There’s nothing like a trip to the Career Resource Center (CRC) to make you remember that you’re a senior.
“It feels unreal,” said Joel Ting ’06 about graduating this spring. Ting is an economics major, and like every other senior, he must soon face the daunting challenge of finding a job by graduation. After being students their entire lives, seniors must now enter the competitive and sometimes unforgiving world of adulthood.
“The vast majority of us contemporary college students have followed a somewhat conventional and very guided track from elementary school to middle school to high school, and even through college,” said Kathryn Harmon ’06, a Spanish language and literature and Latin American studies double major. “Suddenly, after all of that time, graduation from college frees us from those conventional guidelines and the path dissolves into thin air. Suddenly the world is supposed to be at our fingertips, and now it’s up to us to take all of those experiences gathered along the way to help find our ideal niches out there in the real world.”
Because job hunting is, as Ting phrased it, so “stressful and scary and intimidating,” most professors and academic departments do all they can to facilitate a smooth transition into financial independence for their students.
“The film studies department is personally supportive of seniors and has been for thirty years,” said Jeanine Basinger, Corwin-Fuller professor and chair of the film studies department. “Every year I meet with seniors one-on-one. It’s a very specific form of job counseling: how to do resumes, how to do interviews, etiquette, what to wear, etc. I even tell them specific things about specific alum. For example, I might say that one alum worships Fred Astaire so if you don’t like Fred then keep your big mouth shut!”
The film studies department has also organized a vast alumni network in the film industry. Known in Hollywood as the “Wesleyan Mafia,” alumni help recent graduates find jobs, contacts, and even places to live in Los Angeles and New York.
“It’s a very happy and functioning alumni network and has worked for years,” Basinger said. “I give each senior a list of approximately ten names of alumni. I also call the alum and give them the list of seniors. The alumni are waiting for the graduates and help them find places to live and get entry-level jobs. It’s like the underground railroad.”
The psychology department facilitates job-hunting too, but through Psichi, the department’s honors society.
“Psichi acts as a network,” said Sara Williams ’06, a psychology and government double major. “It’s a way in which students can access resources and contacts about job opportunities.”
Even the government department, the most overburdened department, offers resources to job-hunting seniors.
“Giulio Gallarotti” (associate professor of government) “gave us with our course packet a list of resources and agencies we might be interested in, what previous graduates have done with a government major, internship opportunities,” Williams said. “Professors in the government department are willing to sit down with students if they’re interested in government-related professions.”
Most departments actively facilitate job-hunting and provide guidance to seniors. In sharp contrast, however, the economics department prefers to remain more or less uninvolved.
“We do almost nothing except to train students in economics,” said Richard A. Miller, Woodhouse/Sysco professor of economics. “Our contribution is the array of courses we teach which can be very helpful for careers in business and law. We do not run job fairs or things like that. We have a Career Resource Center and that’s what they’re supposed to do. We believe in the division of labor.”
Although the economics department does forward its majors announcements of economics-related jobs, write letters of recommendation when asked, and post job announcements and notices from graduate schools in the alcove next to the department office, it essentially maintains, in keeping with some of its teachings, a laissez-faire approach to job searches.
“We don’t do anything special, and in general assume that students will use CRC resources and their own personal contacts,” said Joyce Jacobsen, Andrews professor and chair of the economics department.
On top of enjoying less support from their professors when it comes down to finding jobs, economics majors must prepare for themselves for job searches earlier than many of their peers. Large firms such as Lehman Brothers, Morgan Stanley, Goldman-Sachs, and others typically recruit on campus early in the fall semester. These businesses recruit independently of the economics department and although these recruitment sessions have been popular in the past, fewer firms sent representatives to Wesleyan this year than last year.
“Wesleyan is a small school, so it is not worth it for companies to send recruiters,” Miller said. “Wesleyan’s small size hurts the students.”
The extensive alumni network, however, works for seniors’ benefit.
“There is somewhat of a Wesleyan network,” Miller said. “Some of the institutions which stopped coming to campus this year were petitioned to make contact with Wesleyan seniors by Wesleyan alums on the payroll.”
The supply of labor is partly a function of the tastes and job preferences of workers. While the alumni network acts as a boon for those who seek a well-paid business position, not everyone approves of working for corporate America.
“I don’t want to contribute to negative aspects of our world,” said Tomi Uyehara ’08. “That’s why I couldn’t work for Nike, for example. I think Nike’s ridiculous. A lot of companies do slave labor. Do you really want to know that you are contributing to making the world a worse place? I kind of don’t want to spread consumerism around the world.”
Although Wesleyan is rife with anti-corporate sentiment, business-minded seniors can defend their employment decisions.
“I don’t subscribe to that ‘corporations are the enemy’ mentality that others might,” said Harmon, who after graduation will work for Club Monaco, a subsidiary label of Ralph Lauren. “Whether I work for a large business corporation or a small non-profit doesn’t change who I am or what my morals, values, and beliefs are.”
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