sabotabby]

I have often wished that I had aptitude for STEM, but I know just as many unemployed or underemployed people in STEM fields, and my physical capabilities did not turn out to be such that I could pull really long hours.

[rinue.livejournal.com]

I read an annoyed defense of the Liberal Arts in the last Harper's, which pointed out that nobody's really looking to give good money to people studying pure science or pure math, so when people talk about the employability of "STEM" they mean technology and engineering . . . and since technology is made by engineers, that's really just one thing. The other letters are in there for padding so it seems like there's room for everyone and it's not all the eggs in one basket yet again.

[sabotabby]

I suspect this is true, yes.

[dagibbs.livejournal.com]

Yeah, trades are looking to be a good place to be.

[sabotabby]

Pretty much the last decent jobs. Everything else is locked up by Boomers.

[smhwpf.livejournal.com]

You should make a poster of this advice. It would probably end up on student walls the western world over.

[sabotabby]

I can do that. I can maybe do it today, if I have time.

[eyelid.livejournal.com]

lol, don't hold back, tell us how you really feel ;)

[sabotabby]

Tact? What's that?

[princealberic.livejournal.com]

I don't know if I 100% agree.

I was given this advice when I graduated and even battled to be able to do it. Nowadays, I have mixed feelings about it. We have to choose general fields before starting high school, and now I really regret not going into the sciences. I see so many ads for tech-related jobs and my sciency friends have been able to get a wider range of work related to their field than I can ever hope to. The worst part is that I wasn't even bad at it, I just didn't care as much as I cared about literature or history.

I don't regret studying something that I wanted to learn more about, but it's also not something I'd recommend to anyone who isn't 100% certain of what they want to do.

Then again, maybe I'm just jaded by how unemployable I am and living in a country struggling with debt-related problems.

[sabotabby]

Here there are so many kids going into STEM that they're now having the same problems as arts grads. All of my kids at my old school wanted to be engineers; for some reason, I don't think that's going to happen.

[princealberic.livejournal.com]

Here that happens too (STEM is probably the most popular stuff to study) but among other things, I think it makes it easier to get work abroad, especially if you speak more than one language (there's probably a surplus in English-speaking countries). It also seems to me like there's more variety with what you can do if you decide that you don't want to be in academia for life.

Obviously, jobs as a whole are scarce. It's just that compared to my field, it seems so much better. It doesn't help that I'm mad jealous of the science students and alumni at my uni for getting better support and guidance on career-related things

[princealberic.livejournal.com]

Also, most of this is probably really country-dependent. For example, I've heard that in other countries, what I studied can actually lead to work. Over here, most people don't even seem to know what it is.

[elsewhereangel.livejournal.com]

Plumbing is where it's at.

Did you wind up overeducated and unemployable like you said in the yearbook?"

[sabotabby]

If I ever lose my job, I'm completely unemployable. All my skills have expiry dates.

[pofflewomp.livejournal.com]

I overheard a young working class lad on his lunch break from his plumbing course a few years ago complaining to a friend that all these middle class people are going on the plumbing courses and taking all the jobs...

actually I think it is very hard to be a self employed plumber, too. Apparently in the UK there is quite a lot of relative poverty among "white van men," especially in eastern England where there is a lot of UKIP and other right wing support: people self employed, not earning enough and too against claiming state support to claim the tax credits almost all normal people in work have to live on because rents are so high.

Also, most tradespeople seem to be employed by major contractors so probably don't get paid much, just sent out at all hours on quick fix jobs for housing associations like mine...

having said that, my partner's cousin is very well off as an electrician with an air conditioning installation business.

[sabotabby]

It's anecdata, but one of my friends in uni dropped out and did a plumbing apprenticeship. He's loaded now. Actually, he was loaded a few years after finishing. All of the tradespeople I've met do quite well here. And at least when I graduated teachers' college, it was easier to go from the trades into teaching than going from uni into teaching.

[pofflewomp.livejournal.com]

I have a good degree from Cambridge University and two master's degrees but have never had a job. I am weird, though. I grew up in socialist-anarchist hippie world in squats and housing co ops and jobs/careers were certainly never anything any decent person was allowed to aspire to. They were bourgeois things that baddies did. Everyone we knew was either on benefits or a special needs teacher. I didn't expect to live beyond my degree anyway - had planned to kill myself afterwards - so never planned ahead that far. And back then it was assumed that if you went to Oxbridge you walked into a top diplomatic or government position anyway, so school teachers didn't bother with career advice apart from a series of monthly talks from people like Winston Churchill's granddaughter, Lady Soames, about how her grandad liked painting watercolours, and sometimes a female barrister would give a boring talk about how women could be barristers if they went to Oxbridge.

[sabotabby]

I have just never lived in circumstances where you can not have a job. By the time I was a young adult, benefits were pretty much non-existent. It's work or die.

[pofflewomp.livejournal.com]

Yes, I would definitely be dead were it not for benefits, which are now being taken away, as I have never been in a situation where I would have been able to work... there must be a lot of people dying in Canada. It is horrifying.

[pofflewomp.livejournal.com]

I actually think that if I could bring up my child to be someone so incredibly confident, non-depressed, engaged with and at one with the world that he actually WANTS to do anything and "loves" some activity or other (all completely, utterly, unimaginably alien to me so I will need to research these things!) it will be a miracle in itself and I will be over the moon. Someone that happy and lucky need not worry about poverty quite so much as I do as they would have the resources and skills to cope better.

[sabotabby]

Hah, tell me about it. If you find out, let me know.

[ironed_orchid]

Sometimes I think it was lucky that graduated from high school in the beginning of a recession (1989), it meant nearly everyone my age was on the dole and it didn't feel like being out of work was the end of the world.

[sabotabby]

For me it's always been a panic. I've been terrified of unemployment since before I can remember; even in my teen years, it was an anxious struggle to have a job.