Southern continues to sell unfulfilled dreams

I can’t even front, Southern has its personification on point! They can paint a really beautiful picture and almost make you believe that vision can actually be attained. I wish I had that type of power with my writing, then maybe I could get everyone to see everything from my point of view. But what I want to do and what Southern does are two different things.
I’m not going to say it is solely Southern’s fault, but they play a huge part in it. As most know, this week was Career Week, where several perspective companies come and view potential future employees. All week administrators and professors have preached, begged and pleaded for all students to attend the career fair and follow the following steps: register online, print out 20 copies of your resume, show up presentable and have high hopes for a career. Pretty picture painted, except they left out one fact: all majors are not welcomed.
When I entered college, I was undecided about my major. I knew I liked to debate so I considered political science. I loved to sell things and negotiate so I also considered marketing or business management. I had become Cisco certified my senior year in high school, so computer science was my main choice. But my true love was working with juveniles and counseling, and I was encouraged to pursue sociology as my major. When I researched what all a sociology degree entailed, and the possibilities that would follow, I became confident with my decision on my major. I also knew to be more marketable to companies I had to be at the top of my class so I enrolled in the Honors College and made sure I ended up on the Dean’s List every semester. Finishing my last year, I decided now, since I was in the top of my class, to attend the career fair and see how marketable I was. What I found was shocking.
As I, along with fellow standouts of my department, entered the career fair with high hopes, we stood and looked around. To the right on the wall were the color codes of what all the companies were looking for. We saw those that were looking for sociology majors had orange stickers. As we walked around with our resumes in our right hand and our hopes in our left, we began the hopeless journey. The more stations we went to, the more we realized we were outcast. Being black history month, I wondered if this is how blacks felt when entering white only restaurants. Apparently, if you are not an engineering, computer science or marketing major, Southern won’t invite companies for you.
Imagine the humiliation we felt as we went to all the companies and tried to sell ourselves but were politely told that our major wasn’t good enough. Imagine how it feels to have the only companies to entertain your conversation are the Waffle House or WalMart. I did not go to college all these years to work fast food or run a department store! I had heard the rumors that if you didn’t major in engineering or computer science, the career fair wasn’t for you, but I didn’t want to believe it. After not finding a single job in the field I want to go in, or a potential internship, I see this urban legend is more than just a myth, it is the truth.
I have been networking on my own, and therefore have my future plans and potential career, but with Southern bragging about how good it’s career services is, I shouldn’t have to. Is the message administrators are trying to send is certain majors are irrelevant in the real world? For having a particular interest in certain fields, does that make us less than other majors? Hopefully whoever does the recruiting and inviting for companies for the career fair can remember there are other majors that want careers too.
Trying to Uplift My Folks