A few weeks ago, a history professor at the University of Kentucky reached out to me and asked if I was willing to speak to her class about my post-graduation life with a liberal arts degree. Upon further investigation, she divulged she recently created a class titled Careers in History in an effort to work with “students to pursue internships and to promote career-readiness.”  She is hoping I can inspire students who are nervous that their degree is not going to translate to something meaningful. I immediately responded I would love to visit her class and we set a date.

I’m almost two years removed from my college graduation but I can vividly remember the  infamous question that inundated a large portion of conversations during my senior year:

“What are you going to do next?”

In addition, that memory also conjures up an even more annoying question that seemed like a slap in the face after I explained I was earning a degree in Geography:

“What are you going to do with that?”

Spare me. I typically laid out different paths Geography majors take after school in both public and private sectors like a good ambassador of my major. However, I often wanted to blurt out “Whatever I want to do with it.”

The fact is, your degree doesn’t define the next forty years of you working career. Of course you are more equipped to work in particular sectors due to it but there isn’t an unwavering linear occupation for the majority of Arts & Sciences degrees. In fact, in November of 2013, CareerBuilder stated “One-third (31 percent) of college-educated American workers age 35 and older are never employed within their degree field. For recent graduates, the chances of working within a degree field are even more bleak. According to the CareerBuilder study, nearly half – 47 percent – of college-educated workers said their first job was outside their field.”

Unfortunately, humanities majors receive a large amount of criticism from the media and are often listed at the top of “Useless Majors” lists. Thank you to the media for bellowing to young students that their passions are “useless”. On the contrary, a 2014 study published in the Huffington Post declared “the broke-unemployed-humanities-major stereotype may not have much of a basis in reality. According to data from the Association of American Colleges and Universities, as reported by The Atlantic, humanities and social science majors earn a similar amount as pre-professional majors do over a lifetime…career-specific skills can often be learned on the job — whereas critical thinking and problem-solving skills are invaluable benefits of a humanities education — as demonstrated by the many Wall Street executives who studied humanities in college.” The study goes on to list that Mitt Romney and Steven Spielberg majored in English, Ted Turner in Classics, and Conan O’Brien and Lloyd Blankfein (CEO of Goldman-Sachs) majored in History. (

In an attempt to avoid beating a dead horse, suffice it to say one can jump into a myriad of public or private sectors without an exact degree match. This doesn’t mean highly technical or medical degrees are attainable in such a manner – but having the attitude to improve, having a relentless work ethic, and honing people skills go an extremely long way. In fact, I was told in college that 75% of learning occurs outside of the classroom. Perhaps this thought is another way of uttering the Mark Twain quote, “Don’t let your schooling interfere with your education.”

Dream big, do big. Apply to positions that seem out of reach, reach out to people much higher up than you, and remind yourself of how much you know and can bring to the table. You never know who is looking to hire someone with your unique skill set.