A chat with a stranger on a bench in Portland's Lan Su Garden changed how I see my own career path.

He said, 'I spent 20 years building a perfect resume for a job I hated, and you look like you're doing the same thing,' which made me quit my marketing job the next week to start that small pottery studio I always talked about.

4 comments

4 Comments

avery_jackson4d ago

My barista did that with her law degree lol

hannah4004d ago

My cousin graduated with a business degree last year and now works at a hardware store. It's so tough out there. I see so many smart people taking jobs just to pay the bills. It really feels like the system is broken sometimes.

nancyn694d ago

Yeah, it's wild. My friend's brother got a fancy engineering degree and now he's doing data entry for a plumbing company. The guy next to me at the coffee shop yesterday was talking about his master's in history while he mopped the floor. Feels like we all got sold a story that just isn't true anymore.

sage3083d ago

People forget that a degree just teaches you how to learn, it doesn't lock you into one job. The barista @avery_jackson mentioned might be the best lawyer in town someday, she's just figuring things out first. The real problem is acting like any job is a step down from what you studied. Work is work, and sometimes a simple job gives you the space to build the life you actually want.