The terrible piece of career advice I got over and over again as a college student
By Áine Cain for Business Insider
I once got into a very polite conversation — tour guides don’t argue with guests — with a nice but unyielding tourist who said, “You have to go into teaching because that’s the only thing to do with a history major.” (I heard this over and over again.) She didn’t even specify what level I’d be teaching at, just that it was inevitable.
…I get why people make assumptions like the insistent tourist did. There’s something sensible and comforting about a linear career path. You take the relevant classes; you graduate, and you’re basically all set. And when you’re a history major, going on to teach history is one of the few linear career paths you’ve got.
Still, liberal-arts majors, disregard the well-meaning people who are fixated on the career path of least resistance. Maybe this is naive (or maybe it makes me sound like a humanities shill), but a good liberal-arts education should teach you how to think, write, and speak. Once you have those skills, you can do whatever you want.
