With help from the Liberal Arts Advisement & Careers Center, Humanities students can turn their passion into their life’s work.
For many students, the thought of what comes after getting handed their diploma is as exciting as it is intimidating. If you’re a humanities student, the pressure of mapping out life after graduation is often magnified by the pressure of discovering how your passions can lead to a fulfilling career. Fortunately, the advisors in the Liberal Arts Advisement & Careers Center (LAAC) are available to help every step of the way, with advice to help students be successful both before and after graduation.
Step 1: Identify Your Passion
Students who choose to study the humanities are often fueled more by interest than a desire to pursue a certain career. “Our students come in and they’re passionate,” says Heidi Clark, alumni program director and experiential learning program manager. “But I think a challenge they might have is they don’t follow a linear path like a lot of other majors and students.”
And, if you’re a humanities student, you’ve probably been interrogated at family dinners, fielding questions from your great uncle Al like “How are you going to make money with a degree in German?” or “What kind of job will you get from studying comparative literature?”
Sometimes, you may even ask yourself these questions. Advisors in the LAAC can help students both answer these questions and learn from the process. “They have to learn how to defend [their degree],” Clark says. “Our students are learning to understand the value of their degree and then translate and articulate it into specific industries or specific positions.”
Step 2: Explore Your Potential
After you’ve explored your interests, LAAC advisors help you identify possible career paths by asking the right questions. Christian Sagers, career director for the College of Humanities, says students often ask him, “What can I do with my major?” The more important question to ask, he says, is “What do people with my major do?” Sagers says that flipping this perspective helps students better outline a potential career path, “because they learn really quickly that there’s a lot of diversity in the application of the skills that they’re learning in their programs.”
Heather Lagrosa-Farr, academic and professional development manager, explains helping students through that transition from passion to career plan is one of her main objectives as an advisor. “Most students that are studying humanities are interested in their major. It starts with passion, and having that as a base of an academic course of study is really cool.” Her role, she says, is helping students articulate their passion to others and explain how their studies have prepared them with marketable skills and expertise.
Step 3: Set Goals
As you progress through your degree, advisors counsel you to set educational goals that prepare you for your career. Cielle Davis, an academic and professional development manager in the LAAC, says, “College is a great time to learn how to set goals intentionally, put them into action, and then reflect on the outcomes and set the next goal.” She adds that students who learn to follow this process in college set themselves up for continued success throughout their professional journey.
Goal setting, she continues, prepares students to receive direction in all aspects of their life. “At BYU, we use an experiential learning cycle, and at the center of it is inspiration, because we want the Spirit to be guiding the decisions they make and the goals they set,” says Davis.
Step 4: Gain Experience
Career Advisor Sarah Sauerbier says she encourages her students to seek experiences outside of the classroom to help them solidify the skills they are gaining through their education. She encourages her students to “continue learning, continue finding resources, continue professional development,” which she believes “can help prepare them for continued progress.”
With each step of the process, from the first day on campus to donning a cap and gown, the advisors in the LAAC help students prepare for a fulfilling and successful educational journey and career.
Lagrosa-Farr explains LAAC advisors are “here to help students both understand the resources that are available and then use them to help [students] individually.” She encourages students to come to the advisement center early and often—she says doing so will almost certainly help them make the most of their time at BYU.
Learn more about resources in the LAAC here.