So, last week, Centre College hosted a program were successful alumni came to campus to have “speed networking” dates with us job-worried students. There were a couple who piqued my interest; a top marketing guy at Jack Daniel’s and another guy who was a deputy chief of staff for a Senator and worked on a presidential campaign. And the cool part was all these guys were no older than 35, with most being under 30.
As I was uninterested in most of the careers represented, I asked the alumni for tips in getting a student’s foot in the proverbial career door. There was one common theme that ran through all their experiences; that Centre doesn’t narrow down your possibilities, but expands them. This may seem like an obvious quality to any higher education, but it is more complicated when further analyzed. At a state school, education tends to track you into a career: education, business, etc. My beloved liberal arts education is education at its core, and not glorified job training. Our core and major classes overlap to an incredible degree, allowing our interests to expand and future to open up. Settling on one clear path, especially for me, my major, and my career field, seems impossible right now. My interests range from camp to campaigns to the legislature to bureaucracies to public opinion to marketing at any given moment. I only have so long to be a nomad (as politics requires to a degree) before I want to settle down with a family. I have to make the most of it, and try to figure out where to start now.
But one more summer for me, and not my career, is is in store.
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