career discovery

     I am not much of a planner. In fact, I never have a plan. I am a spontaneous, spur-of-the-moment type of person, which often drives the people who know me crazy. My lack of planning is something that, unfortunately, has carried over to my outlook on the future. And while I have always had some idea of what I want to do, I have never had much of a plan.

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     In the midst of my uncertainty about the future, I know two things for certain; that I want to continue my education, and that I want to become a writer. Now both of these options, while they would be paths that I enjoy, are not a basis for a career. Even though I do not know what my career will be, I can see exactly where it will fit into the projection of my future plan.

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     After I graduate, I intend to attend graduate school for two years. I have not fully decided between whether I want to attend graduate school next year or take a gap year. Either way, I plan to have my Master’s Degree in English by the end of the next two to three years. Additionally, I also have aspirations of earning my PhD in English, Literature, or a related category one day. However, I know that PhD programs require a lot of time, focus, and money, and will be something that I am not going to be immediately ready for after earning my Master’s Degree. After I work for a while and obtain the proper funds, I hope to go back to school for a PhD.

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     The long term goal of my future career plan is to become a college professor. This is a dream that has developed more recently throughout college. I have become inspired by my professors, and the work that they do inside and outside of the classroom. Being a college professor is something that would allow me to utilize my education, give back knowledge to the next generation, and allow me time to write, research, and publish works in the future.

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     What is missing from my future plan, is what I will do in between. I have never wanted to be a teacher. When people have asked me what I want to do with my English degree, they are shocked when I tell them I do not want to teach. I want to write. However, ever since I realized that being a college professor is vastly unlike being a grade school teacher, I realized that it is something that I could see myself doing. And it will one day become my career, but it will not be my first career.

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     If I am honest with myself, I would drive myself crazy if I went to school for all these years just to become a professor and go back to school, never leaving school. I know that I need a job outside of education. But I want a job where I can use the skills that I have learned as an English major, and hone my craft of writing. I have narrowed my future career options down to three main choices; a publisher, a museum curator, or a writer, such as a journalist or technical writer. Of course, there are many other jobs out there that I would enjoy, but as I have researched writing jobs, these are the three that have really stood out to me. In this paper, I plan to explore the pros and cons of each to see which would be the best career for me.

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     Being a publisher is something that I have been very interested in lately. A few of my friends in the English major have mentioned that they are applying for publishing internships, and their job descriptions have intrigued me. In my career, I want the opportunity to expose myself to contemporary writers. Being able to explore a variety of writing from various authors would be fascinating and riveting work for me. Being a publisher is something that I can really see myself doing.

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     As I have explored publishing jobs recently on websites like Handshake and Indeed.com. Through my research, I have found that there is an extreme amount of care and precision that goes into publishing each author’s unique and individual work.“From the start of the process to the very end, a publisher invests a huge amount of time, money and expertise in ensuring that each book is the very best it can be” (Penguin Books UK). I have also learned that rather than working on multiple books at once, a publisher typically signs with an author and works closely with them to publish and promote their work for an extended period of time. “If an author signs with a publisher, they can expect that publisher to do everything; from copy editing, to media training authors and illustrators, creating marketing materials to promote the book, deciding which retailers to approach to stock the book, and persuading newspaper and magazine editors to run reviews” (Penguin Books UK).

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     As someone who is very passionate about literature, the amount of precision and attention to detail that goes into publishing does not scare me. However, there are many aspects of the job that seem scary or overwhelming. The most pressing issue is financial security. According to indeed.com, the average salary for a publisher is $70,142, however the median annual salary for recent college graduates according to Handshake is only $37,000. While publishing and editing would be meaningful work, I am not sure if I can sacrifice financial security, especially coming right out of college.

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     Another career option that I have considered lately would be to work in a museum. Working in a museum is something that I believe would be a very good fit for me, as it would allow me to explore a lot of my interests in a career field. Depending on my role working in a museum, I could use the skills I have gathered as an English major to use towards the marketing and communications side of a job. Or I could use my knowledge about ancient history that I have learned from my secondary major in Classics. If I worked in curating galleries, which would be what I am most interested in, I could use my love of art and my skills of organization to build interesting and meaningful displays that highlight different artists.

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     According to an interview in The Harvard Business Review with a woman named Natile, the curator at the MIT List Visual Arts Center, if you are a museum curator, “you’re going to be installing the works, receiving the shipments, working with the registrar to make sure that everything has arrived safely. And then you’re working with artists to install the works in a given space.” Yet, she states “Most days are desk days”(Alpaio). One of my close friends currently works at the Amherst College Art Museum, and has said the same thing, that most days he works at his desk. Working in a museum often feels like the perfect fit for me, but I wonder if the long hours behind a desk will be boring. In addition, it is another job that lacks financial security, with the yearly salary on indeed.com ranging anywhere from $38,000 to $107,860 according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, and from coming straight out of college I can expect to make the low end of the salary, especially if I were to get another job in a museum that is not a curator position.

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      The next career option that I want to explore is that of a writer. As a writer, I can explore the more creative path of my writing as a journalist or really hone my craft for writing as a technical or legal writer. The job of a journalist is something that I can see aligning with my personal goals and interests as a writer. It is also a field that I have some practice in, given that I am a writer and editor for the arts section of the Massachusetts Daily Collegian at UMass Amherst. Becoming a journalist would give me the freedom to write meaningful articles about things that interest me. Conversely, it would also give me the opportunity to practice neutrality in my writing as I would write about things that don’t interest me as well.

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     The one downside to becoming a journalist, however, is the salary. According to Indeed.com, the average salary for a journalist is $48,429. This would be barely enough to support myself, especially with the price of rent going up and the fact that I have student loans that I need to pay off. Being a journalist would be the most fun and possibly fulfilling job I could do, however, it is not the most practical.

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      However, if I were to become a technical writer or a legal writer, I would be using my writing skills towards my career, which would help me to improve and practice writing, and I would have more financial stability. According to ZipRecruiter the average annual salary for technical writers in the US is $78,425 and $81,001 for legal writers. These jobs offer the most financial stability out of all of my options, however, they would cause me to give up my creative liberties to write in more of a confined and restricted manner.

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      Unfortunately, from my research, that is what I have learned, that in pursuing a career, I must either give up financial stability or creative liberty. It has been very hard to find a career that would allow me to do both. And a career that allows for both would, I imagine, be very competitive and hard to obtain. So as my future is rapidly approaching, I have decided that I must face this choice between financial security and creative freedom, and decide which is more important to me. I only hope that in whatever career I decide to pursue that I am able to balance these elements in some way, and that I am able to find time to continue my education, and most importantly, find time to continue writing.