Majoring in maturity

At Utah State University, grad fairs, career fairs and networking events are in large supply. In all of my experience attending these functions, there’s one piece of advice I’ve heard more than all of the others: employers don’t actually care what you studied in college, as long as you get a degree.

If this seems curious to you, you’re not alone. The first time I was introduced to this idea I thought it was the most bizarre thing I’d ever heard. It makes college seem arbitrary. Under this line of reasoning, it would make more sense for everyone to just get together and agree that we won’t care about college anymore.

Eventually I decided that college must be a social construct of some kind, something perpetuated in order to maintain the structure of society. If our culture is to be one of haves and have-nots, this must be justified somehow. Obtaining a college degree, the way I saw it, must be the way people reconcile giving better jobs to some and worse jobs to others.

Now that I’m further into my own education, I’ve discovered the real reason employers place such a premium on a college degree. Finishing college, like holding a full-time job, requires great maturity.

It’s not intellectual maturity that I speak of, but rather the life maturity needed to jump through all of the hoops included in a college education.

This would explain why employers see involvement in extracurricular activities, work experience during college and good grades as positive points on a resume. All of these things, especially when achieved simultaneously, prove an applicant’s ability to manage his or her own life and to do it well.

After all, life in the workplace is equally if not more nuanced than higher education. Multitasking, organization and planning are the name of the game.

Under these circumstances, it’s not uncommon for very intelligent people to never live up to their professional potential because they don’t know how to harness it properly. At the same time, others who are cognitively less gifted may end up succeeding because they know how to get things done anyway.

Unless you’re at an Ivy League institution, college is the same sort of effort-based ordeal. Let’s face it — with maybe a few exceptions, none of us have ever taken a class that we couldn’t have gotten an “A” in if we had really given it our all. We could have attended SI, checked Canvas more often or spent more time studying.

Not one of these things is impossible, but they would all force us to budget time more wisely, as well as to simply try harder.

If we expend the effort now to do these things and get those good grades, employers will understand that we’re people who will put forth that same effort for their firms. They’ll want to pay us high salaries with comfortable benefits.

After everything is said and done, the effort we put forth now really is setting us up for our first job, even if it doesn’t matter what our degree is in.

— Levi Henrie is a sophomore majoring in economics and international studies from St. George, Utah. He can be contacted at levi.henrie@aggiemail.usu.edu.