What's A Millennial To Do?

This young fellow shows up in my office the other day, all bright-eyed and bushy-haired. Is about to graduate from a fine and sufficiently prestigious college and is in the full flush of panic that afflicts kids these days when they actually attain the freedom they have dreamed of for so long. I guess the days when guys honked around for a couple of years after graduation are gone. Everybody’'s got to get on a career track right away. I suppose that’'s okay. But I do find it a little dispiriting to look at the shiny, squeaky face of some 22-year-old aspirant as they tell me, "“I want to go into Marketing!”"

The truth is, great careers don'’t always result just because people have hit the rails from the get-go. Bill Gates started in a garage. Howard Hughes flew planes. Musicians and physicists start young at their chosen profession, but that'’s because, frankly, they probably could no't do anything else. I'’d like to think that a person should have some time to figure out what they want to do in life, and while they do that they should endure a succession of demeaning jobs. But I could be wrong. I can'’t say that I got much out of driving that cab in Boston for a year, except for a bunch of weird stories.

Anyhow, there'’s this hopeful individual sitting in front of me and he'’s looking for career advice. He majored in one of the fine arts and plans to abandon that immediately and go into a career of some kind. The question is, what? And what the hell am I supposed to tell him? Let'’s look at the options:

• Financial: Ha! One day, there may be jobs again. But now? Private equity has dried up. The banks are bleeding profusely from virtually every orifice. Would you advise an ambitious, thoughtful person to go anywhere near a bank of any sort at this time?

• Automotive: Nope.

• Advertising: It'’s a dog’s game to begin with. You'’re old at 35. Everybody’'s consolidated up the wazoo. Perhaps there are small, creative firms looking for a bright and inexperienced young face, but most people I know in this field are pressurized, desperate and very, very tired of the hamster wheel.

• Public Relations: Would you tell a person on the brink of all the excitement life has to offer to go into public relations?

• Business School: Would you tell a person on the brink of all the excitement life has to offer to go to business school?

• Journalism: Possibly. The money is bad and it saps your spirit, writing incessantly about things that are assigned to you, rather than stuff you dream up yourself. Also, many newspapers are folding and news is being commoditized to the point where papers are 90% wire stories. Not to mention that something is rotten in the state of Journalism, as it veers more closely every day to the brink of entertainment reporting and gossip.

• Media: Yeah, but as what? An entry-level droid taking some guy his coffee? Actually, that job is now taken by a 32-year-old manager who’s been around for six years and does 12 other functions. There is now not only NO free lunch, there may not be time for lunch at all.
  

Wherever you go, the bottom crustacean on the food chain usually has to sit around getting the lobster immediately above him a cup of coffee. I see kids sitting at desks in the hope that one day they will get to be something that means something to them.

Here'’s my view. God created youth for people to do what they wanted to do. When you get a little bit older, life closes in on you and, caught in a variety of strictures produced by our ambitions, desires and needs, we each take on responsibilities that require us to do a bunch of stuff we don’'t wanna. By so doing, we get cars and kids and spouses and computer hardware (AAPL). But if we don'’t blow it out for the first five or six years of our tenure as adults, we never get those years back, we crave them later, and we end up stupid and crazy, trying to grab back the amorphous dreams and feeling of freedom that we possessed all too briefly when we were 22. Enter Stan O'’Neal golfing while Rome burned. And of course there’'s always Eliot Spitzer.

I told the kid to go into Internet content, particularly short-form video. I figure there'’s enough crazy smoke around that discipline to keep him young for a good long time. Just ask the folks who work on this site! You guys are having a ton of fun, right?

Comments

[wonderingstar]

What would I tell a recent college graduate? Go abroad and work overseas. Teaching English is one of the easiest jobs to find for native English speakers. If one is business-minded, pick a rapidly growing emerging market country (like China or Vietnam) where you can meet local entrepreneurs and business executives who want to learn English. One could parley a teaching job into a job with a local company where you can learn something about business from the ground up. Asia is full of successful North Americans who went there in their 20's and became wildly successful, like this guy: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allan_Zeman. Australians prize their "gap year" experience. Young Americans would do well to emulate this. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gap_year#Gap_year_among_American_students. Who knows, you might wind up being a VJ for MTV, or even a soap opera star: http://www.wwnorton.com/catalog/spring06/032859.htm. Get out and broaden your mind and experiences. Check out this Gap Year site for ideas: http://www.gapyear.com/plan_your_trip/.

[LivingStardust]

Free will is ultimately the power to say "No." If you are trapped in your life, I suggest trying to say it a little more often. And to buy into the excuses (note the word choice) that "We've always done it this way" and "That's just the way it is" is to accept one of the stupidest arguments in the history of arguments. No, if the author of this article thinks all adults are "trapped", he must be thinking of himself. Or those who value everything in the venal terms of dollars and cents. I went to law school. I walked away from the profession where the guilty rich walk free because they can bombard the system with procedural maneuvering (Phil Spector for example) while the poor get screwed. I said "No" to further perpetuation of the graft culture and I am a much happier person for it. "With liberty and justice for all" was not meant to mean you get the justice you can pay for and that is what our system has become over that last 20 years - so totally corrupt it is non-functional. Would it be this way if more people could learn to say "No"? I think not. If "adults" feel "trapped" they should look to their own free will and realize if they are trapped, it is their own doing.

[Henry]

Regardless of what "path" you end up in the biggest dictator will be your mentor (it will be someone) and along with that the luck of the draw about co-workers. You're right about the girl friend analogy. The system is stacked against new employees.

[WIpatriot]

Corporate Compliance.

[JennyG3]

As a millenial myself (born in 1985), I LOVED this post, because it's so right on. I showed it to my 'rents, and asked if I could move back in + could I have some gas $$$... J/K already doin' it LOL :-)

[Cathexis]

I agree about not starting too quickly and taking time to enjoy youth ...

Except ...

This is an option only for those who have the means to pursue it. I didn't. I found myself paying my own way the day after I graduated high school ... and not of my own volition. ;-D

I envy those who have the option and encourage them to pursue it. The rest of you ... enjoy what you can, when you can.

[ccwpmarcus]

I'm not a fan of this sort of thinking.

You're saying that the people who are on their own don't have this option. I have to disagree with you. Why? Because I, just like you, have been on my own since I was 18. Got myself through school and made a great many sacrifices to be able to call myself successful, and have the opportunity to have many options open to me.

Everyone has the option to search around, that's not the question you should ask before you do. The question is: How much are you willing to risk to pursue what you want?

[ccwpmarcus]

HuffPost's Pick

I usually sort of just skim through your posts not really bothering much about them. I'm selfish though and this one is about me, more or less.

It's a good one too. How the hell are you supposed to know anything about what you want to do until you've done some things? I'm not there yet, as I continue to figure out what I do and don' t like, but eventually I'll be able to find the sort of job that allows me to do things that I like and I am good at while minimizing the things I don't like. That's the plan at least.

I think one problem is that everyone sees a glamorous job and thinks, "That's the one for me." A job is like a girlfriend. It has to match your personality. Different people enjoy different activities just like they have different characteristics they're attracted to. Simply because one person enjoys it doesn' t mean you will, and vice versa.