Before transferring into the University of Illinois I went to a community college. I was "forced" to go there because my parents decided that they didn't want to pay for my tuition so I had to pick up a full time job and attend a community school. Senior year of high school is when I thought of this plan in order to transfer into the University of Illinois, so I would say that I've had the future in mind since high school.
After attending that community school for two years I had accumulated enough money to pay my tuition at the University of Illinois for my last two years without taking out loans, meaning no debt after college. My main motivation for this was seeing my older brother basically do the same at a private school but with far more scholarships than me and without going to community college. Seeing him support himself for four full years was quite inspiring, ultimately making me realize that one day I would do the same. Senior year of high school came and I was extremely interested in my AP Economics class and ended up getting a 5 which made me even more interested in majoring in economics. When I decided on majoring in economics and realized that I would have to do the same thing as my oldest brother, I knew I needed to plan for the future, so instead of just getting a job I decided that going to community college would be the smartest thing to do. While there I researched the required classes in order to transfer into the University of Illinois so I took all my gen eds there so that I could mainly focus on economics courses here.
As far as summer activities and clubs/organizations go I was not able to plan ahead because as I previously mentioned, I worked a full time job while going to school for my first two years. This is one consequence of wanting to graduate with no debt. Had I not taken one of my main priorities into consideration (no debt after college) and taken out loans, I would have had more time to get involved in organizations and activities, ultimately making it easier for me to get an internship. This is a dichotomy that I struggled with the first two years of college. I regret working full time and not taking out loans to a small extent, but I was planning for the future. Although simultaneously I was not planning for the future because an internship is crucial in getting a good job after college.
Watching my oldest brother go through a small private college near my hometown and struggling to find a job after graduating in 2010 was a hard thing for me to process. He doubled majored in chemistry and education and double minored in biology and Spanish literature, yet it took him 3 years to find a job in his field. Seeing that was unsettling. Today I still wonder how long it'll take me to find a job as an analyst, which means that I haven't really planned ahead enough. However, he did graduate 2 years after the 2008 recession so the unemployment rate was high. Now that the unemployment rate has gone down significantly since then I have more hope in a career as an analyst.
All in all, I would say that I have planned for the future to the best of my ability instead of focusing on the here and now.
You are the first student to mention something I've written in my comments on several other posts. The timing of when you graduate matters and it is something largely out of your control. Students who graduates in 2009 or 2010 had it rough. Many ended up living at home after graduation because, like your brother, they had a hard time find work.
ReplyDeleteThe pattern that you describe - community college first followed by junior and senior year at the U of I - is now an increasingly common path, pretty much for the reasons you articulated. You must have had a really good summer job and/or gotten some scholarship to offset tuition, not to rack up any debt for college. In that way you may be a little different than the others. In any even, I wonder how well it works academically.
My sense is that many students during the freshman year have a hard time making the adjustment - a combination of actually being homesick and finding the college classes much harder than high school - even the AP classes in high school. But they have time to adjust to the college rhythms after that. If kids like you who have gone to Community College first have similar adjustment issues that first semester as a junior, that must be tougher because the non-transfer students aren't in the same boat. In any event, I don't know that there is research on this but it seems to me like quite an interesting question to investigate.
I didn't fully understand your comment about the internship. Were you saying that you didn't have one this past summer? If so, I wonder what the best path for you is moving forward. Do you try to graduate in the spring? Or do you try for an internship this summer and only graduate after the fall? That would slow things down but maybe you land a better job that way. I don't know. I wonder if students like you get sufficient advice on these matters and if you know where to find out the appropriate information to guide such a decision.
Similar to what Professor Arvan originally wrote, I'm glad you mentioned where our economy was at the time of your brother's years of unemployment. My original thought when reading your post was initially was why you would want to follow in your brother's footsteps if he was waiting for a job for three years. Granted, choice of majors and many other factors go into job employment, but that was just my initial reaction.
ReplyDeleteIt's kind of funny how you played around a little with the idea of "I was planning for the future...although simultaneously I was not planning for the future..." This is a great example of weighing the opportunity costs at that specific time in your life. Do you feel like if you had taken the other route, getting an internship instead of a full time job, that you'd be regretting that decision now. Coming out of college without any student loans is a huge plus, but it's always in the back of our heads if we've made the right decisions in our past.
Regarding the 2008 recession, it is interesting to look at risk in the job market during this time period. When unemployment spiked so high it was obviously an increasingly competitive job market, with fewer jobs being available. This known risk in competing for a different job led to a decrease in career fluidity. Our generation, growing up through this recession, has developed a more career focused view on education due to seeing the hardships people faced during that time period.
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