What’s your degree?

Former students find employment in fields far from their studies

What’s your degree? During the early stages in one’s academic career this question can become all-consuming. Many people flit about several different programs struck by the dilemma of needing to be something while others don’t declare their major at all. It doesn’t stop later either; the tail end of a degree is fraught with intense projects and relationship building that can make or break an intended career often leaving its pursuer wondering if perhaps their link to their work is too tenuous and their prospective profession too distant to truly be worth chasing anymore.

But fret not! Almost nobody ends up where they’ve aimed themselves and life is nothing without modifications to the program mid-flight. In an effort to show you the truth in this sentiment Fast Forward has rounded up three individuals strayed from their academic path to share their thoughts on degrees versus careers:

• Dr. David Keith – Dr. Keith has a PhD in physics and is the director of the ISEEE Energy and Environmental Systems group at the U of C. He is a strong advocate for intelligent technology and policy change in the battle to keep the biosphere functioning for future generations.

• Anila Umar – Umar has two degrees a BSc honours in psychology specializing in behavioural neuroscience and a BSc in biology. Despite — or maybe because of — all the hours she spent staring at rat brains she has moved on to run her own human resources management firm Semenoff Umar & Henricks Consultants Ltd.

• Ben Li — Li has a BSc in biology and a BA in political science. Since leaving university he has been a freelance writer designer and photographer; IT consultant; worked for a software engineering company; worked for the provincial government; and now returned to university with the U of C’s Innovation Systems Research Network an urban research department. “Most of the above” he admits “I would classify as fun activities for which I am also well paid as opposed to jobs per se.”

Fast Forward: How has your degree helped or harmed your ability to perform your job?

Keith: Physics gave me great training both in terms of hands-on engineering and design and attacking complex systems in simple ways.

Umar: It really hasn’t helped at all. I was in the science stream of psychology and my other degree was biology. My job now is all about working with people. It hasn’t harmed me in any way either although now I think a business or management degree would have been a better choice for me if I could do it again.

Li: The biological science program at the U of C prepared me to work constructively with dogmatic individuals and bureaucracies while recognizing the value and importance of classical ideas and practices to particular business practices. I certainly did not emerge knowing significantly more about how to be a biologist than when I went in and hence I’m not a practising biologist.

My subsequent political science degree was the fun one in that its challenges were primarily intellectual instead of logistic. It taught me how to think concisely about the human and societal interactions around macroscopic features and systems and confirmed for me that simply memorizing tables of data values does not substitute for knowledge or expertise.

Do you think you’ll ever try to move to a job that is closer to your degree?

Keith: No. What I do now is exciting and fulfilling and makes use of my training.

Umar: Absolutely not! I really don’t think I could stare at rat and snail brains my entire life! I prefer interaction with people.

Li: I never say never but the tendency seems to be that my contributions to the innovation IT and policy spaces are much more highly valued than anything I’ve produced for the biology crowd in Calgary. For me to get back into biology would require a context where the object is to pursue new knowledge and possibilities in an outward-facing sustainable way as opposed to justifying decisions and facts which are already known for the primary benefit of practitioners of the discipline.

Do you think people need to get degrees related to their career plans? Or would you encourage people to study whatever they want before entering the job market?

Keith: There’s no black-and-white answer. People do need to think strategically about how their education can lead to a fulfilling job but life is full of surprises and lots of people don’t end up doing what they trained to do. People need to find things they are good at doing.

Umar: I think people should get degrees in what they are interested in. As they grow in their academic life I think people tend to gravitate towards certain career choices that may or may not be related to the field they studied but are heavily influenced by their experiences at university.

Li: While there is some knowledge that can only be provided by years of indoctrination into a discipline much greater passion is found among individuals who practice well outside their training than among typical individuals for whom vocation within their training is the only vocational option. Regardless of the degree program the two most important learnings available at a university are: to learn how to learn; and to learn how to produce knowledge from theories data points and information.

Alternatively as has happened to a number of my friends slogging through a degree program for a few years is a much better way to discover that an intended discipline would not fit as a career than being stuck with an unenjoyable job for decades after.

Do you have any advice to offer students and prospective students regarding the choice of degree they make?

Keith: Look for things that motivate you.

Umar: Choose something you really like. It’ll make life at university bearable! I actually loved behavioural neuroscience as a subject to study… it just turned out that there wasn’t enough personal interaction for me to continue in that field.

Li: High school counsellors… seem to have this strange notion that attending university is a career-limiting step where the choice of degree strongly restricts what a student can do after university. For anyone who works hard and is reasonably competent that notion is complete bunk since university is one of the few venues in the world where individuals are encouraged and forced to diversify their experiences beyond that which is familiar and comfortable.

DEGREES OF SUCCESS

Toiling for four years to get a degree you’re not going to use is not something everybody wants to do. In order to ensure you have the highest chances of succeeding in your field the university has provided some helpful services. We have supplemented this list with a few extra recommendations. Good luck studying!

• Career services

The career services office is located in the basement of the University of Calgary’s MacEwan Student Centre across from the Microstore in MSC 188. They provide a number of useful services to students including resume troubleshooting career planning workshops and job listings for students and alumni. The office also provides a number of web utilities designed to help students self-administrate their learning and job application processes (www.ucalgary.ca/careerservices/).

• Academic counselling

The grief of trying to manage a life previously controlled by parents can sometimes be steep. In this case the U of C has established a counselling office where for the occasional fee that can be underwritten using the student health plan counsellors are prepared to talk about anything from emotions to careers.

The counsellors are an invaluable resource and are specifically trained to help with student life through individual sessions group sessions and workshops (www.ucalgary.ca/counselling/).

• Honours degree requirements

The honours degree is often nebulously defined though its requirements aren’t. For many faculties entrance into graduate studies requires an honours undergraduate degree. Anyone interested in following their schooling past undergrad should look into switching into the slightly more stringent degree strain as it will offer not only better credentials on a degree once it has been achieved but usually the chance to participate in relatively high-grade research that can help improve the learning experience and make new contacts for a future career.

• Volunteering and summer research

Summer projects and volunteering to help do research are also a great ways to begin integrating into one’s faculty. Professors are usually engaged in their own research during the summer and often have positions open for paid and unpaid research assistants. Working with a prof is a good way to understand the idiosyncrasies of a field and get references for those resumés and grad applications.

A surefire way to guarantee a spot in some summer research is to apply for an undergraduate summer research grant. Grants are made available to students in the later years of their program. They are faculty specific so talking to a faculty advisor is a good starting point to learn more. Additionally the university offers grants in their PURE program (http://www.ucalgary.ca/TLFC/awards/undergrad/).