Email us questions at [email protected], subject line “businesslady.” Previous installments can be found here.
Dear Businesslady,
Should I stay with a stable, rewarding part-time job in the field I hope to get into or leave it to pursue greener (and more fun) pastures? Some context: I am 21 and will be graduating with my bachelor’s degree this June.
I am currently working at a part-time job in my college town I feel VERY lucky to have. I’m writing for a company that’s related to the field I think I want to get into, my boss is amazing, I’m learning and enjoying myself (and for an undergrad, I am very well paid). I’ve been working there since October 2014.
My dilemma, though, is what to do when I graduate.
Before I was hired at my current job, my plan was to spend the summer working in a national park and then take some of my earnings and travel. I love being outdoors and I’ve had friends who did that and they loved it. I wanted to have one last fun summer and travel a bit before I settled down and looked for real work.
In her twenties, my mom found herself in a job and town she disliked because the money was decent. Shortly after she finally left that job, she became disabled and unable to work. She regrets spending the time where she had good health doing something she disliked. She has warned me about the “golden cage” of a shitty job. She says once I’m in the work world, I will lose my motivation to travel and spend the summer outdoors, that it will feel like a good tradeoff at the time, but I will look back to regret it.
Should I stay in my college town and keep working at my current (part-time) job? Or quit so I can have a fun summer and travel? I literally get teary when I think of how much I want to work in a national park, but I feel like it’s more sensible to stay at my current job and keep building my resume. I haven’t been working there very long, after all. I feel so young and I don’t feel ready for a career. But maybe its time to grow up.
What do you think?
Dear Green,
First off, thanks for making it so easy for me to give you a nickname. You’re young (green), you’re thinking about greener pastures, and you’re yearning for the verdant embrace of a national park.
In some ways you’ve given me an easy question to answer too, except it’s not actually that simple. So let me tell you a story.
When I was little, I used to love visiting my dad’s “office”—the quotation marks are to denote that it was one of many cubicles in a massive complex; he had an unglamorous corporate job working for a multinational company. Some of the decorations in his space weren’t interesting to a grade-schooler, but I remember being fascinated by a phrase he had framed and hung behind his desk: “Never become too good at something you hate. They’ll make you do it the rest of your life.” (There’s a bizarre story behind that quip, but that’s neither here nor there.) And in many ways, my dad actually did become too good at a job he hated; he spent most of his professional life doing things he didn’t particularly enjoy—although at least he was self-aware enough to snark about it via his cube décor.
I still love that quote, but as a kid I responded to it with a kind of fearful awe: Who are they? How would they make you do something you hated? And how could you become “too good” at something you hated anyway? When you’re young, you hate things like getting vaccinations and you love things like playing with toys. You don’t yet have the capacity to comprehend how the double-bind of material comfort vs. personal satisfaction could leave you trapped.
That phrase was my first indicator that “what do you want to be when you grow up?” was actually a pretty loaded question.
Of course, my career path, like most people’s, isn’t a straight line toward work-life balance and contentment. There was a time when I viewed that quote as wholly ironic: that the only way to be successful is to find your own well-compensated-but-loathed skillset and then hang on until retirement. Before that, “when I was your age,” I saw it as more of a commandment: don’t pursue any job you don’t love!
Nowadays, I’m a realist. Everyone makes their own cost/benefit calculations based on the options available to them, and those options are bounded by a whole host of factors, both within and beyond their control. Those of us who are lucky enough to attend college inevitably have to check our pre-graduation idealism against the harsh realities of the post-college world—and for all I know, you might one day regret leaving your rewarding job that aligns with your big-picture aspirations.
Nevertheless, I think you need to let this dream play out and make your peace with the possibility that hindsight might make you see things differently. You’ve got a mom whose personal history is an object lesson in seizing the moment. You’ve got a solid work history in your maybe-future professional field before you even get your diploma (to say nothing of the fact that you’re going to have a college degree, period). You’ve got involuntary emotions welling up when you think of how badly you want this. And, finally, your big idealistic goal isn’t “surpass Beyoncé in record sales, fame, and fabulousness” (which I would strongly discourage you from attempting to achieve)—it’s “try out a different job that may not have as much long-term potential” and also “travel.” At 21, you deserve to give that a shot.
Let me stop waxing introspective about Life ChoicesTM and conclude with some more concrete advice. Since you have a long and positive history with your current employer, give them as much notice as you possibly can—as soon as you have a viable plan in place for your summer of outdoorsy adventure, sit down with your boss, express your gratitude for all the opportunities they’ve given you, and explain that you’d never forgive yourself if you didn’t take advantage of your postgrad freedom. (Caveat: don’t do this if you think they might do something retaliatory like fire you on the spot, but it doesn’t sound like that kind of gig.) The idea is to make sure they give you a stellar reference from here on out—plus, being classy about your departure leaves open the possibility of getting rehired or thrown some freelance work in the future. Following your passion doesn’t mean you have to be careless about it.
But don’t make the safe choice just because you’re not sure what lies on the other side. You don’t want to be stuck in that golden cage for the rest of your life.
—Businesslady
Dear Businesslady,
A few months back a subconsultant whom I would have gladly sacrificed most of my office for was unexpectedly let go. She was shocked, she was given no warning and no one had said anything negative to her about her work. Others on the project were also shocked and have been asking managers about this decision. The reasons filtering down to us have all been understandable (she didn’t review her work before submitting it, didn’t followed the chain of command), but were all things she could have worked on if someone had talked to her. No one did, and I am wondering now if I should. Would if be appropriate for me to take her out to lunch and discuss what led to her being let go? I feel it’s not really my place; but if no one tells her any of this she may repeat mistakes. I want her to succeed and do well, and I think her having a better understanding of what went wrong may help with that.
Missing My Coworker
And a little bit of background if you are curious: [Possibly identifying details regarding complex job requirements redacted.] People like her who could do it all are gold.
Dear Missing,
And now it’s time for me to thank you, for giving me the truly easy-to-answer question I needed after spending so much time pondering the cruel mistress that is a human life/career trajectory (and I didn’t even have to come up with a nickname for you, either).
In a word, YES!
Okay, I’m still way too verbose to just leave it at that. Let me commiserate—I know from personal experience how awful it is to watch a beloved colleague lose their job, especially when that person was never given a real chance at saving it. I also know how painfully awkward it is to point out the spinach in someone’s teeth, particularly when that spinach is metaphorical and the actual issue is much more sensitive.
But the worst-case scenario here is that your ex-coworker takes your attempt at mentorship terribly for some reason: maybe she yells at you, or gets super defensive, or takes it as an opportunity to delineate what she perceives as your professional flaws.
Even if that happens, so what? You don’t work with her anymore, and while that would be an unpleasant experience it would almost certainly mitigate any misgivings you had about your management’s decision to let her go.
And that kind of negative reaction is pretty improbable. More likely, she’ll be thrilled that someone from her old job saw her value, and she’ll be deeply grateful for the opportunity to avoid making the same mistakes elsewhere.
I’m especially emphatic about my “yes” because the things she needs to work on—lack of proofreading, poor adherence to hierarchy—are pretty concrete and easy to fix. If the problems were more vague or difficult to address (like if she seemed off-putting in some ineffable way or had intractable halitosis) I’d probably still encourage you to talk to her, but with tempered expectations about your chances of success.
How many of us learned far too late about some stupid thing we were doing, just because everyone around us was afraid of a difficult conversation? You want to give this colleague a gift, and I don’t want to live in a world where people like you don’t speak up.
Plus, who knows—if her talents really are that rare, maybe you’ll end up working with her again once she gets her shit together. Don’t you want to increase the odds of that happening someday?
—Businesslady
P.S. To anyone on the receiving end of this kind of hard truth, consider it your civic duty to not shoot the messenger. I, for one, would rather learn about the spinach in my teeth at the dinner table, instead of when I get home from the four-hour cocktail party afterward.
Tags: advice, dear businesslady, jobs, work
Related Posts
Dear Businesslady: A Garden Of Job Advice
Dear Businesslady: We Think One Of These Letters Is Fake
Anyone Who Misses Anything Can Work Hard and Fast to Return to the Dead
Aunt Acid: Advice for Supporting Creative Friends
How to Come Up with Great Ideas: Advice for Freelance Writers
“The Spinster’s Almanac”: Poetic Advice for Finding Your Way in the World
Oof I have many thoughts on this. YOU ARE 21!!!! I’m 27 and still have these debates; I’ve known people into their 40s still having them. You still think of life in terms of “summers,” which is so nice, but remember, there is a life that will happen after that summer, not just more school! I don’t know what choice you should make, but this is by far the last one you will make. You will have other chances to go backpacking and you will also have other chances to work in an office. What do you really want now? When you close your eyes and imagine yourself making one choice, does your stomach drop and squeeze and make you wish you’d made the other one?
This is so silly, but your stomach-dropping comment reminded of it. Something I’ve done since I was a child and facing a decision is play “eeny-meeny-miney-mo” because I find that usually I am either happy, or disappointed, once the random choice has been made, and that clarifies for me which choice I really want. I still do this and I am in my thirties.
Yes! Or as a friend once put it to me, “Flip a coin. When it’s in the air, you’ll know whether you want heads or tails.”
OK, A) That Ed Greer story is amazing (not exactly in a good way, but wow, thank you for that) and B) I don’t know how much that quote, or the writer’s mother’s experience, applies, since she does like this job. I’d really take mom’s negativity out of the decision-making process as much as possible, honestly, because while worst-case scenarios can happen, it’s ridiculous to say that people with jobs lose their motivation to go on vacations or travel.
That doesn’t mean you don’t go do the national park thing, just don’t get in the mindset of thinking that you have X years of fun and adventure, after which you must settle down and be a boring drone. That’s a pretty depressing way to plan your life. Better to think long-term about how you can build a career that still lets you take time to do the stuff you love.
“it’s ridiculous to say that people with jobs lose their motivation to go on vacations or travel. ”
Welllll….. as someone who works full-time in a demanding job (and still only gets 2 weeks off, even after 10 years of work experience- including sick days), I would say that many working people may have the *motivation* to travel but don’t realistically have the opportunity to do so. (Or the money, once you get older and start accumulating more and more bills. Or someone to look after the kids, the pets, the house, etc.) Careers where you can take that kind of time off are not necessarily that common.
Even if you have some paid vacation time (which many people don’t), it’s often hard to actually escape work to use it. And taking a week off here or there is really not the same as having an extended period of travel and adventure, which I was very lucky to have (and enormously enjoyed) in my younger days.
There’s something very different– and occasionally life-changing– about that, compared with a few days off from the regular grind. I’m glad I had the chance to do that, because I don’t realistically expect to be able to do it again until I retire (if that ever happens!)
True, you’re absolutely right that it’s harder to take months and months off once you’re working full-time. And I honestly think in her situation, it’s a perfectly good choice to go off and have this adventure, especially since it sounds like she’s not that worried about her finances or long-term career prospects if she does.
I don’t think that mutually exclusive to my thinking long-term point, though. I just really hate how her mom is framing it with the “Your life’s over once you sign it away for that paycheck” attitude. I have family members who think like that, that they’ve had their fun and now they just have to grind away at life, and they’re miserable.
We all have to support ourselves, and we’re all making ongoing decisions about how to do that while still enjoying our lives. Like citystillbreath said above, these are debates you’ll be having your whole working life. “I’ll just take this one big adventure and then settle down” – no. You’ll have to decide your priorities again and again with each new job offer, marriage, breakup, reproductive decision, family crisis, etc. etc.
This is probably hitting close to home for me because I had the erroneous attitude at 21 that I’d have things more or less figured out by like, 25, and the hard decisions about life paths would be behind me. Hahahaha. Maybe I’m projecting and the LW isn’t as dense as I was.
I’m definitely still figuring things out at 35! 🙂 It’s hitting close to home for me, too, because I’ve been working crazy hours for the last few months and I’m longing to escape somewhere (pretty much *anywhere*, really) for the summer.
I take your point about how people don’t necessarily sign away their entire lives once they start working. In many ways, I’ve been happier with myself and my life in my 30s than I ever was before, but I also kind of painted myself into a career corner by taking out massive law school loans. (Don’t go to law school, kids!) Most people will certainly have many crossroads in their lives where they have to make big decisions and maybe try something new.
2 weeks off?! Jesus, you do have it bad in the States. Minimum paid holiday for full-time work in the UK is 20 days – and that’s less than most of Europe. I’m assuming you’re based in the States, correct me if wrong.
Yep. We have it bad here.
And the sad part is, I actually feel quite lucky to have those 2 weeks– I spent the first several years of my career working in temp jobs where we had no paid leave whatsoever (and sometimes no health insurance or other benefits, either). Many of my friends here in the US have no paid holiday or sick time at all.
For the “Greener Pastures” LW-
It sounds like you have a good relationship with your current employer. Instead of just giving notice, why not speak to your boss and ask whether they’ll allow you the option of taking a temporary leave of absence for a few months? The worst they can do is say “no”, and (regardless) they’ll probably still appreciate you giving them some advance notice of your departure. They probably know that, as a graduating college student, you may be exploring other options (especially since you’re only working part-time right now).
I will say that, when I was in my teens and 20s, I took all the opportunities I could to travel and I don’t regret it at all. Those are some of the best memories of my life, and I wouldn’t trade them for anything. By the time you’re An Old Person (like me), you’ll probably have bills and responsibilities that won’t allow you the freedom to do that. So I’d say, yes, take advantage of it while you can!
Also, if working in a National Park can get you a foot in the door with federal employment, the federal sector can be a *great* place to work. You may end up with some career options you hadn’t considered.
Absolutely. And applying my perspective from when I was an employer, a good employee is worth granting that freedom if it works for the job. Maybe the same job Green is doing now won’t be there after her park experience, but a full-time gig will be. Employer will be happy to have someone they know fits well in their organization. (My company had just a few office-type positions, and we were cool with people jumping around from one position to another, according to their interests / talents, even if they weren’t our favorite people. Our favorite people? They could do any damn thing they wanted, cause we knew they’d do it well and we wanted them to be happy.)
You never know unless you ask!
I completely agree that it’s worth being flexible to keep a good employee. If I was ever in a position to hire people, I would try to do the same thing.
I have a good friend who was working full-time and going to school at night (trying to finish his BA). He had the opportunity to spend a semester abroad in Jordan studying Arabic, but was worried about giving up his job here in the US. I gave him a big kick in the pants to go, because I knew he would love it and he’d kick himself for the rest of his life if he didn’t go.
He didn’t really think our employer would give him a leave of absence, but he asked and they ended up agreeing to it. (And he had a fantastic experience that also helped him get into grad school later).
An employer with a part-time worker who is about to graduate probably expects that person to leave anyway, no?
I hope this person wrote in a while ago and isn’t just trying to figure it out now.
Green, maybe it would help to give yourself some concrete, numerical goals? As in, quitting the job is a risk you’ll be taking, and you’ll feel comfortable taking it if you have:
$XXX saved up for living on after you take a salary cut / while you’re traveling without a job
$XXX saved up as an emergency fund
X months/years of work experience on the resume
X skills/accomplishments on your resume
X people lined up for good references
…and from there, you can figure out if quitting THIS summer will cause more stress than it’s worth, but you can have that stuff in place in 6 months or a year. Or you do have what you need from this job, and you can get right to work on the travels and the parks job. So you can go to work counting down the days til you definitely leave, rather than going to work thinking “I wish I were in the woods right now.”
LW2 might be hesitant because of a thing you didn’t mention: being the catalyst for a wrongful-dismissal arbitration / lawsuit.
You *really* might want to watch yourself when you recommend grape-vine-style information transmission.
It’s possible the higher-ups are lying about this woman’s termination, and there’s a different reason than easily-fixable things. If it _is_ easily-fixable things, and they really did neglect good management opportunities, there’s potential for some problems.
I’m all for workers’ rights, if the terminated employee wants to go through that process, but the LW might find herself called on to testify or be otherwise involved in this. So, something to think about.
Hate to be a debbie downer, but I’ve been a seasonal NPS employee and every park I’ve ever worked for has already finished their hiring at this point in the season. There’s probably still concession (i.e resorts and contractors who work in the parks but aren’t THE park) jobs available, but if you’re gonna do this you need to get on it or the decision has been made for you.
In re: Park Service jobs.
Usually they’re pitched about 3-4 months before the season starts, so make sure your USAJOBS account is looking fancy in January/February. A lot of the filtering of applications is done by algorithms so make it so your resume uses the EXACT phrasing from job postings. Say “experience writing and editing technical reports and documents” instead of “I edited report types a, b, & c, I have the following qualifications in d” because that is what the robot is looking for. (Actually, your resume can be as long as you want, so put both things in there, because hopefully eventually a human will read it.) When you take the self-evaluated skills test, don’t stand on false modesty. The top scorers on that test who have relevant skills on their resume will bash it out for the job. Things like being a veteran, child or spouse of a disabled veteran, person with a disability, or a federal employee will count as extra points on that test, so claim those if at all possible.
When picking preferred duty stations, don’t say “anywhere in the US!” or “Anywhere in Arizona!”. That gets you bumped lower on the list of candidates. When you apply for a job, note the duty station, and then modify your preferred duty stations to include the place where you just applied.
As a recent graduate, you’d probably be qualified for GS 4 or 5 positions. Try to get into SCEP or STEP programs, because they select from students instead of the general population, and the general population is full of people in their mid-thirties who do seasonal federal jobs as a career path so the competition is fierce.
Ah, government jobs. Let me know if you have any other questions, and I’ll try to answer them. (This goes for everyone, not just the LW.)
Ah, yes. I looked at Park Service jobs last year, and wound up in extreme confusion, because I have a foreign degree (Canada) and the website the Park Service directs you to in that case actually has nothing to do with foreign education.
Oh dang yeah, that is not a great part of applying for a federal job. You either have to pay for an organization to evaluate the validity of your degree, or you have to provide proof that an educational institution in the US has already evaluated it. So fun!
Yeah, helpfully the USGS did at least spell out those requirements in their job postings, so I’m dealing with the evaluation process now while I work at a stables. Hoping to be able to get an application in for some of the wInter positions, although there aren’t many of those.
If LW 2 is just looking for something for the summer, I did an Student Conservation Association summer internship and had a great experience. You only make a stipend instead of a wage/salary, but they cover a lot of costs for you. I got free room and board, free travel, and scholarship money so while I didn’t really make any money that summer, I didn’t spend any either. I had a great time, got tons of different experiences because the park I worked in had a small staff, and got to see a part of the US that I would have never been able to afford to visit. I’ve also kept a line about it on my resume because people loooove talking about my summer in Alaska during job interviews.
Life does, in fact, go on after you take a long-term serious career job. It depends on the job you take and the other lifestyle choices you make, of course, but you aren’t really trapped forever with no opportunity for travel and fun in lots of jobs. I have a fairly intense engineering job, but I have taken multiple 2 and 3 week vacations, and I have coworkers who have taken even more time off. A few months at a time, even. They just have to make themselves valuable enough for the company to let them do it and still want them back. Plus, there’s something to be said for having the income from the job to pay for the travel, unless you’re independently wealthy or somesuch.
Other people get a few months off at a stretch now and then by switching jobs and giving themselves a longer break before their agreed start date, or doing contract work or self-employment that lets them choose when to take on assignments, or things like that. And you don’t have to tie yourself down by buying a home or having children before you’re ready, or at all.
It’s hard at first to get used to not having a total switch for the whole summers, and the parks job does sound like it could be a great opportunity for a lot of reasons, but it’s also kind of nice to take your vacations at random other times during the year when everyone who’s on a school schedule ISN’T traveling.
Green, I graduated a few years ago in a somewhat similar situation (had a job semi-related to my field while in school, with the option to continue after graduating), and I think it really comes down to the amount of flexibility in your chosen career field, and (lets be real) the strength of your connections in that field.
I chose to continue working at my job post-graduation to build up my experience and it paid off miraculously. I was lucky in that I had colleagues who supported me and were also well connected in my field of choice (which is hard to get into but flexible once you’re there). After a year I left that workplace (due to contract reasons) but got another one via connections where I met even more supportive people and had the ability to take time off. About 2 years after I graduated I had saved up enough, and had built enough connections that I could take 2 months off for myself to freelance/chill and not worry about the job situation, because I knew a few people who had my back.
Not saying this will happen to you (it definitely wasn’t planned on my end) but I think in this horrendous job market its valuable to build upon the experience you have now. There will always be chances to take time off to explore, and its sometimes better to do so when you know you wont have to panic about finding a job asap when you return! All that said, I do love my job and if you feel you could maybe love working in Parks, thats a solid career path too.
Regarding LW1, you probably don’t want to stay in your part time job post graduation regardless. Generally having a college degree is a good way to get a full time job doing things you weren’t qualified to do before getting that degree. So maybe losing a part time job is not as big of a deal as it seems. As you say, it pays well for an undergraduate job. So why not take this time to explore?
Or at least to try looking for a full time job doing something.
Green, if you really love the job you are currently doing, and if it does lead into the field you dream of getting into, I think it is worth pursuing for a while longer. The idea of an imaginary line in time which separates fun and experimentation from a harsh, dreary reality, has some basis in truth but is NOT the truth. Our parents’ experiences are not dogma. They made some choices, we can learn from them, but we are not doomed to repeat them.
As long as you have decided to travel, and work in a Park, it can be done some months into the future, after you have taken more out of this job. Of course, if you can ask for three months off, this would be great, but even if this is not possible, stay in this job you enjoy, apply for the Parks as early as you can and come back from traveling qualified to go into your chosen field.
As for Missing, would your employers be all right with you informing her of her failings? Perhaps they did not do that for a reason? I am all for letting her know, but make sure this would not be a problem with your job.
Well shit. If there was ever a clarion call that I need to suck it up, buy a car and move to another state now, while I still have the chance, this is it. I have been thinking about this for years now, and I’m slowly being sucked into the stability of work and settling down and even caretaker roles in my immediate family. If I wait another year (or three, or five) it’ll never happen. Thank you, Businesslady!