A couple of months ago, I came across Marina Keegan’s oft-cited article, “Even Artichokes Have Doubts,” where she muses on why so many of her friends have chosen to “sell out.” Given the fact that so many of her friends had other artistic, social and professional interests, she questions why so many seemed to settle for jobs in finance or consulting — approximately 25 percent of her class (2012), and approximately 30 percent of ours (2023). If you take the technology sector into account, where companies like Google and Amazon have infiltrated the top 10 list of employers for Yale grads, that number climbs to 44 percent, or almost half of Yalies.
Marina’s tragic passing has since touched every generation that comes after her, as we look back on and admire who she was and what she wrote. Her words live fervently on, as they continue to be quoted, circulated, reinterpreted and debated today. They also prove prescient. The Economist recently asked if elite students were “abandoning their dreams … [and if] that matter[ed].” Corporate recruitments start now as early as sophomore year, and the view that college is primarily a pipeline for employment has become widespread.
I myself am in a unique position. My background is nontraditional — I took three gap years — which many say is a boon for standing out in the job application process. I also recognize I’ll be graduating with a Yale degree, with all the access and prestige it affords, however unfair that may be.
On the other hand, “What are my actual marketable skills?” is a very real question for a liberal arts degree like me. By my age of 25, most people have already entered the workplace or invested in a career, building credibility and know-how to move them forward on some sort of distinct path.
Ever since I first stepped foot on this campus, I’ve been searching for that elusive panacea: passion. Something I enjoy doing for the process more than the outcome, where I felt challenged but maintained a respectable amount of competence in, and which would one day lead me toward financial independence and security. I figured some class or club would inspire me, and the rest would be history. Passion would be my flashlight, granting me precious clarity on any future decision-making.
The reality, of course, is not so rosy.
Beyond my personal doubts, the world looks different than it did a decade ago. Gen Z is not what I’d call a hopeful generation. Instead, we’ve been deemed anxious, lonely, mentally ill and socially awkward. We’re drinking less alcohol, having less sex, doing less drugs and doom-spending. Are the kids doing alright?
While some of the alarm may be overblown, some of it is warranted. Post-pandemic, the job market appears uniformly unwelcoming. As Jill Carrera, advisor at the Yale Fellowships and Funding Office, told me, “the class of 2025 seems really desperate to get a fellowship to study abroad. Like, really desperate.” I would consider myself a prime example of said desperation.
On campus, the prospect of finding employment goes a little something like: So you want to go into…
Academia? Okay, but tenure is dying.
Consulting? Understandable, but it’s a bullshit job.
Lawyer/doctor? So you make your parents proud. At what cost?
Tech? AI is coming for you.
Creative industry? You mean content creator.
Government? Stay safe out there.
Nonprofit? Marry rich.
Arts/entertainment? Ah, to be a nepo baby.
While most of this is subjective and reductive cynicism, perception often tells us more than numbers. Though economists point to overall healthy market indicators, rising income inequality, inflation and soaring living costs make it so that people don’t feel optimistic about the future. Nariman Behravesh, chief economist at the consulting firm IHS Markit, reported in 2012 that “job growth [this year] was not great, but it was good enough to make people feel like things are getting better.” Can we say the same thing in 2025?
In needing to balance my soul-searching with a healthy dose of pragmatism — and a reminder to chill — I wondered where all the people Marina interviewed in her article ended up. For those who were “trying to figure out if [they] loved art enough to be poor,” did they? Who said they wanted to experience industry and make some money before they changed the world, did they? Who said they found banking stimulating and educational and practical, did they? Were they satisfied with their choices? What did they learn? My friends and I were all collectively speculating, but I craved answers.
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Joseph Breen ’12 is senior counsel at the NYC Mayor’s Office of Criminal Justice. In 2012, he was considering a job in commercial real estate, although he ultimately wanted to work in affordable housing. At the time, he worried about working for any organization that “abused communities for profit,” but also recognized that it can be hard to tell which things are “improving communities and which are exploiting [them],” especially when it takes time to create “your own alternative, meaningful experience.” At Yale, he was an American studies major, working for organizations like Dwight Hall and the Homeless Advisory Commission for the Mayor in New Haven. After graduating, he was an intern in the NYC Urban Fellows program and worked at the NYC Department of Small Business Services before getting his master’s and JD at Harvard, eventually landing in his current position at the New York City’s Mayor Office. His pedigree is as impressive as it is faithful to his initial ambitions. But in speaking with him today, he is careful to qualify his accomplishments and acknowledge his privilege.
“No one would begrudge anyone who lives in our society, needs immediate financial security and makes decisions based on that,” he said. “Luckily, in my field of public policy and government, it’s [a path] you can get started on right away.”
He notes that the sample of students Marina interviewed were mostly her friends, whom she had a very specific intention for including in the article. She had asked a group of first years what they wanted to do in order to push her classmates to “be accountable to [themselves], and to do the same for [their] friends. She was doing her part in holding [our] collective generation accountable, ask[ing] what it is we wanted to do, and to be critical of why that might’ve changed. To analyze that part about ourselves, and figure out what those influences were.” She was an idealistic person, and she was trying to prove a point.
Breen observed that public interest jobs don’t have as effective marketing or recruitment tactics as corporate options, insisting that the University could do more to support students on “common good” career paths. While at Yale, students have boundless fellowship opportunities to pursue these types of opportunities; when they leave, it’s the entry-level recruiters at larger firms that pursue them.
Breen described how Marina’s death, at first, felt like an accelerant: a feeling of pressure to achieve a lot at a young age. A sense of urgency to never trade one or two years of your life for something if you could avoid it and to make an impact as soon as possible.
But a decade later, time has brought him perspective, enabling him to realize that it’s not about impact for impact’s sake, or the size of it. Rather, it’s about being thoughtful and positive with the small steps you do take in the moment.
“If you have the privilege of [having this] choice, you should continually ask yourself: what ideas are you advancing, and whose interests are you serving? It’s not always black and white, and there are times when there’s overlap,” he said. “But at the end of the day, it’s about being aware of what the end result of your contribution is — and living in that tension. Just because things aren’t guaranteed, doesn’t mean you shouldn’t attempt them. Don’t waste your time, but also still act as if you have the time to continually reinvent and evolve.”
Jeff Gordon ’12 LAW ’21 is a fellow at Yale Law School. In 2012, he was considering a job at a hedge fund, although he ultimately wanted to work in policy reform. At Yale, he was an American studies major and Yale College Council President, and he interned at the White House as a speechwriter. After graduation, he worked at a nonprofit consulting firm for large schools in urban education, got his law degree, did research at Berkeley and eventually found his way back to Yale.
Gordon contends that consulting is a flexible, multipurpose job that can help one develop analytical skills, and simply criticizing those who go into the industry misses the point. The jobs we consider “selling out” vary with time. 2012 was just off the heels of Occupy Wall Street, and attitudes were formed accordingly. Are corporations still the bad guy now? Tech? Has it shifted to consulting? Gordon emphasizes that the force of criticism needs to go deeper than that.
“It’s not inevitable or fixed which things college students are going to be tempted by. It’s a choice we’ve [as a society] collectively made to make certain jobs” appealing and accessible. In 2012, Teach for America was incredibly prominent and prestigious as a career path, while going into the start-up sector wasn’t really regarded as a feasible or potentially lucrative prospect. But the tides ebb and flow.
“My hypothesis is that if students follow what they’re most sincerely interested in, that will tend to lead them towards more unique, individualized career paths,” he said.
But even if students follow their interests, they also need to be willing to accept more risk: it takes more effort to go down a less-trodden path. And Ivy League students are traditionally — and somewhat ironically — risk-averse.
Another factor contributing to the stress is the peer pressure dynamics of making any career choice on a college campus.
“After college, each time you choose your next job, you’re making a choice in a relatively private setting … not around the closest thousand people you know, who are making the same exact choice at the same time,” he said. “But as a college junior or senior, you introduce a conformity and comparison aspect to the process. When you’re making this choice and everyone else is making it too, there’s pressure to pick a job that is well-regarded within the Yale context. And the key thing that has not changed is that there’s still a population of Yale students comparing themselves to each other, which is ultimately an unhealthy dynamic for making choices that are in your own best interest.”
In other words, it’s easy to get self-conscious. Life always brings new communities of people to judge you for the choices you make. But college, Gordon points out, contains the “most generic community of people [to compare yourself to], all interested in different things, [but sharing] the least common denominator of prestige.”
Even so, he doesn’t dismiss the hedge fund route as lesser or useless. To the contrary, he acknowledges that it’s important to understand how things work and how the flow of money in society is being managed. To “work in the belly of the beast and reform it afterward” is a valid strategy, he thinks. At the same time, that’s a hard position to maintain, and he said he isn’t sure how taking that job might’ve changed him.
“Sympathy is a double-edged sword. Understanding is useful and important, but there’s also a risk that you become intellectually captured by the people you work with, and let your personal sympathies overwhelm your analysis,” he said.
There are costs to taking certain jobs, and maintaining critical distance gets hard. It hearkens back to that old adage about golden handcuffs: when a certain type of job means getting used to having a certain amount of money, it also means getting comfortable with the lack of risk that comes with it.
So what are Gordon’s concluding words of wisdom?
“The general lesson I’ve learned is that you do the best work and go the furthest when you’re doing things you’re actually interested in. If so much of life seems to be about motivation, pick the things that are easy for you to get excited about.”
Sam Schoenburg ’12 loves his job. He is currently a police district councilor handling issues of policing and public safety for the city of Chicago and an associate at a law firm. He majored in political science while at Yale, and took a gap semester, super-senior style, before the pandemic made it a norm. Thirteen years ago, he was interested in political activism and government advocacy. Thirteen years later, he holds steadfast to those interests.
As for any judgement on “selling out,” he agrees with his former classmates: it’s not about the act of doing it, but the doing of it without a valid reason.
“It’s about challenging those who aren’t sure why they’re doing it, who think consulting or any of those other jobs is just easier than figuring out something else,” he said. If you have a good reason on why you want to do it and what exact skills you’re getting from it — that aren’t PowerPoint and Excel — he doesn’t have any qualms with it.
Schoenburg reflects on his twenties as a time of change, an age of uncertainty, full of endless choices. In the end, he notes, “It’s important to be kind to yourself, and know that you can only make the best decision for yourself with the information you have at any given moment.”
It’s also important to lower the stakes, because “the way to fulfill your purpose in life is not only through the job that pays you money.” That most of life’s meaning comes from beyond a job is a mantra I’ve heard many times, but still have trouble fully envisioning for myself. If a third of our lives will be spent at work and so much of our time is being stolen by screens, how else do we maintain a sense of agency over the priorities we set for ourselves?
Annie Shi ’12 took a job at J.P. Morgan right after graduating, while mentioning her fantasy of one day opening up a sustainable restaurant. Thirteen years ago, she was practical.
“I’m realistic about the things that I need for a lifestyle I’ve become accustomed to,” she said.
“[And] how can I change the world as a 21 or 22-year-old?”
Today, she is co-owner and beverage director of King, a James Beard Award-nominated restaurant in New York City. She is a case study of someone who entered finance with an exit strategy, and managed to follow through on it. When I asked her how she remained so committed to her passions, she told me, “I just know that I loved food and I loved restaurants, and I wanted to be involved in some way … but that path could have led me to a corporate job at Resy, [or some other place]. Did I really love restaurants, or [did] I really love food? Was it just something that [was] a hobby? I think that’s just soul-searching. There’s no other way to do it.”
Should all creatives be more pragmatic with their careers? Shi doesn’t regret her banking days at all, if only because there was no other way she could have survived. In general, she recommends taking baby steps over taking big risks. While working in London, Shi took weekend courses on restaurant operations, staged at local restaurants and found ways to learn about the industry before ultimately feeling ready to leave her position.
“I didn’t really know if it [was] a passion or if it [was] a career until I tried it. Opening [a restaurant] was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done,” she said. “The opening years of King certainly tested [my commitment] many, many times. But it’s a question you will find yourself asking even as you’re doing it. That’s just the nature of learning and growing.”
Passion is often packaged as a proxy for certainty. My friends who are artists tell me they’re doing it because they love it, or because they can’t imagine themselves doing anything else. But passion doesn’t manifest the same way for everyone. For some, it’s forged rather than found, grown alongside doubt rather than in place of it. Like faith, it can sometimes only be realized when it’s questioned.
Shi tells me that people in their twenties are “positioned perfectly to make [their] dreams reality.” Not because it will be easy, but because “people who are my age, in their 30s, can’t drop everything to make something happen.” Time, energy and the blissful power of ignorance; sometimes what you don’t know really can make you stronger.
Of all the people Marina interviewed, I managed to speak with four. But everyone seemed to land mostly where they hoped they would, as deduced via some LinkedIn stalking. In 2012, Mark Sonnenblick ’12 was a “musician, writer, and improvisational comedian at Yale looking (among other things) into a job at a hedge fund”; he is currently an Emmy and Drama Desk-nominated writer and composer. In 2012, Michael Blume ’12 was in the Whiffenpoofs, and quoted as saying his fellow classmates “don’t wanna be interviewed cause they already be on the path to making mad bills”; he is now a rapper, singer/songwriter and activist who’s performed at the Governors Ball.
That so many of the people I interviewed followed through on their ambitions paints a hopeful picture of the future: they all found their way. But many also attribute a great deal to Marina, who both inspired and forced them to reflect on the choices they were making in the moment.
While entering a creative career might be staying faithful to one’s passions, it also shouldn’t be romanticized. It won’t happen as fast — if it at all — the way one thinks it will. Doing something in the arts is lonely and individualized, requiring a person to make things up as they go along. Even those who find success don’t pretend to advocate for it, since the nature of making art evidently changes when you need to survive on it. In a New Yorker profile, Hollywood’s most famous and successful script doctor Scott Frank said that “the hardest part about [his] job [was] learning to live with disappointment.” No matter how successful one becomes, security thus appears to remain an elusive concept in the creative industries. Neurosis is built into the profession.
This returns to a common theme throughout many of my conversations: that life is more than a career. Or as one of my friends puts it, “I don’t live for labor.” It seems like an obvious and privileged point, but it can be hard to remember when leaving a place like Yale. Finding a community and building robust relationships, one soon finds out, is just as hard and important of a journey. Outside of ambition, it’s crucial to diversify where one derives their own value from, because at one point or another, one alum tells me frankly, “your career will always in some way let you down.”
Regardless of path, the only thing certain about your twenties, it seems, is the crushing — and exciting? — uncertainty it brings.
In the end, Marina is remembered as a champion of her friends, and I believe she would be very proud of all of them today.
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Has a lot changed in the years since Marina and her friends graduated? Yes and no.
Shi recalls that “all through Yale, I never felt like I had a clear idea of what I wanted to do as my job, because I only knew of like five jobs. I didn’t quite realize how many career paths there could be out in the world. And so I think this path, the path that I ended up on, was the only one I could have taken.”
In contrast, most students today are all too aware of the many paths they could take. But as psychologist Barry Schwartz points out, having too many choices paradoxically makes people unhappier. It’s hard to know whether social media has ultimately inspired more people to consider a different path, or simply burdened them with unrealistic expectations.
Still, the majority of the debates I’ve been having with my friends prove cliché: they mirror exactly the ones Marina had been having with hers. Are we just experiencing the norms of a phase of life?
In 2004, Katherine Stone wrote about the changing nature of the workforce and the “rise of precarious employment” in the 21st century: jobs no longer came with security or any promise of continuity. In “The Corrosion of Character: the Personal Consequences of Work in the New Capitalism,” Richard Sennett observed that in 1999, “a young American with at least two years of college [could] expect to change jobs at least eleven times in the course of working, and change his or her skill base at least three times during those forty years of labor.” What would the stats say now? Probably something like: “a young American has on average eleven jobs at once, and checks their Linkedin compulsively.” As a friend of mine describes it, our employability now depends on how easy or hard it is to replace us, rather than whatever skills or experience we might have to offer. The market moves faster than we can keep up with, and it feels all too easy to become obsolete quickly.
The result of such constant instability, Sennett hypothesized, would trickle into all emotional, social and personal aspects of life. Sennett uses the example of Rico and Jeannette, a prosperous young couple who, despite their respective successes, describe living in constant “fear that they are on the edge of losing control over their lives.” As Sennett views it, this “fear is built into their work histories.” To survive in the modern economy means remaining flexible and untethered, which conversely sets one’s “emotional, inner life adrift.” The “everyman for our times,” Sennett predicted, would be someone both “successful and confused.” Enter Adam Scott.
There are many reasons for the massive and increasing exodus of students into finance, tech and consulting. But I think a large part of it is that on top of the uncertainty students face about themselves, they face an increasingly uncertain world — and so gravitate naturally towards whatever appears to offer them the most stability. Change is nothing new, but the rate of it seems to be happening much faster now.
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I still don’t know what I’m going to do post-grad. I know that’s normal, but it doesn’t appease the anxiety. To recount a conversation at the dinner table over break:
Dad: “What are you doing today?”
Me: “I’m writing an article on the job-seeking process.”
Dad: “But you don’t have a job.”
Point taken.
Once again, a disclaimer: this article isn’t meant to troll consultants — if only because John Oliver does that better than anyone — or pass unsolicited judgment on others. I have no leg to stand on: I might yet go into consulting. Or I might not. As much as my soul-searching entails, it’s also laden with the privilege to do so in the first place. When reality hits the day after graduation and all hope for a magical continuing financial-aid package runs out, I might change my tune. I’m simply trying, as always, to figure out how best to make a decision and preclude any feelings of regret.
In that little-known memoir Michelle Obama published seven years ago, she wrote about the career crisis she encountered a little ways after entering the workforce: “Somehow, in all my years of schooling, I hadn’t managed to think through my own passions and how they might match up with work I found meaningful. As a young person, I’d explored exactly nothing … Barack, meanwhile, had tried out some things, gotten to know all sorts of people, and learned his own priorities along the way. I had been so afraid of floundering, so eager for respectability and a way to pay the bills, that I marched myself unthinkingly into the law.”
Am I getting ahead of myself? Yes. Far be it from me to compare my predicament with the former First Lady of the United States, who at this point in her life was already a practicing lawyer — and not a fledgling senior yet to write her thesis. But I feel an immense urge to learn from the wisdom of my predecessors, especially in the face of the unknown. To balance a sense of long-term patience with my constant search for purpose, knowing that the luxury of this time in my life — and in attending this institution — is the hope, however naive, that I can protect myself against the dreaded revelation of “wait, I actually hate my job,” some years later.
The consequence of this, of course, is paralyzing indecision. In a piece addressed towards graduating students, Angela Duckworth of “Grit” fame had this to say in response: “Don’t overthink it. Move in the direction of something that feels better rather than worse.”
Or, as writer Elizabeth Gilbert advises: “Follow your curiosity, not your passion.”
Or, as my dad likes to remind me often: “Just get a job first. Then you can talk.”
LAURA ZENG is an Urban Studies & Humanities double-major hailing from the suburbs of Chicago. She is currently looking for a job. Contact her at laura.zeng@yale.edu.