It is that time of the year again — internship and job hunt season.
With the University of Idaho Career Fair this week and that feeling of application anxiety swirling over campus, it can be difficult to keep calm about planning for the future.
It seems that just as the student population settled into a fall semester routine, due dates and waves of testing overcame that stress-free feeling that could have been.
With social and political stressors as high as ever, on top of personal stressors, it is no wonder college students seek comfort in knowing that others like them worry all the same.
Over the last several weeks, my inbox has been bombarded with newsletters about potential summer internships and lists upon lists of ways to land a job right out of college — one that does not place me as a part-time barista or in a call center. But, these emails reinforce what we have been told time and time again. The job market is terrible, and it has been ever since the economic recession 10 years ago.
So, we should all be OK with part-time, low paying gigs and lousy internships, because we are still being told how hard it is for graduates to find jobs in their chosen field.
Well, according to a 2016 Economic Policy Institute report, with time, the economy has grown stronger to accommodate new graduates entering the job market. There are still many nuances to the overall situation. The market is still nowhere near perfect, especially for minorities and some female graduates.A negative attitude toward the “real world,” however, makes attending college seem like a bit of a gamble. In some ways, though, it is. College students, no matter their university’s price tag, lay out all their cards and hope the outcome is at least somewhat beneficial. This often constitutes the idea that the fall semester application anxiety and year-round stress about the future is not entirely worth it. But, it is worth it.
There are several factors worthy of noting that college students should be aware of when attempting to understand the job market and their need for a degree. According to the Pew Research Center (PRC), it is harder for recent graduates to find good jobs in their field than graduates did 20 or more years ago. Students are no longer guaranteed a degree, a job, a house and 2.5 children. But, that same report also shows graduates still receive higher paying jobs and more job opportunities than those without at least a bachelor’s degree.
And, if we are looking to consult those that were once in our shoes, the PRC report shows 83 percent of graduates over the last three generations believe their degree — and all the stress that came with it — was entirely worth it.
I completely understand it might be more difficult for me, a journalist among thousands of others, to find a job in my field than it would be for a talented and equally as needed computer programmer. Finding a job is incredibly dependent on what a student obtains a degree in. Still, the journalist and the computer programmer have the same concerns about finding something stable once they are kicked out of their comfortable campus nest.
As students, we should not cease to worry about our future careers just because we have it a bit better than graduates did 10 years ago. We just have to stop believing that everything is impossible.We might all have to do some time as lousy interns and part-time receptionists, but that is OK. At the end of the day — even though it is just a piece of paper — the degree that often put us through hell prepared us for the highs and lows of being a working adult.
Through all the worry and stress, it is important to remember that with a positive mindset and an extra effort, we have attempted to set the path for success — it might just take a little longer to get there.
Fall, for a college student, should be about coffee dates with friends and football games. It should also be about a slight dose of worry and stress. But, it should never be about disdain for the future, because in all actuality, we might one day be the ones telling college students just how worth it everything was.
Hailey Stewart can be reached at [email protected] or on Twitter at @Hailey_ann97