<p>^^you know, if they were wandering about, we might be wringing our hands, worried that they would never have jobs!</p>
<p>Congrats to your daughter, as well!</p>
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<p>Have you read the “emerging adults” thread? It seems to me your pangs are misplaced.</p>
<p>You didn’t prevent your daughter from traveling or taking self-exploration time. My daughter traveled extensively during school, mostly on her own dime (and credit card). I was actually surprised that she wasn’t looking for work abroad after school… but she said she was tired of traveling and wanted a local job for a year or two. </p>
<p>If a kid wants to travel and explore, it can be done without parental support. Many college grads opt for post-college programs that will allow them that opportunity – without parental funding – such as teaching English abroad; a Fulbright grant; joining the Peace Corps – or any number of different ways to integrate the “explore” part with the “get someone other than mom & dad to pay the costs” part. </p>
<p>I can understand why your daughter might have a sense of wistfulness – I have the same sense myself, looking at my own daughter, and realizing that missed opportunities in my youth because I was in such a hurry go to law school after undergrad and then get right to work. I think we all sometimes wonder about the choices we didn’t make, the roads we didn’t travel. </p>
<p>But I just don’t think that it would be reasonable or appropriate for such “exploration” to be done with parental funding. So please… don’t let your daughter’s wistfulness be a trigger for parental guilt. </p>
<p>Plus-- I think that would be a very destructive choice for young people who need jobs – employers do not like unexplained gaps, and rarely are impressed by parental-funded world travels. Of course, parents who are funding such excursions probably are quite affluent, and it is quite possible that their offspring do not need to work at all, given the family finances. But for the rest of us – one way or another, the biggest detriment to employability for a young person is lack of work experience. The older the young person is, the greater the potential disadvantage of a spotty resume. That is – no one expects a 19 year old to have a lot of work experience or to have held jobs with much responsibility… but they do expect to see some significant part-time or summer work/internship experience with a 22 year old college grad – and definitely would want to see at least a year or more of full time work experience from a 24 year old who had been out of college for 2 years. </p>
<p>It may be that some of your daughter’s friends have plans for graduate or professional school. That is… if a kid spends 1-2 years “exploring”, and then goes to law school – no one is going to care what the pre-law school work experience was. The law firms will only be interested in the law-related work or internships racked up during law school. The same would be true for a MD – when they are graduating and looking for residencies, no one is focused on what kind of work they did before med school.</p>
<p>D1 will have 1-2 months before she starts work when she graduates, and she will have 3-4 weeks off a year. I know she will be using the time well to travel wherever she wants to go, and she will be paying for it.</p>
<p>I started work 2 weeks after graduation, and I got married few months later with no honeymoom (no time off and no money). Since then H and I have traveled all over the world. The difference between travelling after you have a real job vs traveling on your parents dime or student saving is you could stay at nicer hotels and eat at real restaurants. </p>
<p>I have no regret that I had to work straight away, and I don’t feel like I have missed out on anything. Don’t feel too badly for your daughter, be happy she has a job. She will get to where she wants to go to someday.</p>
<p>Just what I needed:). A good dose of common sense. Thank you for the reassurance.</p>
<p>I worked from the time I was 15, first at McDonald’s, then at GM. I was in a program that required me to alternate 12 weeks of work with 12 weeks of school for 5 years. Instead of taking time off during our 2 week break each summer, I worked in order to make much-needed money (since I put myself through school). I didn’t take a break before hiring into the company full time after graduation, and I didn’t take a break when I switched jobs after several years. I survived! I always took my vacations, of course. :)</p>
<p>Our son going into his senior year seems to have decided to go into medicine vs. recruit for a job right away upon graduation. He’s an econ major with decent work history and might very well be gainfully employed this coming spring but we are thrilled that he is opting to continue his studies and pursue a profession that will (hopefully) give him a lot of job security and latitude for choosing where he lives. Am very glad he stuck out all the science classes. It was hard when he wasn’t really sure. No pathway is that wonderful these days but this one feels like the right one for him, at least from our perspective. It’s so hard for young adults to have to make such consequential decisions.</p>
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<p>As if funding four years of self and world exploration wasn’t enough…</p>
<p>My son had the type of job right after graduation that he was unable to fully take the total vacation time he was entitled to. If he took a full week off at a time, he would have had to work 100 hours per week for a couple of weeks just to catch up. So he never used up his vacation time.
I am not complaining since he is lucky to be continually employed since his graduation but sometimes young adults get on a treadmill and unable to get off before they are financially secure. But it’s the real world.</p>
<p>Quick question - is there a forum anyone knows about where recent grads discuss their job prospects?</p>
<p>Nephew, CivE grad, is still hoping for work BTW. Prospects for those grads in the past 1-2 years have been awful.</p>
<p>My best friend recently got a full-time job as an employment counselor for people with disabilities (not in her field, but she didn’t particularly want a job in her field [English/French] anyway–no desire to teach).</p>
<p>Another friend, who’s a trained illustrator/graphic artist, got a part-time job in the city library system, which she supplements with design commissions.</p>
<p>A third found a paid internship in her field, though she did have to expand her hunt geographically in order to find something.</p>
<p>Two others have found part-time work, which, while perhaps not ideal, is a lot better than nothing.</p>
<p>Other than that, I know a few accounting or business majors who got extremely good jobs prior to graduation.</p>
<p>So, it’s tough, but I’m very happy that at least some of my friends who didn’t graduate with anything in-hand are finding work. Good luck to everyone who’s still looking for work!</p>
<p>ETA: A lot of people I know, including some with jobs, moved back home after graduating. Among my peers, there’s no stigma about this this at all, it seems.</p>
<p>son is still…looking. in the meantime, he is helping his cousin on the family farm…he says he is going to add “feeding the world” to his resume…</p>
<p>it’s wonderful to have him around; yet hard to have him around. he really doesn’t want to be at home job-hunting, but he is delightful most of the time.</p>
<p>“But she has voiced a wistfulness, feeling that compared to her vagabond friends, she has grown up very fast. Settled down, very fast. I have told her she can save up her money, and then wander all she likes.”</p>
<p>well Alumother, she wants to do what you did decades ago.</p>
<p>Simba - I know. But the family fortune has faded. Should I have kept it for her? Perhaps so. There’s something to be said for having to work early, and thereby determining that you’re actually pretty competent and can earn your own living.</p>
<p>a lot of you guys say that since parents are paying college, they should push their kids into fields with higher job prospects
I DON’T AGREE WITH THAT (i’m not a parent, i’m a 17 year old) but personally if my parents pushed me to do something i don’t want to for next 4 years of MY life, f**k it, like hell i’m gonna do that.
students will only excel if they are interested in what they’re learning.<br>
i keep telling my parents that i’m interested in doing what i enjoy the next 4 years of my life. i’m not JUST looking at the years afterwards.<br>
however, it does help to double major, aka widen your prospects</p>
<p>Alumother: where did your son end up? Stanford or Princeton?</p>
<p>"i keep telling my parents that i’m interested in doing what i enjoy the next 4 years of my life. i’m not JUST looking at the years afterwards. "</p>
<p>So for the next 4 years, you want a paid vacation.</p>
<p>Simba, he’s at Princeton. Surprised the bejeezus out of me, really, but he likes it as much or more than D did.</p>
<p>^ Seems conniving mother won both times !</p>
<p>Nervusbreakdown, my kids are free to study what they are interested in studying & pursue the careers they are interested in pursuing. However, they also are well aware that mom & dad take them off the payroll after undergrad. So it is in their best interest to plan wisely for their futures.</p>
<p>When my son graduated from Tufts in 2009,only 23% of graduating Seniors had jobs lined up!!One of his friends got a job as a bank teller,another was working as a waitress!All Tufts graduates .My son was lucky and found a job after 7 months in accounting .The salary is good although this was not the job he was seeking .Don’t know any 2010 graduates.</p>