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Do you mind if I ask how did your wife get a bank teller position? Did she go in person, do it online, knew someone already working at a bank? I have applied numerous times to Teller positions because I figure it would be the perfect summer job and no luck at all, to their credit at least the banks are timely in rejecting you.
But you are right it seems rare these days that people actually end up doing what they studied. Which may explain the trend I see in most college students:
1)Majoring in a narrow field- i.e... accounting to be an accountant, nursing to be a nurse etc...
2) Going back to school for a higher degree, often (but not always) in a field unrelated to the first degree. Accelerated Nursing, Masters in accountancy etc...
3)Law school
She was standing in line to open a bank account. The line was long. The lady behind her started talking and learned she had just moved to CA and needed a job. The lady said "I am a VP at (A different) bank" We are hiring tellers, do you want a job as a teller? Wife said "I will do anything" Lad took her information and told her to report for training the following Monday.
I never understood why a VP from a bank was standing int he line at a different bank, but it was fortuitous. Be warned - bank teller is extremely stressful, low pay demanding and hard (on your feet all day). The only plus side is there is room for advancement if you stick it out. Few do stick it out. It is easy to get fired. It is easy to just quit one day. If I remember right my wife quit after a year or maybe two. The stress was too much - (the stress combined with diet pills, not eating enough and the cappichino with steamed milk I made for her that morning, sent her to the hospital one day. I think that was the trigger. Anyway she went to a temp agency, worked for a developer for a little while and then got the gig at the business bank. that was much nicer, maybe ten customers a day, nice pace, she got to sit down and take her time so there were never any errors. much better job. then the developer called and offered her a permanent position with pretty good pay. She told the business bank she was leaving and they offered her a permanent position at slightly better pay. She told the developer she had a better offer from the bank and it was more pleasant work and the developer upped the ante, back and forth for a while an she ended up bettering the first offer by $11,000 per year. It was pretty neat. She really never liked any of those jobs though. they were not bad, but not something she enjoyed.
Law school is a horrible choice right now. It is a tough field to begin with and has one of the highest job dissatisfaction rates. However there are too many law schools and thus way too many new lawyers. Tens of thousands of them find no job each year. Every year tens of thousands more are added to the unemployed lawyer roles. If we do not have 100,000 graduated and admitted lawyers out there looking for work by now, it will be there very soon. I cannot even imagine the number of new lawyers who are underemployed. Many find jobs that pay $20 an hour or so, and they have huge debt. A lot of them are with temp agencies and all they do is review documents 10 hours a day 6 days a week with no paid vacation or benefits. When someone advertises for a paralegal they get dozens of resumes from admitted lawyers, some with 4 or more years of experience.
If you go to a top 20 or so law school and have above average grades, it is still probably pretty lucrative. (Maybe). Otherwise, it is crazy to incur student loan debt. Even the few who make it, are not likely to see incomes north of $200,000 at least not for a very long time. Many many talented lawyers stall out in the $150,000 - $180,000 range, which is still a healthy income but if you have the drive to get that far, there are more pleasant and faster ways to get there. Current older lawyers frequently make a lot more than that (more than double that), but that is getting more and more rare, and I have doubts that more than a very select few of today current graduates will ever see much more than that (except as that range may end up adjusted for inflation). If it costs you an extra three years and $100,000 or more to get there, that is not all that bright of a light at the end of the tunnel (especially when you consider it involves 60 plus hour weeks at a job that you will hate at times, and may hate all the time.
If a child chooses a degree that the parent knows has poor job prospects, why would they then allow the child to live at home once it is verified that yes, those job prospects are in fact, poor? I doubt that many on here would advocate for not paying for a college education if their child sincerely desired to study a field that was not sought after.
So, the parent pays for a degree with the knowledge that job prospects are poor, and then complains after the fact? How does that make sense? If the parent helps the kids through school, when the prospects are poor afterwards, then the blame must be shared.
Yes I hear it is very rough for law grads out there unless you graduate at the top of your class from a top school, baring that it will be difficult. Still it seems to be a popular trend. In fact the whole "going back to school for masters, 2nd degree in something else" seems to be the go to thing right now. Which often results in the "adult child" living at home with the parents whilst he/she is in grad school, 2nd degree etc...
As for the temp agency I did have some luck in the beginning which I was very happy about, I mean to actually get a call back to have someone interested in you is better than Christmas Morning. However these positions required a full time commitment, a quit school commitment. Certainly if I was not in school I would do it in a heart beat but I am 2 years away from finishing the BSN and I don't want to give that up.
Where are the 3 months or less temp assignments? Surely they are out there.
Yes In fact the whole "going back to school for masters, 2nd degree in something else" seems to be the go to thing right now. Which often results in the "adult child" living at home with the parents whilst he/she is in grad school, 2nd degree etc...
As for the temp agency I did have some luck in the beginning which I was very happy about, I mean to actually get a call back to have someone interested in you is better than Christmas Morning. However these positions required a full time commitment, a quit school commitment. Certainly if I was not in school I would do it in a heart beat but I am 2 years away from finishing the BSN and I don't want to give that up.
Where are the 3 months or less temp assignments? Surely they are out there.
The summer jobs out three are mostly 29 hours a week (to stay under the benefits threshold). They are most at or near minimum wage. My kids have had no problem finding summer jobs - grocery store, Mcdonalds, Pizza deliver or cooking, waiting tables, park maintenance, and a museum villiage of sorts (hard to describe, it is a little town made of old historic buildings).
Yes I hear it is very rough for law grads out there unless you graduate at the top of your class from a top school, baring that it will be difficult. Still it seems to be a popular trend. In fact the whole "going back to school for masters, 2nd degree in something else" seems to be the go to thing right now. Which often results in the "adult child" living at home with the parents whilst he/she is in grad school, 2nd degree etc...
As for the temp agency I did have some luck in the beginning which I was very happy about, I mean to actually get a call back to have someone interested in you is better than Christmas Morning. However these positions required a full time commitment, a quit school commitment. Certainly if I was not in school I would do it in a heart beat but I am 2 years away from finishing the BSN and I don't want to give that up.
Where are the 3 months or less temp assignments? Surely they are out there.
Kids in school are having better luck finding jobs this summer than in the recent past. Many of them are working at the mall folding jeans, serving fast food and other low level retail jobs.
So, the parent pays for a degree with the knowledge that job prospects are poor, and then complains after the fact? How does that make sense? If the parent helps the kids through school, when the prospects are poor afterwards, then the blame must be shared.
"Following one's passion" can be very costly and counter-productive. The art history major that I talked about upthread who ended up living at home after the master's degree is a case in point. When that girl was still an undergraduate I checked with an older Ph.D. in art history who informed me that jobs in art history were terribly hard to get - there were WAY too many graduates in that field - and this was before the recession hit in 2008 which just made things worse.
I informed the parents of the then 21-year-old student of the situation (I didn't know the girl well enough to contact her directly). They pooh-poohed the warning, saying they always encouraged their children to follow their passions. A few years later, master's degree in hand, the princess is living at home for a year and a half with no job at all, in her field or otherwise. Can you say spoiled? Can you say parent-enabled dysfunctionality? I never did ask if the parents passed on my warning to their daughter, as that would be too much like rubbing it in.
Just to bring the story up to date, princess did finally find a part-time job in art which she worked for another year and a half while still living at home before throwing in the towel (i.e., giving up on finding a full time job in her field) and going back to school in another field. The new field is international relations. While I don't know what the job prospects are there, they've got to be better than art history.
Art history gets my vote for being the most useless degree out there. (Yes, I know that's arguable.)
This sounds like a mixed message to me. Once the child has graduated, it's up to them how to make their degree work. If parents are to be involved, it should be at the time the major is chosen. When my sons declared, I asked them what the major meant in terms of future job opportunities. The eldest found a job in his field easily, and the other two have internships that hopefully will lead to the same.
A lot of the comments on here are blaming the parents, when in reality, all we are doing is supporting the goals of our children.
I agree here.
The problem that I often see when a student chooses a major they are wanting only one possible job opportunity when they complete their degree and when that doesn't surface it becomes an all or nothing. What they need to do is realize all the various ways they can utilize that degree.
For instance, just because a person gets a degree in communications doesn't mean they have to go into broadcasting even if that is what they want. A spokesperson with the school district or police department, a retail store manager or bank manager could have all started out with a communications degree and end up putting it to good use in those jobs.
Or a person who gets a law degree doesn't have to become a partner in a firm or own their own firm. They can be the legal consultant for all kinds of companies or even cities.
Broaden the definition of job opportunities and you will have more success.
My family is rife with adult children (nieces, nephews, cousins) who either come home after college and work a part time job while sponging off their parents or adult kids who don't go to college and live at home with or without a job.
This floors me as my siblings and I were raised to be very independent. I don't quite understand how the same people I grew up with now let their kids be so useless.
There is no reason for it. Nothing is wrong with any of these kids. I have one nephew who is going to college this fall and he says he "may not bother to look" for a summer job because he is "leaving in August." Uhhh, yeah. That is what is called a SUMMER job. And my niece is 25 and has only had a job for a few weeks at a time. She goes EVERYWHERE with her mom and is spoiled rotten. I often have to remind myself how old she is because I literally see her as being 12 or 13 due to her behavior and level of independence.
I was grousing about this to a friend who says his youngest sister just graduated from college and has no plans to get an apartment or do anything other than move home with her mom. Is this a generational thing that I just don't get? I am 36, so not that old, but seriously, I do not understand.
If you haven't noticed, the job market is in the toilet. A lot of adults with work experience are working the jobs college students used to work. There is no real excuse for not trying, but there certainly is an excuse for not finding a job right away.
"Following one's passion" can be very costly and counter-productive. The art history major that I talked about upthread who ended up living at home after the master's degree is a case in point. When that girl was still an undergraduate I checked with an older Ph.D. in art history who informed me that jobs in art history were terribly hard to get - there were WAY too many graduates in that field - and this was before the recession hit in 2008 which just made things worse.
I informed the parents of the then 21-year-old student of the situation (I didn't know the girl well enough to contact her directly). They pooh-poohed the warning, saying they always encouraged their children to follow their passions. A few years later, master's degree in hand, the princess is living at home for a year and a half with no job at all, in her field or otherwise. Can you say spoiled? Can you say parent-enabled dysfunctionality? I never did ask if the parents passed on my warning to their daughter, as that would be too much like rubbing it in.
Just to bring the story up to date, princess did finally find a part-time job in art which she worked for another year and a half while still living at home before throwing in the towel (i.e., giving up on finding a full time job in her field) and going back to school in another field. The new field is international relations. While I don't know what the job prospects are there, they've got to be better than art history.
Art history gets my vote for being the most useless degree out there. (Yes, I know that's arguable.)
My daughter was an art history major at UC Santa Cruz and graduated in 2006. She has worked for two museums in Los Angeles since. She found a job at the Autry Center in L.A. a few months after she graduated. On the suggestions of a friend, she found her next job as the registrar-collections manager at USC in the Fisher Art Museum there. The job entailed a good raise and she has very good benefits. So for some people, art history does pay off.
My daughter was an art history major at UC Santa Cruz and graduated in 2006. She has worked for two museums in Los Angeles since. She found a job at the Autry Center in L.A. a few months after she graduated. On the suggestions of a friend, she found her next job as the registrar-collections manager at USC in the Fisher Art Museum there. The job entailed a good raise and she has very good benefits. So for some people, art history does pay off.
I'm glad for that. I didn't mean to imply that there are no jobs at all in art history. Ironically, my conversation with the art history Ph.D. took place in 2006, the same year your daughter graduated. This person taught art history at a small private college in the southeast and she told me of situations where there were hundreds of applicants for an available job, and she told me she was speaking of museum jobs as well as teaching jobs.
Your daughter must have impeccable credentials, recommendations, and interviewing skills. Do you know how many applicants there were for the jobs she landed? By the way, I have been to the Autry Center.
Whether I overstated the case in my post I'm not sure because I'm not an insider in this field, but I think it's fairly clear that it is a crowded field at the very least, so it would be prudent for art history majors to have a "plan B".
Thanks for posting; it's good to hear of happy endings.
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Choosing a major and useless degrees
