juilletmercredi

I agree that you should take a leave of absence, so you can go home and be with your family and your father. However: 1) If you are pretty sure you don't want to stay in academia, then no, leaving a PhD program won't completely fuck you over - unless there's some other job you want to do that requires a PhD. People leave PhD programs all the time and still have full, productive lives. In fact, it's better to leave now when you've only invested a year into the program than to give it 3 or 4 years and feel exactly the same. 2) No, leaving a program doesn't torch your bridges if your professors are reasonable people and you make it clear that you are leaving because you no longer think a research career is for you. Attrition is a fact of life in PhD programs. But as long as you show yourself to be competent and professional and simply making the best career choice for you, most of the time people will respect you for that. Besides 3) You are the only person who has to live your life. Your old PI might believe you are ruining his reputation; he might get mad. But is that really worth the potential of being miserable for another 3-5+ years? For someone else's approval? (And I'm not saying you WILL be miserable for the next 3-5 years; things may get better. But assuming that you are...don't stay for other people. 4) "I'll feel shitty leaving this place with nothing to show for it after all my hard work (not to mention leaving a good paying job and spending tons of money just to move here, dedicating the best years of my life to working towards this goal)" - Sunk cost fallacy - essentially, don't throw good money (or time) after bad. You've spent a year and considerable resources on this program, sure. But that time and money is already spent. Completing the program or dropping out doesn't change that fact, nor does it get you your time or money back. And the value of that time does not decrease if you drop out, nor does it increase if you stay and finish. A year is a year is a year, regardless of what you do with the next 4 or 5. So, the question is, do you want to be unhappy for 4 more years just because you've already invested a year, or do you want to cut your losses (if you indeed decide that's the right thing) and move on to try to seek happiness elsewhere? Note: This advice is only if you decide leaving is your best option. You may decide to stay for professional reasons, and that's okay, too. My point is that whatever you decide, you should do it because it makes YOU happy and suits YOUR career goals, not the happiness or career goals of your PI or anyone else.

I agree with TakeruK; when I was in graduate school, my signature referred to my graduate student status, not my TA status: Jane Smith Doctoral Student, Underwater Basketweaving Graduate University And I actually did put my email in my signature line. I changed the second line to "Doctoral Candidate" once I advanced to candidacy. (It may have said "PhD Student" and "PhD Candidate," I don't remember. I wouldn't put "TA" in my signature because 1) it's a transient thing, meaning you might have to change your signature a couple times and 2) you want t emphasize your role as a junior colleague studying for a doctoral degree, not just a teaching assistant. Presumably anybody contacting you regarding your TA responsibilities would already know that you are a TA. And what if you get emails from conference organizers, journal editors, fellowship coordinators and other professionals? Wouldn't you rather them see "doctoral student" rather than "Teaching Assistant"?

If you don't know what to do, don't pursue a second master's or get a PhD. The best way to find out what you want to do is, ironically, to pick something and then identify what you like and don't like about it. Then you make a series of career moves until you find something that's relatively satisfying to you. People who feel overwhelmed by the myriad of career options often feel that way because they have a perception that there is one "right" career or job for them, and when they find it, they will reach their passion and feel blissfully happy or something like that. But that's not the case for the majority of people. Many people actually feel pretty "meh" about their jobs. And even the ones who really like their jobs often like the jobs primarily because of the tasks they do every day and their coworkers, or the fact that they can go home every day at 5 pm so they can be with their children or partner, or the fact that their job enables them to live in a city they love or pays them enough that they can keep up their hobbies. Very few people feel abiding passion about their careers, and as you'll see in the comments at the thread I linked, sometimes people who do feel that say they wish they didn't - because then they could separate work from their personal life more easily and leave work at work. A lot of recent grads also feel like they have to end up in their perfect career right away, or fairly soon, but that's also not necessarily true. Many people make a series of lateral moves (or vertical ones) into the position they eventually want. Some people start off in one field only to find out that they really want to be in another (or move there out of pragmatism). With that said, here's what I think you should do: Take a look at some job ads in your field right now. Look at the jobs that have descriptions that seem even mildly interesting to you. What kinds of skills do they ask for? Are there specific kinds of software programs or analysis techniques they want people to know about? What kinds of experiences do they want applicants to have? Use those as a basis for your future plans.While in your MS program, take some classes that seem interesting to you and also teach you some of the skills you saw when you looked at job ads.See if you can find a part-time job, maybe starting second semester, in your field or one close to it in which you can learn some of the skills and get a bit of experience. This is also your opportunity to see what tasks you like to do every day and which ones you would rather not, so you get a feel for what kind of work you might like to do.Visit your university's or department's career center. Many schools have great career centers that have career inventories and counselors on hand to talk you through the process of selecting a career, or set of careers, to aim for. (But take them with a grain of salt; no test is going to be able to tell you the perfect job for you.)Starting probably in late fall of this year, start poking around to find a summer internship. Anything that sounds interesting, do it; you're not looking for perfection, but just the opportunity to identify what you like and don't like and get a little experience.Then, when you're ready to look for jobs next fall, you don't have to start out with the attitude that you are looking for something very specific. Instead, through these prior activities, you'll have gotten yourself down to some key words and titles that you might use as search terms when looking for jobs. It gives you an idea of what you are looking for in the job description and what kinds of titles people who do that stuff have. The key is, try not to think about this as "I am trying to decide what to do with my LIFE!" Think about it as "I'm just trying to find what my next step is," with the knowledge that you can always change directions if you want to. (After all, my training is in public health and psychology with an eye towards academia, and I currently work in applied tech research. And I didn't have to get another degree to do that.) And, I just want to repeat this, because it's important: if you don't know what to do, don't do a second master's or do a PhD. Quite frankly, time is money. You don't want to spend productive years worth income (and retirement savings!) earning a degree that you may not ever need - a PhD especially.

The NRC has rankings in oceanography, atmospheric science, and meteorology: http://chronicle.com/article/NRC-Rankings-Overview-/124750/ MIT, Princeton and CU-Boulder are all listed on there as top 15-20ish programs. MIT seems to be the best reputed, followed by CU-Boulder and then Princeton. But they're all pretty close. UC-Berkeley is not ranked among them. Upon inspection, this seems to be because UC-Berkeley has no coordinated PhD program in atmospheric science, oceanography, or meteorology. They do have an atmospheric sciences center that lists departments, faculty, and courses that are related to atmospheric science. You could, perhaps, get a PhD in Earth and planetary science or chemistry or geography and focus on atmospheric science. (It appears that Berkeley's earth & planetary science program is, predictably, quite good: the NRC estimates their S-rank between 1 and 4.) But there's not a dedicated one in atmospheric science.

It's true that different schools have different policies, and you should ask. However, generally you shouldn't apply to graduate school unless you're relatively sure that you want to attend the following fall. I mean, stuff always happens, but if you are already contemplating whether you actually want to attend next year or the year after, it might be best to wait.

Check out agricultural programs that will get you to your goal and see what their prerequisites are. I'm guessing it will vary depending on what kind of agricultural program you want to attend. For example, Penn State's MS program in soil science says they prefer applicants with an undergraduate major in soil science OR a natural sciences major. They do have some minimum requirements - including 8 credits of biology and 12 credits in agronomy, geology, and plant science. Washington State's MS in agriculture just requires you have a major in a related area. Texas A&M has some toxicology degrees within its college of agriculture (including one called Applied Toxicology and Food Safety) that you would probably be very competitive for. So it depends. However, I will say that regardless, you probably don't need to do a second bachelor's in anything. At most, you probably would just need to complete some prerequisite classes - which you could do part-time as a non-degree student while working. Like even if you wanted to get that MS in soil science at Penn State, it sounds like you would only need to take around 4 classes to have the required prerequisites. At several programs, because of your strong background in chemistry with research experience, you may get admitted as a conditional student and then just take the classes before you start taking graduate classes in the program.

This this this this this. You say that one of the primary reasons that you are transferring out of your current program is because it is lower-ranked and there is not a lot of research going on there - no papers, limited opportunities. However, is transferring to another lower-ranked PhD program going to solve those problems? one reason that PhD programs earn lower ranks is precisely because of the lack of research opportunities compared to programs that are more well-regarded. Ranking isn't everything, of course, but general groupings of programs can sometimes indicate what kinds of research opportunities there are - and how productive faculty members are (although you should certainly check individually). This is particularly important given that it sounds like your wife is ABD! There might be other, better options for you to increase your chances. For example, you could finish your PhD where you already are and them aim to apply for postdocs at well-reputed universities in cities with large clusters of universities (Boston, Research Triangle, Atlanta, etc.) You may then have to postdoc for a while or do more than one postdoc, but postdocs generally pay better than doctoral programs and may lead to a better quality of life than repeating a bunch of work you've basically already completed. Honestly, gunning for a postdoc to sort of elevate you over a lower-ranked PhD program sounds like a much better choice than starting over at a new PhD program. (I have a friend who essentially did this - she went to a PhD program in Germany that she claims was lower-ranked, so she spent several years as a postdoc and then research associate at the university I was a graduate student - more than is customary in my field. She got two great offers last year, and took one.) Your career goals are important here, too. Do you and your wife both want academia? If so, and you already have a two-body problem complicating matters, you're going to frankly want to go to the best-ranked program you can (with the best advisor, of course). It'll give you more flexibility on the back end to try to solve that two-body problem if you are both applying to academic jobs in the same areas.

1. I think this depends on what university it is. In my field (psychology), if a person gets all three degrees at Stanford, Michigan, UCLA, or Princeton, that would be completely understandable and I don't think anyone would care. Those are top 10 programs in my field, and I've seen successful professors who got all 3 degrees at those kinds of places. Another example would be if someone got their BA at UCSB and then stayed on to get their PhD there and work with Brenda Major. She's huge in my field, and her influence would probably outweigh attending there - and also, it's a top 15 program. There are other ways to show scholarly breadth and independence, like collaborations, networking, and postdocs. Staying at the same university becomes more of a problem if it's not clear why you stayed - you attended an undergrad with a middling PhD program or stayed but worked with a professor who was not a good fit for your interests. 4. I wish programs would be MUCH more explicit about this in the beginning, particularly for people who are coming from undergrad or only had a small gap between undergrad and grad school. While I theoretically realized this when I started, I didn't realize the extent that it went to - that I'd have to ask my advisor to get on papers I was interested in rather than him offering the chance; that I'd have to seek out my own opportunities for publishing and networking; that I'd basically have to design my own program; that a lot of the job-hunting and professional development skills were on me. Once I did realize that I got into full gear, but it took me a little while, and I could've started publishing much earlier had I realized that.

When I was in college I - sort of accidentally - applied to be a research assistant to a professor in my department. She was doing research on child motor development and I was interested in being a school counselor, so I thought it was a good match to prep for grad school. Well, I fell in love with research, and she encouraged me to apply for this undergraduate fellowship funded by the NIMH. I got into it. It was a 2-year program that focused on funneling more underrepresented minority group members into research on mental health; I was paired up with a research mentor and did 15 hours of research a week, and also heard speakers and took classes and went to conferences. I started doing some work on the interface between mental health and sexual health/HIV, and I wanted to study that and design school-based HIV prevention programs that focused on tenets of psychology and mental health to change behavior, so I decided to get a master's in public health and then a PhD in psychology. But then I found this perfect PhD program that was a hybrid of public health and psychology, so I went there instead. (But now I don't work in public health anymore, although I still do psychological research.) Interestingly I also had a hard time "choosing" per se. But that's because I had a specific career goal and research problem that could be addressed from a variety of different angles in different programs - psychology, public health, social/public policy, public administration, even sociology. I focused on psychology and public health because I knew the most about these two fields and knew that the theories and methods from them were what I wanted to use in my research and my career, but had I attended an MPH program and moved onto the PhD applying phase the way I originally intended, I probably would've applied to a few social policy/public policy/public administration programs, too (specifically Brandeis's social policy program, and Princeton has a joint program in psychology and policy). Usually I tell students to let their interests and career goals guide them. You have to have concrete interests and a career goal before you go to graduate school, because as TakeruK said, it's not about exploring - it's about preparing for a very specific career (or set of careers). School counseling is a good goal to have - it's concrete, there are specific steps you have to take to pursue it.

I have been known to eat grapes for dinner, eat ice cream straight from the carton, drink the orange juice from the bottle, eat dinner at 12 midnight, wake up in the middle of the night and eat candy...I do so many food-related things that make me not-an-adult. But hey, I live by myself, no one cares. LOL. But I pay my bills! I drive a car! I get to work on time!

No, getting a second master's from a less-prestigious university won't eliminate you from consideration at PhD programs. Many people get their first (and only) master's from less-prestigious universities and go to top PhD programs; where you get your master's from doesn't matter as much as what you do there. However, taking several years away from literary scholarship to teach may impact your ability to get into PhD programs. Someone in English or a humanities field could probably speak to that better than me.

On the graduate level, underrepresented minority status doesn't really matter as much in admissions. It's kind of a "nice to have" but doesn't really play the tipping point in getting you in or anything. You wouldn't really mention your "diversity" in your statement of purpose or the application unprompted; I'm African American, and I certanly didn't mention it in mine. Instead, you discuss your professional and academic qualifications for the program. The only time this would come up is in a diversity statement if one is requested, but most programs don't ask for that. It might matter for fellowships and funding, but those sources usually have very specific requirements that will make it clear. (I have a friend who is Brazilian, but of European descent. She considers herself Hispanic/Latina. She is eligible for some fellowships for underrepresented minorities, but not others.)

I got my PhD from SMS at Columbia. Personally, I would also advise a retake. I know at least for the PhD in SMS at Columbia, you need to be accepted by both the SMS department and the other social science department you apply to. Your GRE scores would be on the low side. I'm not as familiar with the other programs, but those are all top-ranked schools of public health and a higher GRE could only benefit you.

Even if you don't want to leave California long-term, you could get your degree elsewhere and return to work. When people here suggest social work, I'm pretty certain they are referring to studying clinical social work (which is the provision of counseling and therapy services) and becoming a licensed clinical social worker. LCSWs provide direct therapy in much the same manner that other professional counselors, psychologists, and therapists do - in fact, a social worker friend informed me that most practicing therapists are actually social workers by training. It's also probably the non-doctoral degree with the best job prospects, compared to an MFT or professional counseling degree. I prefer doing PsyD since I really don't want my main focus to be on research. There are PhD programs in which your main focus isn't on research. Many (dare I say most?) clinical psychology programs are actually focused on turning out competent practitioners who also know how to do research primarily so they can be excellent consumers of it, and graduate classes that largely go into practice.

I read some stuff online that said PsyD's are looked at as not being "real" degrees in Psychology. Is that baloney? Well, it's "baloney" that PsyDs are not real degrees in psychology, but it is not "baloney" that some people believe PsyDs are not real degrees in psychology. The PsyD is a more recent model that was developed, IIRC, in the 1970s-1980s to address people just like you - folks who wanted a doctoral-level degree in psychology to do care provision with people without learning to become a producer of research. A lot of old heads in the field are skeptical about PsyD programs (my introduction to them in my very first psychology class was my professor writing it on the board, then writing a big red X over it, categorically telling all of us not to do them at all). But there are some very reputable PsyD programs that are APA-accredited and will lead you to your goal of therapy with individuals and families. However, the vast majority of them are not funded. In addition to Baylor, James Madison offers all their students three years of TA/GA support. Their PsyD is a combined clinical/school program. Is there any benefit to having a doctorate versus a masters?(I don't know why not just MFT, a Doctorate sounds better but does it pay better too?) Generally speaking there are two main benefits: scope of practice and salary. Generally speaking, doctorally-prepared psychologists are the only ones who can legally call themselves "psychologists", and in many states are the only therapists who can work under the legal definition of "independently." They also have higher overall salaries. But that's speaking really generally. A psychologist in rural Oklahoma working with Native American families might make less money than a licensed clinical social worker in Seattle working with upper-middle-class patients. A MFT who has their own practice and only occasionally consults with a psychologist might feel more independent than a clinical psychologist working at a VA hospital. The state definition of non-independence may require a collaborative relationship with a psychologist - that doesn't mean that one will be breathing down your neck at sessions, but may simply mean that you check in with one once a week or a few times a month to discuss complex cases. And depending on what non-doctoral degree you get, you might not have to do this at all (I believe that LCSWs can practice independently in all states, but check that to be sure.) I can't afford to take out any more loans! Any program you do that leads to licensure in professional therapy/counseling/psychology work will most likely require some loan debt, unless you get a PhD in clinical or counseling psychology that is fully funded. Most PhDs in clinical and counseling are fully funded, but they come with the caveat that they tend to be more research-focused and will require participation in research and a research-based dissertation. A PsyD will be most expensive, in that they are typically 3 years of coursework and 1 year of an internship. But even an MFT, MSW, or master's in professional counseling will probably require some debt. There are very few scholarships or non-repayable aid for programs in this field, so you'd have to borrow to cover costs. The cheapest way to do it is to get a master's in one of those latter three fields from a public university in the state where you're a resident. One option, if you are interested in serving in the military for a few years, is applying for the Health Professionals Scholarship Program through one of the branches. The Army and Navy will pay for clinical or counseling psych; the Air Force is a little more vague about what they cover but you can always check with a recruiter to find out for sure.

^Going to co-sign all of the above. Take it easy in your first semester - your first year, even. I agree with seeing if you can do the internship in the summer or maybe during your second year.

1) Even if we could predict your chances of admission to graduate programs, simply providing your GRE score is not enough information to make that determination. 2) If you provided more information (like undergrad GPA, research/work experience) some folks may be able to give you an idea of whether you are competitive for admission, but nobody can tell you whether or not you can get in. That's dependent on a lot of factors outside your control (like who you are competing with in a particular year). 3) Did you just start at UNCC? Why do you want to transfer already? You probably wouldn't do a "transfer" so much as just applying to start over somewhere new.

I was coming in to say this. People who say that they are routinely working 12-16 hour days are, almost universally, not actually working 12-16 hours. There's ample research showing this: people simply cannot work 80-hour weeks for months on end without breaking down physically and/or mentally. Generally, folks are doing 6-8 hours of productive work and there's a lot of stuff in between that: procrastination, travel time, eating, daydreaming, conversations with peers, meetings, drifting off, surfing the web, etc. You don't need to work 12-16 hour days to be TT at an R1, even at Harvard. (And I have some friends who have gotten TT jobs at some elite places. They worked a lot...but not 16-hour days, every day, for months.) I did the very exercise that rising_star advocates and realized that not only was I certainly not working 10-12 hours a day as I thought...I was also not organizing my time in an efficient way. That gave me the appearance of working all the time but made me unhappy, because I didn't have focused time to spend on my hobbies. So instead, I scheduled blocks of time that totaled about 6-8 hours a day (10 if I really needed to get something done), and left myself some unstructured time to do hobbies. I was so much more productive when I did this, because I had some non-work time to look forward to and really got to recharge with my friends and personal hobbies - and I scheduled time for exercise, which was SO important. (Note, though, that I did this after I had finished coursework and most effectively during my ABD stage. You WILL feel like you are working all the time when you are still taking courses.) I would say that my real work time during the PhD was about 40 to 60 hours a week. More in the beginning of the program, less towards the end. And I came out with four publications, an NSF, an award for my dissertation, and a postdoc at an R1 that led to many R1 TT positions, so I wasn't a slouch. (I then decided not to go into academia, but I have a very good non-academic research job at a well-known company.) 8-6 M-F plus about 6 hours or so on the weekends sounds completely doable for a PhD program in social psychology, even if your goal is TT at an R1, as long as that 8-6 time is actually being used for productive work rather than fooling around.

Yes, it's very common to put manuscripts in preparation on your CV. However, I have heard it recommended that you don't put a manuscript in prep on your CV unless you have a draft in some form that you can send to someone who requests it, or at least talk intelligently about it. In other words, you wouldn't have a manuscript listed as "in prep" if you've only started thinking about the paper.

Oh yup. Things I did for extra money in graduate school: Teaching assistant (wasn't required to by my funding, so I got paid extra money, and I did some for summer programs and such which also paid extra)Statistical data analysisInternship at a market research firmGraduate hall director for residential lifeWorked in the library assisting undergrads with statistics projects and teaching workshopsThey were a mix of on-campus and off-campus jobs. A good thing to do is try to find work that will directly relate to something you might want to do after the grad degree. That market research internship directly related (and indirectly led) to me getting the non-academic job I have now, post-graduation. The experience as a hall director made me interested in student services jobs at colleges and universities. Basically, I was interested in different types of non-academic work, and I used these part-time opportunities to explore those types of work.

I think those fields are related enough that the physics research experience can help you get into robotics programs, particularly if you can articulate well why you want to go into robotics.

I think it depends on where you want to work, what you want to do, and what you mean by "abroad." Even if you plan to return to the Netherlands, there are lots of MBA and other business programs that are well-known internationally. A Harvard or Wharton MBA is likely to be able to find work anywhere in the world, and I'm pretty sure there are equivalent programs in the UK and maybe other western European countries. However, the flip isn't necessarily true - if you wanted to come work in the U.S., an MBA from a Dutch program might be less recognizable. Some programs may also have special concentrations that appeal to you.

I know a couple of electrical engineers who work in software engineering - it seems to be a pretty common career path for EE majors, actually. Are you doing a specific type of software engineering that sets you apart? Anyway, typically PhD programs - and especially top ones - require or strongly recommend their applicants to have had some research experience. Basically, they want to be sure that you know what you're getting yourself into and are not going to discover after a year or two that you really hate research. Also, they're going to want PhD students in their labs who are going to be helpful - help them get out publications and grants. At any rate, one strategy is to take a look at your role at Visa and emphasize the parts that are research-related or research-transferable, and write about those in the statement of purpose. Also, write compellingly about the reason you are taking this "hard turn towards research." I'm assuming you didn't just wake up one day and decide to become a researcher; what has motivated your desired career change?

My husband, originally a math major, also "hated stats" the first time he took statistics and probability. He decided to give it another go and changed his major to stats after that. The major reason, according to him, is he loved the varied applications of statistics. He wasn't a huge fan of the sort of abstract nature of his math major before that; he really wanted to do more applied, practical work, and stats was the way for him. However, there are many other areas of math that can be applied besides statistics. I think statistics is probably important for most applied mathematicians to know in some sense, but there are applied mathematicians that don't use much if any statistics on a regular basis. Also, let's walk it back a bit. If you don't know what you want to do, why are you hoping to get a PhD in math? Math is a pretty abstract/theoretical field - there are more applied portions of it, of course, but the kind of math people study in graduate school generally isn't. Even in applied fields, a PhD is often not the degree you want if you really want to "do" something. My PhD is in public health - which sounds very applied, until I realized into the program that it mostly encourages doing research, and not the on-the-ground kind of public health work people think of when they think of public health. A PhD is a research degree; if you don't want a career as a researcher (or aren't sure that you do), then you shouldn't get a PhD in math. Most of what you want to do can probably be achieved with a BA or MA in math, applied math, statistics, or some related field. Here are some applied areas you can enter: Epidemiology (math + public health) Biostatistics (statistics + health/medicine) Bioinformatics (statistics/math + health/medicine/biomedical science + computer science) Meteorology/atmospheric science (math + atmospheric science) Quantitative psychology (math/statistics + psychology) Mathematician position in the federal government (do a search for "mathematician" on USAJOBS) Medical physics (more physics than math, but still) Check out this website on careers in math. Also, "making the world a better place" is a broadly interpreted statement and a lot of traditional jobs (including in big corporations in finance and accounting) involve work that makes the world a better place or at least some necessary function for humanity. For example, some finance jobs may involve helping to improve the economies of developing nations, or developing a microfinance program for low-income laborers, or providing support and financing to nonprofit organizations. Nonprofits, NGOs, governments, hospitals and clinics need people in their finance and accounting departments just like large corporations do. And pharmaceutical companies (where many biostatisticians work) create drugs that help millions; there are some non-profit pharmaceutical companies, and even many of the for-profit ones do pro bono work. On the flip side, make sure that you avoid romanticizing nonprofit or helping professions kind of work, because a lot of it is very different from what you might expect. For example, in medicine, a lot of healthcare provision and research organizations these days are very large corporations, and their primary goal might be to make money. A lot of academic and nonprofit medical research is directed by the winds of NIH funding, which is competitive and makes the atmosphere different from what you might otherwise expect. Some non-profits are poorly run and their employees not well compensated for their work (and I don't mean "I can't buy a yacht" well-compensated; I mean "I'm struggling to pay my rent this month").

I see that this is essentially a stealth ad, but I'm going to answer it anyway. I have several issues with that kind of statement, and his story as a whole. 1) I don't read academic journals in my free time. That doesn't mean I'm not a good researcher and that I don't like the work. I've got a friend who's a speech-language pathologist, but she doesn't do volunteer speech therapy on the weekends. Another friend does public health education work and she doesn't do that for free; most statisticians I know don't do analysis in their free time; nurses don't always help sick people or read nursing journals in their free time; accountants don't often do people's taxes for fun. In fact, none of the friends I know who are happy or content in their careers spend their precious free time on the career. Work is work. It's something that you get paid to do so that you can have a roof over your head and eat food; what you do in your free time, and whether you'd enjoy doing what you do at work for free as a hobby, is irrelevant to whether a career path is right for you. (If so many people were willing to do it for free, then why would my job ever pay me money to do it?) In fact, only a very lucky few get to "do what they love" at work, and sometimes doing what you love burns you out on that passion. 2) I wish that we as a culture would get away from the idea of a "dream job", or at least that we would help college graduates understand that landing your dream job straight from college is rare. We've all got to pay our dues first. I also wish we'd get away from the idea that you can find what you love to do and get someone to pay you to do it. There are very few jobs out there like that, and the ones that do exist are highly competitive (and probably don't pay all that much, since they pay you in "passion"). There's no secret sauce for college graduates who are on a career trajectory that they don't like. You progress through your career much like other people - you work jobs, you figure out what you like and you don't like, and you make a series of career moves to get yourself into a good place where you like most (but not all) of what you do every day. You may never be passionate about the role that you play, but you might enjoy the work and your coworkers and appreciate the company and its benefits. I love these Ask a Manager threads for that reason: I feel "meh" about working "Do what you love" is not great advice Why you shouldn't follow your passion I think this will actually make recent college graduates happier, because once they realize that they can be content doing a wide variety of things and they don't need to be consumed with passion every day at work, they'll settle in and find the good in what they do. 3) Not everyone has dreamed of starting their own company. I have not, not once. I like working for other people. I like the security of an established company with benefits and procedures for taking time off and some brand recognition. I like working essentially 9 to 5. I don't want to manage all of the business aspects of a new start-up; I just want to do my job. The vast majority of people are like that, and should be. There can only be so many companies; at some point, there need to be employees for these companies. Every company will, eventually, need an accountant and an HR department and IT. What I don't like is the encouragement for nearly all college grads to start something themselves if they can't find a job. They hear all the sexy stories of Facebook, Snapchat, and these other billion-dollar former start-ups. They DON'T hear the stories of the failed start-ups that have left their founders poor. And not that failing is bad - it's okay to have a failed start-up, and being the CEO of a company can teach you a lot in a very short amount of time. But I think that kind of work should be left for the people who really, really want to do it - who don't mind living and breathing their work most of their waking hours, who have a deep craving to completely own and direct something of their own, who feel constrained and stifled by a normal 9-to-5 working environment (or its permutations - lots of jobs have flexible hours). There are a few recent grads who will be like that and the rest probably need to get a traditional job - or, at the least, work for someone else who is starting a start-up.