Life After College: Alternate Paths of Success
Anna Little never imagined that she would be working as a yoga instructor and bar manager four years after graduating from college with a journalism and creative writing major. If you asked an eighteen year-old Anna where she would be after her college graduation, she would have told you about her plans to work as a staff writer for a fashion magazine for a few years while working her way up to an editor role. Despite graduating with a nearly perfect GPA and three internships under her belt, Anna found herself struggling to get anywhere near the publications she dreamed of working at.
Without the help of personal connections, the media industry and other creative industries may seem like a concrete wall for recent grads to break into. To keep the bills paid while they send out resumes and go out for interviews, recent grads are taking up side jobs in various industries that fall outside their college degrees. These jobs allow a flexible schedule that allows recent grads to work on their actual career goals while staying afloat financially. But what happens when the side job develops into the final destination? When things don’t work out according to plan, college grads are discovering alternate routes of success and redefining what success means to them.
When Anna reflects on the narrow goals she set for herself as a post grad, she laughs at how far her current position is from where she imagined she would be. After graduation, Anna found herself going through an endless cycle of rejection emails and interviews that led nowhere.
With an impressive transcript, a talent for writing, and a tireless work ethic, Anna felt that the reason she wasn’t getting responses from job applications was not having a personal connection or knowing someone at the company. After a year of applying to jobs and trying her hand at freelance work, Anna accepted a job as an assistant to the fashion director at a Manhattan based magazine. While she was finally closer to her goal of being a writer, Anna was dissatisfied and hated the work that ranged from managing her boss’s schedule, picking up and dropping off samples, and organizing everything from his desk to the fashion closet to his personal closet.
“I felt like a robot,” said Anna.
Anna quit after a few months and took a job as a yoga instructor teaching five classes a week and bartending on weekends. The hour-long yoga classes during the day left her plenty of time to send more applications and give freelancing a shot. Two years later, however, Anna worked her way to studio manger at the yoga studio and bar manager at a popular Brooklyn eatery and is very happy with the life she created for herself. She still freelances because she loves to write, but she no longer feels the need to belong to a magazine or have a 9–5 office schedule to achieve success.
“I realized I was chasing some idea of what I thought success was. I thought if I get a certain job, then I will be happy. “I love what I do at both the yoga studio and the bar, I make really good money, and I still get to write,” said Anna.
In comparison to students graduating with business degrees who often get jobs before they even graduate, those in creative industries don’t always have a path that is simple and defined. However, by staying determined and channeled that creative spirit into other areas of life, alternate paths of success start to reveal themselves.
Saige Wang found herself in a similar situation three years after graduating from Parsons School of Design. Saige struggled to find consistent work and refused to settle for projects she wasn’t passionate about. When she finally did get a job for a small, start-up interior design firm she loved, she was let go after a few months due to down-sizing. To support herself during her job search, Saige began selling her collection of vintage, antique jewelry through Etsy. When her online shop gained positive responses and she began to make more money, Saige began purchasing destroyed antique jewelry for a low price and redesigning the piece while still keeping its antique charm to sell.
“As a designer, I’ve always had a good eye for antique shopping and seeing the potential in old, run down pieces that look like they don’t have anymore life in them. With a little investment and imagination, I turn the piece into something else while still retaining that lovely antique feel that made it special in the first place,” said Saige.
Her pieces often have a story behind them or an inscription on the inside band with a date, a name, or a quote. Saige makes sure to keep these inscriptions and find out what she knows about the piece’s history to share with the buyer. Her favorite piece shes worked on was a ring from the 1920s with the engraving “Mon Coeur est a vous,” or “my heart is yours” in French.
“I sold it to a young couple as an engagement ring and they were so happy with it and every time I think about it I smile,” said Saige.
One year after transitioning to focusing on her jewelry store, Saige has plans to turn her online shop into a physical store eventually, but until then she is happy with her work and is not looking for other jobs.
“I used to feel really upset that I couldn’t find a traditional job with a steady paycheck. But so what? I’m happy, excited about what I do, and am making money. I never imagined myself here but I really wouldn’t change a thing.”
