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I'm currently a 28 year old bartender and I want out. When I graduated high school I went to school for business. I did it for all of a year before deciding, with the clear eyed idealism of a 18 year old, to drop out and follow my bliss in art school. That lasted all of a year and a half, when I dropped out for a variety of reasons, the foremost of which was "Why am I paying for this? I can learn without school". Turns out I need he structure of schooling, because 8 years later I've got nothing to show for myself but almost a decade in the service industry. Ultimately, the main thing is that I need to get the gently caress out of restaurants. I want to make good money, I want a job that's mentally stimulating and ideally creative. I *dont* want a job that has me catering to the whims of entitled dickhead customers and working for manipulative, shady piece of poo poo managers and owners. Earlier this year I started applying to schools, and I'm kind of leaning towards marketing/advertising/something businessy. I'm good at art stuff (drawing and design) and it would be cool to do something that involves that. Now, I can go to community college and essentially cobble together a course load of graphic design and business classes, which is kind of what I'm leaning towards, but I'm not sure what jobs that would set me up for. I was also accepted at UVM for economics or 'community entrepreneurship', which essentially teaches skills in small business ownership, entrepreneurship, marketing, etc. Either major would essentially give me a business slanting liberal arts degree from a good school. So, Uh...thoughts?
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May 28, 2016 18:49
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At this point the best (and potentially only) way to ensure a decent graphic design career is to also learn to code for web dev. Graphic designers are a dime a dozen, developers can't make anything better looking than a power point slide, designers that can code are unicorns who get headhunted from job to higher paying job. If you can't code and aren't exceptionally talented, you can't be in this for the money. That's my report from 10+ years in the industry. Also: martinlutherbling posted:I *dont* want a job that has me catering to the whims of entitled dickhead customers and working for manipulative, shady piece of poo poo managers and owners. Buddy I've got bad news about the marketing/advertising biz for ya. "Shady" isn't usually part of it but the rest... You'll be working with people who literally believe yogurt needs a twitter feed. The good thing about working for ad agencies is that 99% of places you can drink at work, Mad Men style, because you need that to forget you're not creating or making art, you're making a twitter feed for loving yogurt. You're pulling an all-nighter to sell Tide. You're doing nothing of value whatsoever. Maybe since you're also pursuing business things, this won't sound so awful to you. It's a ridiculous industry that becomes more useless and maddening the longer you're in it.
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May 29, 2016 00:36
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I'm in a similar boat. 32, working retail, and questioning my direction in life every step of the way. One thing I know for sure is that when you don't know what the hell you're doing with your present day to day life, it helps to research what the future can hold. Figure out exactly what degree you want to shoot for, exactly what classes you need, what jobs that can land you, what they pay on average, etc. All the little details help paint a clearer picture of the path forward, and if it doesn't start looking like it'll pay off then all you've done it spent some time basically googling things, and you can still look for something you might like better without having learned the hard/expensive way through trial and error.
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May 29, 2016 04:42
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Same. I'm a 33 year old artist/illustrator and part time comedian in Chicago who has always been obsessively interested in science and almost went into aeronautical engineering and am more and more regretting my choices and wondering if I've started to hate drawing. If I went back to school to go into a research field, would I regret it even more? Like would I finally get back out only to end up teaching at Ted's Mystery Hole & College behind an Arby's in Kansas with huge debt for 15 years and maybe get to do one year of interesting research and then die? Or is this just me regretting whatever I didn't do no matter how my life turned out? Per the OP, I can't improve on Scudworth's advice. All the designers I know who make any good money also have some experience with web backend stuff. I do freelance design work sometimes, but creative work clients in general can be insufferable in the way I thought was only limited to children's book characters doing a new riff on their shtick with every page. Don't burn any bridges though because literally everything is based on nepotism. Frogisis fucked around with this message at 08:12 on May 31, 2016 |
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May 31, 2016 07:50
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Thanks for the responses so far guys. Sorry I haven't been watching this thread as closely as I'd like, currently in the middle of a big move. That's pretty depressing to hear about graphic design, but kind of what I expected unfortunately. I love the actual *design* part of gd, even the nit picky nerd poo poo like choosing the perfect typeface, kerning, etc. That said, I don't know that the back end stuff is really for me, and it seems like it's hard to eek out a living without it. As far as the ad world goes, you paint a bleak picture. The idea of developing ad campaigns, print ads, and whatnot sounds really interesting, and long term I think being an art director for a brand or firm would be awesome...but running the Twitter feed for Doritos sounds miserable. I think I could do well at the former, but the reality of the latter would be loving awful. Is that something specific to advertising or is at marketing as well? Or in this case are they one and the same? Honestly, I have no clue what I'd want as a career. Despite doing poorly in high school I'm a smart person (not to sound conceited, but I feel like I'm normally the smartest person in the room...although maybe that's partially because I'm surrounded by other restaurant workers ), and I like to research and learn. I also love design and art (and I show an aptitude for it), and really anything with a creative element. All I know for sure is that bartending is a major waste of my intelligence and talents. In that vein, even running a 4loko Facebook page would probably be more fulfilling. For now I'm thinking the best move for me is to enroll in some business focused lib. arts courses in community college. Get as much general poo poo knocked out as possible and worry about a career after I at least have some experience from my classes.
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Jun 1, 2016 19:12
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Flip around Ad Age and see if any of this appeals to you - http://adage.com/martinlutherbling posted:The idea of developing ad campaigns, print ads, and whatnot sounds really interesting, and long term I think being an art director for a brand or firm would be awesome...but running the Twitter feed for Doritos sounds miserable. I think I could do well at the former, but the reality of the latter would be loving awful. Is that something specific to advertising or is at marketing as well? Or in this case are they one and the same? I'm gonna try to run a very basic hierarchy for you but past a certain point I don't know what happens at the top levels. In an agency the creative director* takes marketing information, target audiences, and what the brand is going for and develops the campaign with the marketing people, usually from the brand itself. They determine the imagery and basic visual stuff. They give that to the lead designers and a project manager. They make a team of designers. Designers design it further and give that to the production team, which includes the grunt work of graphic production (cutting up anything to prepare it for the developers to code or for it to be print-ready) and the developers themselves. *Creative directors start at the bottom as designers, often designers start in graphic production if they're fresh in the game, they make banner ads. Designers work their way up to art director, but "art director" as a term doesn't really mean poo poo anymore because many places just call any designer past a certain point an "art director", don't know why, it's become meaningless. That's why I'm saying "creative director" here, they're the highest level. Being a creative director at an agency takes many years up the ladder, and you'll still be designing Facebook assets for Corn Pops, because that's advertising. That's what it is. That's what developing a campaign is. You're never getting away from that. It's Corn Pops all the way down. If I was an unmarried asian american college graduate female, what fonts would make me want to buy Corn Pops? That's the job. That research is what marketing departments do. That and buzzwords like "content strategy". I have a few friends who've refused to take art director+ positions and stay lower designers because these are questions they don't want to stay in the office till midnight trying to figure out as a career. I was in a brand strategy meeting once with the producers for a TV show and I heard the word "viral" probably 20 times. Again, it's a loving ridiculous industry you can't be in for meaning at the end of the day. The office drinking is crucial. There are design areas I wish I knew how to get into, wine companies have really expanded their label art and I think that would be rad. Packaging design is very interesting but I think that's a whole other specialty, there are agencies that only do that. For a time I worked in the design department of a municipal government and it was great and truly helped people. Also book cover design for a publishing company would be amazing, as would non-profit stuff, but I think those jobs are the holy grail kind you keep until you die. But advertising is what i described above. Marketing is the research & planning arm. Scudworth fucked around with this message at 11:06 on Jun 2, 2016 |
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Jun 2, 2016 10:49
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Community college is a good place to start. Take a few different things you think you like and maybe even a couple you don't have any interest in and see where it takes you. I would discourage you from making some firm pivot in one direction. You can feel your way through CC relatively inexpensively.
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Jun 6, 2016 04:38
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I know from personal experience that working in an advertising agency is way better then working in kitchens. Though the idea of switching from making something that someone wants to something that no one wants can be emotionally taxing. Also don't drink yourself into complacency and move on if it doesn't work out.
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Jun 8, 2016 19:06
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Team_q posted:I know from personal experience that working in an advertising agency is way better then working in kitchens. Though the idea of switching from making something that someone wants to something that no one wants can be emotionally taxing. Also don't drink yourself into complacency and move on if it doesn't work out. Having your head slammed repeatedly in a car door for 12 hours a day is better than working in kitchens.
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Jun 8, 2016 20:16
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martinlutherbling posted:I want to make good money, I want a job that's mentally stimulating and ideally creative. I *dont* want a job that has me catering to the whims of entitled dickhead customers and working for manipulative, shady piece of poo poo managers and owners.
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Jun 8, 2016 21:12
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^^ Of course, but I was referring to working in the restaurant business specifically, anyone who's experienced it knows what I mean.
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Jun 8, 2016 23:48
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Frogisis posted:Same. I'm a 33 year old artist/illustrator and part time comedian in Chicago who has always been obsessively interested in science and almost went into aeronautical engineering and am more and more regretting my choices and wondering if I've started to hate drawing. If I went back to school to go into a research field, would I regret it even more? Like would I finally get back out only to end up teaching at Ted's Mystery Hole & College behind an Arby's in Kansas with huge debt for 15 years and maybe get to do one year of interesting research and then die? Or is this just me regretting whatever I didn't do no matter how my life turned out? This is sort of a tough call, because it's kind of impossible to know whether you'd like actual scientific research until you've gotten into college coursework. I started college thinking I was going to go into math or physics, only to pretty quickly realize that I wasn't really cut out for it. Fields related to biology seem like a decent option if you're interested in science but not sure if you'd be able to handle the difficult math required for physics-related fields (which isn't to say that math/stats isn't heavily used in biology, but at least it's not a prerequisite to do much of anything like is the case in physics).
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Jun 9, 2016 02:00
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Frogisis posted:Same. I'm a 33 year old artist/illustrator and part time comedian in Chicago who has always been obsessively interested in science and almost went into aeronautical engineering and am more and more regretting my choices and wondering if I've started to hate drawing. If I went back to school to go into a research field, would I regret it even more? Like would I finally get back out only to end up teaching at Ted's Mystery Hole & College behind an Arby's in Kansas with huge debt for 15 years and maybe get to do one year of interesting research and then die? Or is this just me regretting whatever I didn't do no matter how my life turned out? The thing about science research is that just being both good at science and interested in it isn't really enough. Research is a pretty thankless thing to do, and you will literally spend years in grad school with nothing to show for it until you start to become more familiar with your experiment and can actually get somewhere with it. You're also getting paid below the poverty line the entire time you are doing it. I'm just finishing a Master's in Physics right now, and it's pretty telling that literally no one I know is actually enjoying their time in grad school. This is at a good, well-known, well funded University, doing cutting edge research. I don't know if it's better or worse at other schools, but I think you need to care enough about doing science research to be willing to be miserable for half a decade, on top of also being good enough to handle it. On the plus side, if you are good with money you at least won't come out of it in debt, unlike some other fields. As for being good at math, it's mostly just how much time you are willing or able to put into it. I've never been very good at math, so I just worked 20 hours a week on my E&M course. I'm pretty decent at it now, but my supervisor was not happy with the amount of research I didn't get done that semester.
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Jun 10, 2016 20:40
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martinlutherbling posted:For now I'm thinking the best move for me is to enroll in some business focused lib. arts courses in community college. Get as much general poo poo knocked out as possible and worry about a career after I at least have some experience from my classes. do the total opposite. general classes don't mean poo poo - there's a reason you take them first. there's no experience there besides being able to write a 15-page paper and learning to do group projects with 19-year-olds. think about what it is that you might want to do and take 2-3 targeted classes. pick a couple of marketing or design-specific classes. then go get a poo poo job. in any reasonably metropolitan area, there's some recruiter who's looking for someone in your field. call robert half/ accountemps/ office team/ etc and start fishing for entry-level jobs. 6-12 months of working in the industry, plus 2-3 classes in, say marketing or whatever, should change your prospects a bit. you've got references, you've got some education that you're currently building, and you look motivated. go back to the recruiter or start building at work. don't assume one more person with a bachelor's is going to open doors. you can learn from both and apply that learning to the other activity.
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Jun 12, 2016 02:55
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Einstein's poo poo posted:then go get a poo poo job. in any reasonably metropolitan area, there's some recruiter who's looking for someone in your field. call robert half/ accountemps/ office team/ etc and start fishing for entry-level jobs.
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Jun 12, 2016 16:23
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Have you considered the trades? There is huge demand right now because an entire generation of kids were told that they ABSOFUCKING MUST go to college or they will wind up in the gutter. So most people in the trade are nearing their 60's and are on the way out. If you can get into the commercial end of really ANY trade you will run into computers and computer controlled systems. If you have even a basic understanding of Windows and command line / general menu structure you will run circles around most of the old guys. They freeze like a deer in headlights when the computer does anything unexpected. Computer knowledge will also keep you away from the hard work most people think of when someone says they work with their hands. You're not going to be busting rocks all day long in the hot sun.
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Jun 12, 2016 19:01
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PromethiumX posted:Have you considered the trades? There is huge demand right now because an entire generation of kids were told that they ABSOFUCKING MUST go to college or they will wind up in the gutter. So most people in the trade are nearing their 60's and are on the way out. If you can get into the commercial end of really ANY trade you will run into computers and computer controlled systems. If you have even a basic understanding of Windows and command line / general menu structure you will run circles around most of the old guys. They freeze like a deer in headlights when the computer does anything unexpected. Dunno, that's what they say in Australia, and every tradesman I know would rather hacksaw their arms off than hire someone over 21*. At my old job, at a bakery, I have actually seen my boss tear up resumes after reading no further than the DOB. As I've said to my younger friends, "for the love of god, if you are going into a trade, do it before you hit 21." * = In Victoria at least, there is a difference of >21 and <21 of ~$2.17 ph AUD.
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Jun 12, 2016 23:58
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Sic Semper Goon posted:Dunno, that's what they say in Australia, and every tradesman I know would rather hacksaw their arms off than hire someone over 21*. you can sit for most journeyman exams for most trades after year 3 on the job. most Masters licenses require 6 years minimum. The trades aren't rocket science and anyone even mildly competent will be just fine.
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Jun 13, 2016 01:04
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Graphic design and web dev is pretty competitive for entry level positions. You need to network a lot and be well connected to get in, at least as far as I can tell. Mobile dev is in big demand tho and they seem to like to hire artsy people. I've heard trade work in the us is a good route. I apprenticed under a watchmaker for a bit and the money was decent. I also happened to really like the work.
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Jun 13, 2016 02:54
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Sic Semper Goon posted:Dunno, that's what they say in Australia, and every tradesman I know would rather hacksaw their arms off than hire someone over 21*. In many countries you can't ask for a DOB on a form unless you're consenting to a background check, and asking during a job interview is straight-up illegal. It won't ever be on resumes in America or Canada.
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Jun 13, 2016 12:35
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Scudworth posted:In many countries you can't ask for a DOB on a form unless you're consenting to a background check, and asking during a job interview is straight-up illegal. It won't ever be on resumes in America or Canada. I've had jobs ask if I was over/under an age (liquor/tobacco selling requires 16/18/19 in some states)
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Jun 14, 2016 05:01
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