`` Dear Grads, Don 't ' Do What You Love '

The article It’s Not About You by David Brooks, presented the struggle in today’s society for graduating students, due to the trouble of finding passions or use of strengths. “Instead, they will confront amazingly diverse job markets, social landscapes, and lifestyle niches. Most will spend a decade wandering from job to job and clique to clique, searching for a role.” (Brooks 4). Newly graduated students have had difficulty discovering their strength and weaknesses. Instead, students should find themselves before taking on life's journey. “This year’s graduates are members of the most supervised generation in American history. Through their childhoods and teenage years, they have been monitored, tutored, coached and honed to an unprecedented

As a young man entering my senior year of high school, my mind races as I try to figure out what it is that I’ll commit my life to. What will be the driving passion, the purpose of my existence, the reason I get out of bed every morning to face another day of this life? Some people would try to encourage me to choose a career simply for its potential to make me wealthy. However, looking at the degenerate lives of the rich and the famous around the world, its apparent to me that the pursuit of earthly riches alone isn’t all that it’s cracked up to be. I’d rather spend my days in pursuit of something more fulfilling. As far as I can tell from my

“I feel sorry for the person who can't get genuinely excited about his work. Not only will he never be satisfied, but he will never achieve anything worthwhile” (Walter Chrysler). Deciding on what one wants to be in life can prove to be a demanding task. There are so many, yet limited, different opportunities in the world to have an excellent career and make a decent living while doing something one loves. It is limited because there are only a few specific career paths that someone could take to make good money. It is very difficult to make a fulfilling living being a garbage man. There are many different opportunities because, within these specific careers, there are usually various paths to take. Someone who has dreams to be a

Student need to do what they love. Find something that they will want to study or risk never being successful because they’ll be bored with their job. College has a huge variety of programs that can be studied so chances are there is one out there for everyone. If students find something they love to do then college really won’t be too difficult and they will like their job afterwards. “Education is about finding out what form of work for you is closest to being play” (Edmundson), jobs should be something enjoyable, almost like having fun doing a hobby. People need to do what they love so they won’t be bored or held back by their lack of enthusiasm and excel to and move up in the workplace being more and more successful.

More often than not, young students are taught to believe that they must go to a prestigious university to obtain a Bachelor’s degree or higher in order to have a fulfilling and satisfying career. This may hold true for some people, but others do not need to follow this same path. For students who choose a career that isn’t considered conventional or isn’t high in pay, they tend to be looked down upon which pressures them into choosing career paths that they do not have a passion for, or the skill set to actually accomplish which makes college a waste of time and money. While everyone should be encouraged to get an education beyond high school, people should be encouraged to get the education that is relevant and proper for them to make sure they are getting their money’s worth.

I consider Steve Jobs’ commencement speech at Stanford University in 2005 to be one of the most effective speeches. He uses mechanics of speech to craft a well-rounded speech that is crowned by his use of rhetorical devices. Jobs gives relevant and fundamental knowledge of his life and experiences with his rhetorical approach. In his speech to the Stanford’s graduation class, he tells different stories of love, loss, discovery and difficulty he faced in his life to encourage new graduates as they continue to mature in life. He encourages students to pursue their dreams and not be discouraged by failures they might experience in life.

In recent discussions of “Is College Worth It?” By John Green, a controversial issue has been whether, people should attend college or get a job after they finish high school. On the one hand, some argue that people can get a monthly income better than if they have a degree. From this perspective, some people they do not want to attend college. On the other hand, however, others insist that people should attend college after they finish high school. In the words of John Green, one of this view’s proponents, “after graduating from college, I actually made $1 per hour less when I started working as an assistant at Booklist Magazine, but the job was better in every way” (video). According to this view, he was working at Stake and Shake and he was getting better salary than what he got after graduate by 1$ less but money is not everything in life. Then he proved to the audiences through his experience that he was more comfortable with working as assistant at Booklist Magazine even he is making less money. Because he got a better job, got the knowledge, and work on something that he like. In sum, then, the issue is whether to attend college or work without a degree. My own view is that attending college is worth it even if it will cost some sacrifices of things that we can get it in the future. After, all, I have chosen to identify as a college student at Winona State University. Though I concede that choosing the university and working to

Nine years ago, I never could have imagined I’d be writing this essay. I was a senior in high school, and, like the rest of my classmates, I was apprehensive about the future. Unlike my classmates, I felt like I had missed the proverbial “you need to get your life together” message. I watched my classmates apply to colleges, their majors already decided and their future careers mapped out. While I was an above average student, I felt I lacked the decisiveness my classmates seemed to have. I did not feel passionate about a career or even a field of study. I felt defective. This was compounded by the financial strain I knew attending college would have on my family. It seemed wasteful to try to “find my passion” at school while squandering

American entrepreneur, Steve Jobs, once said: “Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do.” Some people may take a job out of necessity rather than being passionate about their work. You have to love what you do as you spend more time working than being with loved ones. In Studs Terkel’s Working, adapted by Harvey Pekar, the reader is presented with visual adaptations of the lives of ordinary Americans that show how they feel about what they do for a living ranging from farmers, miners, barbers, box boys, and a hooker are some of the jobs mentioned in the novels. The author gives the

Deresiewicz points out that a statement most people feel compelled to ask students regarding their major is “What are you going to do with that?” (28) There is a strong pressure to get through college with excellent grades and to start at a high paying job right after graduation. Deresiewicz argues that “few of them approach their studies with a sense of intellectual mission” because they are focusing on volunteering and internships (30). The author is putting down students for being anxious about what society has already planned for them. How can someone not worry about a job if that is all that is talked about with them? From personal experience, most adults will start a conversation by asking where I want to go to college and what I want

“Misconception No.1: A liberal arts education is a luxury that most families can no longer afford. ‘Career-education’ is what we must now focus on.” (Ungar, 2010, pp.191) As Ungar has claimed, there is a recent misconception that a liberal arts education is no longer a necessity but luxury because it doesn’t provide an instant career launching education. With so many people having to a need to spend as little money as possible, they are determined to only spend money on preparation for their future career. For this reason they go to college only to take courses that are necessary for their future. “She is in college to take vocational training. She wants to write computer code. Start a business. Get a job in television. She uses college to take vocational courses that pertain to her career interest.” (Murray, 2008, pp.228) Murray explained the story of a girl who is in college solely for preparation for her career. Because of this, she isn’t interested in a liberal arts education. If the course doesn’t directly pertain to her desired career, she prefers not to take it.

Bok states, “According to one survey, 60 percent of Arts and Sciences professors do not even think that preparing for a job is a particularly important goal for undergraduates” (Derek Bok, 36). Bok is quite puzzled since about three-fourths of new college students presume preparing for a job is the key component of attending college. According to Bok, Liberal arts professors believe that once they integrate some aspect of a vocational program students will become more concentrated on learning the competent skills necessitated by the jobs. Bok also provides background information on vocational program in which he states that, “Since the average length of time people stay in their first job has shrunk dramatically, more and more employers want their employees to “hit the ground running” without having to receive costly training before the company” (Derek Bok, 39). Students are already being pressured by employers to have these skills needed for the job perfected by the time they graduate so the companies won’t spend resources on training. With the pressures employers place on the arriving college students they feel as if they have to choose a career and prepare for it as

However, some, such as Gerald Graff, argue that colleges and schools are missing opportunities when nonacademic interests of the students are not taken into the classroom. For example, he claims that his schooling was unable to foster his interest in sports or other “nonacademic” interests. However, I would claim that this is false considering there are majors that can foster one’s interest in sports such as sports journalism, sports broadcasting, and exercise science. In fact, I would argue that college allows one to follow their dreams. For example, I met a counselor who was originally was a plumber for thirty years of his life. When I asked why he changed careers he responded with, “I had full support from my family to go back to school, and ultimately I wanted to do something more fulfilling with my life. And now I am doing what I have always liked to do that is talking to people” To make this change he had to first earn his bachelor’s degree and then his masters thus accumulating debt. In addition, he had to take wage cut of 50,000 dollars a year. Despite this he had absolutely no regrets with the decision he made.

Famous actors, musicians, politicians, artists and authors are often called upon to deliver commencement addresses at prestigious places of higher learning. It doesn't take Nobel-Prize-winning social scientists or psychologists, or speech professors to predict what these elite guest speakers will say on such occasions such as these. The speaker will tell the graduating class to aim high, never give up, make the most of opportunities, and do as our forbearers did: pull yourselves up by the bootstraps. But when Oscar-winning actor Tom Hanks showed up at Vassar College to present the commencement address, his presentation avoided those clichés and platitudes. Hanks was refreshing original and yet remarkably pragmatic. This paper critiques Hanks' themes, examines his rhetorical techniques, and editorially analyzes his purpose.

Parents push their children to have more academic jobs and majors to improve their child's “status.” But when a student with high academic achievement chooses to have a vocational style job it is seen as unfortunate or even a waste of genius and intellect. Students should have the opportunity to be trained in whatever careers they want, even if it is a more vocational job like a trade instead of an academic job. If these students find these vocational jobs more meaningful than any academic job they should have the right to choose them because of their pursuit of happiness.