Amidst the flurry of school examinations, considerations of higher education, university exams and various other mentally strenuous activities, it seems to me that young people can all too easily get lost in the minutiae of their degrees without giving due to consideration to their long-term career goals. I know many people who by their third years of study, are engaged with subjects at university which are entirely unrelated to their long term career goals. A budding geography student may very well be impressively versed in rock formations and contouring, yet all that information won't be of much use in their future career as a physiologist.<br/><br/>As rambling as that introduction was, the point I'm trying to make is that for all those graduates out there who are terrified to be entering the world of work with no particular career path in mind, they need not fear. In the short term, a university degree will give its students a complex and detailed understanding of a specific area of work. The fact is that most of this information, whilst being invaluable cultural capital and being generally useful to know, it will no doubt be entirely superfluous knowledge when the hypothetical graduates have actually gotten jobs. The skills attained through various other modes of experience at university life are far more likely to serve graduates better in the long run. Involvement in administrative roles in University societies and generally being forced to become socially capable amongst a large group of equally wide-eyed young people, are the kinds of experiences which are invaluable in the long term and can directly lead to better employment opportunities. In order to substantiate my point I am going to momentarily dip into my wealth of nostalgic anecdotes and am going to mention my own mother:<br/><br/>Mum - A culture vulture type English student in the 70's, with a passion for reading and other such artsy pursuits, is now, forty or so years later, employed as a Hospital Design Project Manager. I am as clueless as you are as to what that particular job entails, but her life is a perfect model on which to demonstrate the unpredictability of a graduate's future. Her English degree has by this point led her into a career which is more engineer than intellectual? She explicitly demonstrates the crucial fact that people can always adapt their skills and there is almost always something in the job market which appeals to a certain type of person, regardless of their other interests or history of study.<br/><br/>While we dip in and out of periods of recession and the media collectively delights in the opportunity to publish doom and gloom articles about the inevitable demise of our unemployable generation, it is important to remember that nothing is set in stone. The person with no clear job in mind today, could be running the world tomorrow! Figuratively speaking. On that note, while my current ideal occupation remains to be a teacher, I am not giving up hope that I could well be a vet by my middle age.
