Life is brief. It's important for us to follow our passions to the extent that we can, understanding that even our passions evolve. All of this speaks, among other things, to a robust education that gives our young people opportunities to experience numerous opportunities. Our legislature instead wants to narrow these by narrowing curricula through anti-CRT bills and high-stakes tests—and much to the detriment of our youth. This, atop the inadequate funding of our schools. It's no wonder our youth often find themselves adrift.
-Angela Valenzuela
Almost half of older millennials wish
they’d chosen a different career path—
what they’d do differently
As millennials begin to turn 40 in 2021, CNBC Make It has launched Middle-Aged Millennials, a series exploring how the oldest members of this generation have grown into adulthood amidst the backdrop of the Great Recession and the Covid-19 pandemic, student loans, stagnant wages and rising costs of living.
At 35, Kristen Alfenito laments that she has yet to start her career.
That’s not to say she hasn’t worked. For the last 16 years, she has held a string of jobs, starting with two part-time gigs while attending college for musical theater. Then, she says, she was diagnosed with cancer, dropped out and became “resigned to working in food service or retail for the foreseeable future.” Today, Alfenito works as a cashier at a bakery in Morgantown, West Virginia.
Thinking back to her college days, “I wish someone had helped me figure out what jobs would be applicable for my interests and passions, and what kind of degree was actually required for that — if any,” Alfenito says.
Many older millennials who are now approaching middle age have significant career regrets. Nearly half, 47%, say they wish they had chosen a different career path when they started out, according to a recent survey of 1,000 U.S. adults ages 33 to 40, conducted by The Harris Poll on behalf of CNBC Make It.
Alfenito believes millennials, who this year range in age from 25 to 40 and make up the largest age group in the workforce, were pressured to pursue four-year degrees, and the mountains of debt that can come with them, without always knowing if there was a viable career on the other side of graduation.
As older millennials approach two decades in the workforce, their current roles and responsibilities may not be what they envisioned out of high school or college. We talked with six people from a range of fields about what they would do differently if they could start over again.
A history degree and few job opportunities
For Lee Ruark, earning a history degree was all part of the plan to start a career — he just didn’t know what he wanted to use his degree for. He graduated from college in 2007 just as the economy began to nose-dive into the Great Recession, and many jobs he thought of trying out went away with it.
He spent the next three years figuring out his options, first thinking to join the military until his health prevented him from doing so, then taking the LSATs with the intention to go to law school. He almost became a police officer before he finally stumbled into substitute teaching. When he discovered a knack for it, he got certified to teach full time with a focus on high school science.
Ruark, now 35 and living in Jeffersonville, Vermont, remembers how stressful it felt to be directionless right after school.
“I had anxiety because my friends were finding jobs, and I perceived them as being wildly successful while I wasn’t,” Ruark says. “What’s interesting is, after talking about it with them, I realized all my friends had the same anxieties about perceiving others’ successes. We laugh about it now, but to think about it, [feeling anxious] was a waste of time and energy.”
If he could, Ruark says, he would go back to the time he was in third grade when his mom — also a schoolteacher — told him he had a gift for teaching and encouraged him to pursue it. If he had listened instead of being resistant to following in her footsteps, Ruark says he could have pursued education a lot earlier.
A $170K law degree that doesn’t pay off
Some millennials say financial realities, especially living with student loans, changed their chosen career path. As a college senior studying policy, Brad Walters wanted to be a legislative aide, but seeing the low $30,000 starting salary in comparison with his $60,000 student debt, he went into education instead. “It tells you something when education is the more lucrative option,” he jokes.
