I remember my first week of the journey towards a bachelor’s degree at my current college being filled with guest speakers and alumni. As each speaker went up there the more I asked myself, “Why am I even here?”
A common theme kept repeating amongst speakers, that internships were the most important thing to be successful in your career. But I was confused. I had just spent years of my life working my way up through minimum wage jobs and earning promotion after promotion just to be told that going to college and earning a Bachelor’s degree was the most important thing and now here I was being told something different.
All this to say that I still want a Bachelor’s Degree. It’s a big accomplishment that has never happened in my family, a lot of jobs require you to have one, and I’ve sort of already put a hefty down payment on it when I signed up for my classes.
However, after talking with and listening to a lot of alumni and college graduates, I learned that your Major and your Degree is important, until it’s not. At the end of the day, a job could hire you because of your Degree but it’s your experience and skills that will make you successful.
There is a lot of great information that you can learn in a classroom, but there is no better way to learn about your career than getting actual career experience. Internships allow you the opportunity to gain hands-on experience, network within your field of study, and fill out your resume.
I encourage you to utilize the resources that your school offers to find internships and job opportunities that will help you in the future. This also could be a different type of internship that is not in your field of study. You might find that an internship outside of your comfort zone could teach you skills and life lessons that could carry over into your career or even broaden the types of jobs you could gain after graduating.
According to a study done by Next Gen Personal Finance out of 1,000 graduates surveyed only 46% were currently working in their field of study. So you could find yourself working at a job you never even thought of when picking your classes.
Of course, enjoy college, pass your classes, and pursue the career you planned for but be open to every path that the college journey might present to you.