By Brittanty Jensen
Graduation is a scary time for many students. They ask: where do I find a job, what if I can’t find a job and if I don’t find a job does that make me useless?
More college graduates are unemployed than high school dropouts, according to the latest research by Economic Policy Institute. It wasn’t until 2002, though, that more high school dropouts were finding jobs than college graduates.
Lauren Shaw, 23-years-old, graduated from BYU in English in April of 2007 and has yet to find a job.
“Being a college graduate, you feel like you’re overqualified for half the jobs, but because you don’t have any experience there’s no job for you,” Shaw said.
She recommended people try to find jobs or internships related to the job they want during their college years so when they graduate they have the experience they need to get the job they want.
“If you do know what you want to do, get as much experience as you can,” Shaw said.
Procrastination is something a lot of college seniors do when searching for their job after graduation. Shaw said it’s something she did and it was easy to rationalize because she always had something come up. Whether it’s taking a vacation or just keeping up on your final schoolwork.
Finding a job isn’t easy. Shaw said she feels overwhelmed most of the time. It’s your first “real” job and it’s the beginning of your “career.”
Some college students have postponed their graduation because they just didn’t feel ready to deal with the responsibility.
“Beginning of last fall, I realized I could graduate within a year and so that’d be a year and a half early,” said Devin Dupree, a 23-year-old psychology major from Rexburg, Idaho. “I wasn’t expecting it. So, I decided to just stay in school another year.”
Dupree’s decision was based on him not feeling ready to apply for graduate schools like he wanted to be. He felt he could just take an extra year to get more experience and take his time applying to graduate schools rather than rush it just to graduate a little earlier.
“There’s a lot more I wanted to do in undergraduate and I’m not ready to move on,” Dupree said.
Another student, Miranda Buell, an exercise science major from Sutter Creek, Calif. wasn’t ready to graduate and begin looking for a job so she postponed graduation last year.
“I was just anxious, not knowing what I was going to do,” Buell said. “So, I postponed it by taking lighter loads so I could stay longer so I could figure out what I was doing.”
Buell feels like she made a smart decision, though. She now has more focus on what she wants to do in her life and she’s had a whole year to really think about the direction she wants her life to take. Buell said she wish she had chose her major earlier on in her college career.
“I didn’t have a lot of time to look into different jobs and different volunteer opportunities to get experience in the field that I want to go into,” Buell said.
A graduate of BYU, Shannon Ogden, said she’s been happy with her decision to take her time going through school. She worked a lot more than the average student and only took classes part-time.
“While I was getting educational experience I was able to get hands-on training and really learn what I like to do in the work place,” Ogden said. “A lot of times you end up doing things you didn’t want to do.”
