You must ask youself a series of questions:

Is it the money or is it the meaning?
Is it for me or everybody I love?
Can I do this for 5 years?
What is the point?
How can I be happy without hurting anyone else?
Is knowledge, on it's own, valuable?

You can't be me, I'm taken

Not ONCE in almost 40 years in media have I ever shown my 'diploma' to anyone. Or promoted it. It is however included factually in my CV.

On the other hand I don't regret a minute of it

You can't be me, I'm taken

I didn't decide my path. It was sort of agreed on in my family that I would go into business. I was sent to the States by my family, so the choice was theirs as much as it was mine. At that point in life, I had different goals than I do now. Back then, all I thought about was settling in a developed country where I would have a future.
Now that I know I have a future, I want to think about contributing to something in a positive way either as a management consultant for business and corporate ethics and responsibility, or sustainable development, or doing something else (i.e. teaching). Had I known back 10 years ago what my life choices would be today, maybe I would have chosen a different path. The issue is, however, that sometimes you don't know what you want to do in life unless you gain valuable experience in other fields by doing something you don't like. It could be hard and frustrating sometimes, but wrong choices in college don't necessarily amount to wrong choices in life.

Mikhail from SF

A great thing to do after college is to continue at the next level and go to grad school! Not only does a semester at school equate to years of work experience, it is also so much more fun.

I think most jobs fall in multiple categories in your list - for example, I don't think you could be good at something without enjoying it; and most likely if you are good at it and enjoying it, you would be recognized and you would feel useful too. It is easier than it sounds!

Try not to spend too much time in any single job. Challenge yourself often and be honest in your assessment. Are you still excited to get up in the morning and go to work? Are you growing? Do not pick a work that you can just comfortably do. Pick something that puts your abilities to test, yet, do not burn yourself out by sacrificing your a personal life. Never work just for the money.

Reading the comments here, I have the feeling something is missing. Some of my experiences :

• Unable to get a decent job because of beeing on a 'black list' of 'troublemakers'. That was right after school, had been student-leader in the years 1968-1970.
  
• Beeing thrown of a job because of beeing a candidate in the elections (for the greens!)
  
• Denyed promotion because of defending co-workers rights.....
  

If there is a conflict on the job, what side do you choose? I'v seen a lot of cowards....

The struggle of man against tyranny is the struggle of memory against forgetting.(Kundera)

A typical thing to do is to study Philosophy, then change your mind and study Advanced Physics, then graduate, then find a job as a Copyright Contract Writer or something similar (ie. a job that has nothing to do with what you studied, and which you don't really like nor really dislike) ... then when you reach 30, decide that all you've ever wanted to do was be a Furniture Designer, then enrol for night lessons at university on Furniture Design, then have kids and put all your plans on hold, but then fortunately your partner has a promotion and now earns big bucks which gives you a chance to finally change your life, but by then you'll have realized you're not really into Furniture Design but into Advertising, and before you know it you're 60 years old and ready to enjoy retirement, during which you'll finally have all the time in the world to become an expert on Ancient Mesopotamia, which is really all you've really ever wanted to be.

Well, you could act like me: Graduate and apply to grad school, without realizing that no company in its right mind will hire you for a serious entry-level job prior to your departure, since it's a guarantee that you'll be a couple of thousand miles away come Summer.  (And you don't want to lie by telling an employer that you won't be leaving, because it could result in a poor recommendation.)  So you're left essentially sitting on your rear end for eight or nine months.

Ah, well, life goes on.

I chose my path -- academic economics -- because of Paul Krugman and John Maynard Keynes.  I eat up anything and everything that they write and have written.  An entirely new world was opened to me.  My friends all find them -- especially Keynes -- boring.  My fiancee can't even understand Keynes's writing, because of the heavy Britishness.  My (admittedly few) conservative friends hate them both, of course, but we still have a great time talking about the ideas.

I love it.  I wake up in the morning and think, "Hey, this stuff is great!  I've got an endless amount of material that I can talk about, think about, debate about, and so on."  It will never pay an enormous salary, especially if we stay in Britain.  The money's much better in American and Canadian academia, and I would easily be able to make more money working in the private sector in London or New York.  I was even offered a job in Atlanta that paid more at the entry level than some academics will ever make.  But it's enjoyable.  Plus, it's giving me the opportunity to travel while I'm young, and few get such an opportunity, so I count my blessings.

Be nice to America. Or we'll bring democracy to your country.

Since I was about 10 [only a slight exaggeration] until I was about 28 I applied myself pretty single-mindedly to pursuing an academic career in mathematical physics. Problem was, by the time I got to the dissertation-writing stage I realized that

1. My students did not like me and the feeling was mutual [though I enjoyed explaining thinks to interested students, and they appreciated it]
   
2. I was not able to meet my own standards of research quality [I was too sick of spending hours in the library digging up often-quoted references to find they were drivel, to go on and contribute more hay to the haystack]
   
3. I wanted to have a life, and to know about everything
   

In other words, I did not have the necessary "unreasonable optimism about my own research" [in the words of my advisor] to succeed in academic research, nor the patience [as a professor once warned me in 1999!] to endure teaching, nor the ability/inclination to focus single-mindedly on a narrow area.

On the other hand, I don't regret obtaining two undergraduate degrees and a Ph.D. in an esoteric subject. In hindsight, I educated myself as much as I could and [ultimately] had patience for, for the sake of education and self-enlightenment and not for job prospects. Then I transitioned to the private sector relatively painlessly and have a great job.

I did not shy away from going half a world away in pursuit of my academic career, nor to move into a new city and country, with few local contacts, in pursuit of a career in the private sector.

So,

1. educate yourself to the fullest for the sake of self-development
   
2. don't be afraid to change orientation (I have done it twice at a 5-year interval) but give yourself ample time to settle before considering whether you've made the right choice (again, 5 years seems fair)
   
3. be bold and ambitious
   
4. identify your strengths and weaknesses and try to make the best of them [recognize that what you find most interesting may be what you find challenging, not what you find easy, and you're better off working on what comes naturally to you]

A society committed to the notion that government is always bad will have bad government. And it doesn't have to be that way. — Paul Krugman

I am graduating this semester too and I am facing the same questions. And honestly, every time I try to find the answers I get really confused. However, I have figured one thing out--you can't plan everything. I think the best decision is to just let things happen and be open to any possibility...and follow your intuition.

Most American graduates try to find a job that pays enough to cover the rent...not easy if you pursued a degree in anything other than marketing or engineering.

Although aimless and doing nothing more than getting by at the moment, I do have one bit of advice to offer.

Unless you are absolutely convinced that X is the most fascinating thing in the world and you cannot imagine a life that does not involve the constant study of and thought about X (as Drew Jones says he is about econ, above), DO NOT apply to graduate school in ANY academic or non-professional field.

In my experience, without aforementioned enthusiasm, it is just a waste of time.  Either you will drop out bitter and disillusioned after failing to make adequete progress towards the degree, or realize at the end that you either can't make a real contribution to the field, or just don't want to.  Furthermore, the jobs available never pay enough to be worth doing for the money alone.  And, should you drop out, or choose to do something else that does not involve your degree, there is a fair chance that all the time spent grad school and all the degrees accumulated will count against you in the job market.  Overqualified in general, but specifically qualified in nothing.

I've been lucky since I dropped out, in that the out of nowhere lark I took to escape temp work, teaching English in Japan, has turned out to be quite a bit of fun.  It doesn't pay very well (although compared to my finances in grad school, I feel awfully rich), but it's actually kind of fun.  I know other people who are not managing as well.  It can suck.

I could say that the most important thing for you, and all graduates, in the moment is to feel fine with not knowing what to do. There is nothing wrong with not knowing, just accept it.

When time comes, you will know.

Probably, as all young people, you are in a hurry to live, and finally reach that state of fulfilment we all dream about. Well, it never (almost never happens as we want.  

"Our life is shaped by our mind; we become what we think." - BUDDHA

What I find despicable about the situation after graduating is that most young people have to comply to the demands of the market, not to their own wishes. We have to be "flexible" as capitalism enjoins.
I personally want to earn higher degree of philosophy,
but the omnipotent market does not need philosophers so much, so I have to study and make research in areas less attractive to me.
Long live the liberty and freedom of men under market economy and democracy!


I'm not ugly,but my beauty is a total creation.Hegel

Although I will be in the same situation pretty soon, and am still clueless what exactly I will be doing, I think I can give a sort of advice: do not make long-term plans, because nothing really happens exactly as planned. If you see a god opportunity, grasp it now! Don't hesitate for life ways for nobody! Even if it eventually does not prove to be the perfect choice- regrets seldom help. Raise your head and go on- everything is experience, even bad one, and it does give you something:-).

I was talking to a friend and I told him that I necessarily want to love my job I am going to be working. His comment was such: "Job is for the money, if you love your job too much, then it becomes your life." A bit cynical in my opinion, but worth thinking about.

I can resist anything but temptation.- Oscar Wilde

Naneva, may god bless you for this post!:)) It was so useful to see all the comments. I do understand how you feel. I'll be in a similar situation in January 2007.:))

When you were talking about people who know exactly what they want to do: i'm one of them. I've always known i want to be a journalist. Studying journalism in college has confirmed my desire. Actually, this is how i ended up studying politics too. I want to cover politics. It is so fascinating, so relevant to every-day life! So now i'm thinking of applying to grad school to study politics because i still lack substantial knowledge to become a well-rounded reporter. By now i know that journalistic technique is relatively easy to acquire, through practice, so what i need is more substance.

But there's nothing wrong with not knowing exactly what you want to do. A friend of mine who's graduating this May tells me he feels the same way. He's good at so many things, for which i truly envy him, he can't decide what exactly he wants to do with himself. What do people that are very close to you say you need to do? Usually such people have good observations of what you're really good at. Sometimes, amazing, we don't see what they see though it's obvious.

I read somewhere that success comes with connections, not necessarily with brains. A bit sad. But then, cultivating connections and maintaining them can also be a challenge, so take good care of your connections:))