Lower Your Future Risk

We are all in some stage of college education, and we have a variety of different experiences coming from college as well as outside, including paid and non-paid job, volunteering, campus involvement and etc. To keep an eye toward the future and reducing income risk, you could either continue doing what you are doing and making wise choices yourself, or you could also get some assistance from people you have network with, such as your older sibling or friends, or relatives, so on so forth.

Personally, I am doing both. I am making effort to continue making my own campus experience to help me in the future career, and at the moment, I also consider doing something else to make me more competitive in the job market when I graduate, as well as to avoid some income risk. I have a campus paid-job and there are some committees I am involved with that have great workshops or trainings to enrich my knowledge for future. They usually invite some guest speakers to campus, to talk about their experiences right after college, or people who are in the industry for a while. A lot of time, they will share their own experiences of how they deal with some of the struggles, and what are some tips they can give to us, as college students. What some of other students do is to pick up a major that can lead them to better placement or income in the future. This might works but the trend is always changing so there is some risk if you decide to do it. My cousin studied Biology Engineering in University of Michigan when he was an undergraduate, when a lot of anticipation of how this area is going to be more popular and can make a lot of money. After he graduate, the economy is not doing well, and the field was not longer popular and he can't find a job because of the big context in the job market. I suggest people to pick up something they like, or at least not hate, and continue doing it. It might be a wiser choice to just follow the trend because trend is something unpredictable. 

From there, I also kind of make some network and connections with people from LinkedIn, from career fair, and as many resource I can utilize as possible. To share a little story that once I have asked a recruiter from Bank of America that if she could go through my resume and give me some suggestions. One of the feedbacks she gave me was that it is good to get suggestions from people who are more experienced than you, but always keep in mind that different people have different pathway, that sometimes what is beneficial to some people won’t necessarily have benefit to you.

So my point is that there are a lot of ways we can develop to reduce risks for future through pushing yourself to do more stuff and also taking suggestions from other people, but do make sure keep in mind that first, you may not get benefits from other people’s experience; and second that those people who you ask suggestions from, they haven’t been through everything either, and they are trying to learn to lower their risk for their future too. Lastly, when we are talking about lower future risk in anything, a lot of times we are talking about in short term, but not long term. Some of the things might help with lower risks in short term, but not your whole life. You will have to keep your eye opened and always learning.