You Majored in What? (12 page)

• For every problem you identify, see if you can come up with three different solutions.

• Think over a time when a door closed, when you didn’t get what you wanted. How did you handle it? What did you do instead?

On a scale of 1 to 10, how would you rank your use of the problem-solving mindset?

If you were going to tell an employer about your strength in this area, what example(s) would you use?
__________________________________________________
__________________________________________________
__________________________________________________
__________________________________________________
__________________________________________________

Wow! That was a lot to think about. This may have been a difficult chapter for you to work through, but students who have taken the time to analyze their mindsets and actively develop them have found the results invaluable when interviewing for jobs. And if you haven’t already, be sure to return to your Wandering Map and list the thinking skills you’ve honed over the years. We’ll revisit the knowledge you’ve gained in this chapter when we cover interviewing in Chapter 11. In the meantime, keep thinking about the mindsets you’re developing and using. They will come in handy very soon.

Take one more look through the ten mindsets and answer the following questions:

Which mindsets do I use the most?
__________________________________________________
__________________________________________________
__________________________________________________

Do I see any potential problems with the patterns of my mindsets?
__________________________________________________
__________________________________________________
__________________________________________________

Which mindsets would I like to develop?
__________________________________________________
__________________________________________________
__________________________________________________

What actions can I take in the next twenty-four hours to start developing new mindsets?
__________________________________________________
__________________________________________________
__________________________________________________

WISDOM BUILDERS

MAJORS AND MINDSETS

If you’ve already selected a major, take a minute to think about how it has influenced you. What mindsets do you use the most in your major? What topics do you tend to study? Do you look at situations or information differently from other majors?

Different majors emphasize different thinking skills. Some teach you to analyze and view things from a specific perspective; others teach you a variety of perspectives. Some emphasize the scientific model and are more rational and logical in their approach; others emphasize perception or creativity.

If you haven’t selected a major, what major might fit the way you tend to think?
Instead of selecting a major based on career options (because you now know that’s not the best idea), have you considered selecting it based on the thinking skills you’d like to develop or strengthen?

Just as an experiment, let’s take the movie
Good Will Hunting.
How might different majors perceive that film? What aspects might they notice?

Here are some possibilities:

• Psychology majors might focus on the therapeutic interactions between Will and his psychologist or the diagnosis of his condition.

• Economics majors might take notice of the class structure of Boston and the economic challenges for the working class to acquire a college education.

• English majors might focus on the story structure, the plot, or the character development.

• Anthropology majors might want to analyze the different subcultures that make up Boston: the clothing they wear; their different speech patterns, their relative acceptance into society.

• Math majors might be interested in the formulas and problems Will is solving.

You Majored in
What?

How is your major your mindset? What do you notice about current events or other subjects that reflect the major you’ve studied?

WORDS CREATE WORLDS

Did you know that changing your vocabulary can change your thinking? The language you use in any situation has the power to affect your perception of a situation. Imagine you are describing something as “a complete disaster.” What do you picture in your mind? Now, describe the same situation as “annoying.” Big difference, huh?

We often use language that inflates or exaggerates to make something more interesting than it really is. We describe everyday things as “amazing” or small events as “miracles.” While those words won’t likely hurt your everyday experiences, changing some words can help you clarify your feelings about a situation. For instance, the word
should
. How often do you use that word, particularly in relation to the job search—as in “I should go to medical school”?

Here’s an experiment: every time you would normally say “should,” change it to “want to.” So now you say, “I want to go to medical school.” That’s a very different sentence and much more powerful. It allows you to stop and think: do I really want to go to medical school? And if you do, you may feel more motivated now because it’s something you want, not something you have to do. Conversely, maybe when you word the sentence that way, you don’t actually want to go to medical school.

Here are some other changes to try:

• Change
can’t
to
won’t.
Instead of saying, “I’d like to look for a job, but I can’t do it right now,” try saying “I’d like to look for a job, but I won’t do it right now.” This may be a little harder to acknowledge, but it’s honest, and you can decide if you really are choosing not to do something.

• Change
but
to
and.
Maybe you’ve said, “I’d like to look for a job, but I’m taking a really heavy course load right now.” This sounds reasonable, doesn’t it—after all, you’re very busy. It’s a good excuse. But let’s reframe the statement with one simple change: “I’d like to look for a job, and I’m taking a really heavy course load right now.” Do you see how that simple use of the word
and
opens up the statement to possible solutions? The first statement closes off any chance of change or problem solving. It also draws into question whether it’s really true that you’d like to look for a job or if you’re looking for excuses. The second one accepts that you’d like to look for a job and you also have a challenge. You can then start thinking about ways to solve that problem.

• Take a moment to use your reflective thinking skills and examine how often you have connected the words
should, but, can’t,
and
must
to your job search.

MAKE YOUR EDUCATION RELEVANT
TO ANY EMPLOYER

You know, I have this crazy philosophy that your grades should represent your grasp of the material and not your negotiating skills, which are amazing, by the way.

—GREG KINNEAR AS PROFESSOR ALCOTT
IN LOSER

Did you know that your love of learning could make you a valuable employee? Wise college students are curious—always seeking new information, new ideas, and answers to questions. Employees who value learning will read more about the field in which they are working, will attend and present at conferences, will develop new ideas, and will create value for their employers throughout their careers. Remember the “don’t make me think” philosophy from Chapter 3? Do you feel as if you have absorbed a lot of knowledge and information about obscure topics and still aren’t sure of their value? On the contrary, your academic experiences (regardless of your major) are at the core of your career planning and development. In the classroom you have had the opportunity to acquire knowledge, connect with professors, learn valuable skills, and become exposed to new ideas and experiences you haven’t even considered.
Your major is not your end goal; it’s a series of classes that will help you accomplish your goal.

Once again, this chapter might seem unusual for a career book. If you’re tempted to skip it because you’ve finished your education, don’t. This chapter is designed to assist you with making sense of and getting the most from your education whether you are in your first semester of college, your last, or even if you’ve graduated. Considering that classes are the primary source of a college education, it’s ironic that they are disposed of so easily in the career-advising process. In this chapter we’re going to do an in-depth analysis of your classroom experience and examine the skills and knowledge you have acquired from classes so far and the classes you would like to take prior to graduation.

Your classes represent the classic point attractors in chaos theory. They have captured your attention, generated excitement, and are interesting, but they can also be distracting—particularly if you’re not quite sure what you can do with them. Many college students dismiss their education for its presumed lack of marketability. They begin their sentences with apologies, such as “Although I’m not a business major, . . .” or “Even though I haven’t taken any courses in. . . .” This approach virtually guarantees that you will not be taken seriously in the job market and that your potential will never be fully realized. You must have absolute confidence in your degree and your ability to apply it to the marketplace if you’re going to persuade employers to hire you. So as we start examining your education, one rule is required:
no apologies, no regrets, no “if only’s,” and no “I should haves”
when it comes to your education.

Students select their majors for all sorts of reasons. Why did you select yours? At best it was because you enjoyed the professors and what you were learning, but life isn’t always that simple. You might have been prevented from pursuing your desired major because it was overcrowded, or your grades weren’t strong enough. Maybe you wanted to pursue a particular major but were turned off by its requirements—foreign language or math courses, for example. But now you’re starting to wish you had bitten the bullet and taken those tough classes so you could be in a more competitive position for a job. Perhaps you selected a major that doesn’t seem to have a direct career plan or one where the job market is saturated. Maybe you’re looking at the list of recruiters coming to your career center and all you see are employers seeking a major you didn’t take.

None of that matters. Remember chaos theory: assess what you currently know, what you don’t know, and what you can learn. After all, you are where you are. Instead of focusing on what you didn’t get, what knowledge/learning have you acquired? What else would you like to learn before you leave college? And just because you’ve already graduated doesn’t mean you can’t mine your classes for what you learned as well as find new opportunities to learn. And you don’t have to learn everything through your classes. Chapter 8 will help you find ways to develop even more knowledge outside the classroom.

When taking classes, most students focus on the present moment—a “what do I need to know to pass the class” approach. You’re focusing on the subject matter to pass a test or write a paper and likely not thinking beyond that. You don’t see a connection between what you’re learning and how that knowledge might be used. You may have even discovered that because your major isn’t immediately understood by relatives or friends who took more “practical” subjects in college, it’s ridiculed. Liberal arts majors in particular have become the ninety-eight-pound weaklings of the education field, beaten up by the public and media.

But then, last time I checked, this “bracketology” business wasn’t easy for anyone. I read the other day that there were 18,446,744, 073,709,551,616 possible combinations for filling out a 64-team bracket. For the liberal-arts majors in the crowd, that’s, like, a lot.

—JIM ARMSTRONG,
DENVER POST

Students in preprofessional majors like accounting are told from day one that their education is relevant to the workplace and are encouraged to think accordingly—constantly applying their theories and knowledge to the workplace. If you took a less career-oriented major, you have not received this same encouragement. In fact, your professors may never have said a word about what you could actually do with the knowledge you were acquiring. If that’s your situation, you have some catching up to do. Conversely, those of you who took preprofessional majors like advertising or marketing may be finding that there aren’t enough jobs in the field to support the number of majors. When the first question you’re asked in an interview for a position in banking is “You’re an advertising major. Why aren’t you interviewing for an advertising job?” suddenly your “practical” major seems like a liability. Even management majors can struggle in the job search if they feel they’re always competing with finance or accounting majors. In many ways, a management major could be considered the liberal arts of the business school.