Job fairs should provide better options for humanities majors

By Amanda Melchor     9/18/08 7:00pm

Last week as I browsed through my Thresher, I was surprised and a bit disappointed to discover a Career Expo insert. Those few sheets of paper meant that it was that depressing time of year again: not midterms or finals, not Valentine's Day, but Job Hunting Season. Not everyone approaches the expo the same way I do. While I see this fair as another way of being reminded of the limits of my humanities major (outside of graduate or professional school), my scientifically-geared friends see it as a glowing chance of opportunity. The career fairs at Rice are designed to cater to and pique the interests of only a select group of students - the future scientists and engineers - while leaving the rest of us with few options.

When we enter Rice, we are told that our choice of major does not really matter, that our professional opportunities and choices are no longer limited and defined by our major, but career fairs act as a shining example of how misleading that advice can be. Most of the booths listed for the expo offered information about a wide range of jobs and companies to students whose choice of focus is myopic and limited. When I look under the descriptions that are not science-related, the majority of them consist of "consulting" with the odd "publishing" and "communication" thrown in there for good measure.

Though consulting is indeed analytical and lucrative, what other opportunities are available to humanities majors outside of consulting and graduate school? When people ask me about my major (English) and my post-graduation plans, three questions always come up and usually in this order: "So, are you going to grad school? You want to teach, right? Which law schools did you apply to?" This kind of view of liberal arts majors is another kind of narrow-mindedness we never really think about or address. But when I can't fathom professional success for myself outside of these options, what does that say about how humanities majors (and their interests) are seen? Rice students are shown few examples of how to be successful in the professional world without Teach for America or graduate school.

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While career expos are a great necessity to students and offer needed job opportunities and networking practice, the Center for Student Professional Development (formerly known as the Career Services Center) needs to not only create info sessions and seminars that feature careers for humanities majors that explore venues outside of teaching, law school and research, but also invite more diverse organizations, especially ones that are looking for students with less scientifically-focused interests. What about inviting local nonprofit and creative groups like the Houston Museum of Natural Science, the Houston Chronicle, the Alley Theatre and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston to talk about job opportunities? These organizations are probably looking for creativity, analytical skills and effective communication on a daily basis, and there's no better place to look for this combination than on the Rice campus.

The U.S. government is another large bureaucratic body that also strives to scoop up the nation's best and brightest; what hidden gems of opportunity do they have of which Rice students remain disadvantageously ignorant? And while Fortune 500 companies like Chevron, IBM and Google gear themselves toward science and math majors, these companies need workers with liberal arts majors interested or experienced in marketing, advertising and human resources; a business's success relies on these departments as well as their main product.

A great opportunity that Career Services has offered and taught in the past has been Humanities 212: Career and Life Options. The course not only instructs students on how to create a résumé and conduct oneself during an interview, but it also helps students evaluate their interests, goals and skill sets as well as provide them with the basic framework for an informational interview. With the help of an Interest Inventory, Myers-Briggs Type Indicator and other tests, the course helped me focus my interests a bit and suggested jobs that seemed compatible with my interest and skill sets. CSPD should try to offer something like this course on a larger scale so that it can be available to a wider variety of students and allow students to take the initiative as they search for jobs and internships.

Students who are either premedical, prelaw or predental and going to professional school or planning to attend graduate school already have their support systems in place. Entire departments and staff are devoted toward helping them meet their goals. The same cannot be said for those with a nonspecific degree who plan to enter an unsteady job market. The Career Expo should not be a time of resignation that makes humanities majors - a significant amount of the students at Rice - feel as though they are running a painful professional gauntlet. This activity should be something students look forward to and can rely on as a way to get their internship and job searches started.

Amanda Melchor is a Hanszen College senior and opinion editor.

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