Martin Luther King Jr. Scholar: 10 Years Later

Almost 10 years ago, I arrived in St. Louis to interview for the Martin Luther King Jr. Scholarship at Saint Louis University. The scholarship had been around for two years, but this year was the first year the college was interviewing candidates before selecting scholarship recipients. The weekend was cold, in the teens, one of the coldest for St. Louis that winter. The water in the ponds next to the Cupples House was frozen over, an incredible sight for someone coming all the way from Hawaii to interview. The MLK Jr. Scholarship is awarded to students "who are committed to the promotion of social justice in our society." Scholars are expected to uphold their commitment to diversity and social justice during their time at the university, as well as meet yearly GPA and leadership requirements. If I wasn't clear by now, I was awarded the scholarship and was expected to uphold this commitment during my four years at SLU and after graduation.

Diversity and Social Justice

Social justice is the view that everyone deserves equal economic, political and social rights and opportunities. I absolutely despise the phrase "social justice warriors" because the phrase conjures images of Twitter trolls and selfish individuals who are "activists in name only." Social justice is a good thing. Social justice worth working toward and ought to be promoted on a daily basis. A better term for a "social justice warrior" is "butthead." The term "social justice warrior" only makes it easier for people to dismiss actual social justice as a legitimate goal and perspective, especially in a world that so desperately needs it.

But, I digress.

Diversity is much more than racial diversity. It's much more than making sure your school, company or organization has "this person" or "that person." Diversity also includes religious diversity, gender diversity, intellectual diversity, hometown diversity (diversity of the location of one's upbringing) etc. As a white woman with a white name, I don't look or sound diverse (well, half white, but I look white to most people). Since being a MLK Scholar meant this commitment to diversity, I felt that a Native Hawaiian in the Midwest I could create diversity and contribute to the community in ways different from my peers and from those in the St. Louis area.

What Does It Mean to Be a Scholar?

I always understood SLU's motto to be "men and women for others." The motto could've changed in the years since I graduated, since the university now says its motto is "higher purpose, greater good."  To me, being an MLK Scholar meant taking King's legacy and teachings beyond the Civil Rights Movement of the 60s. I think it means finishing the work he was unable to finish and doing the work that he would've been unable to get to even if he was still alive. King would've been a busy man in the decades afterward if he wasn't assassinated in 1968.

During my four years at SLU, being a Scholar meant active membership in the university's Amnesty International chapter. It meant yearly participation in SLU's Make a Difference Day every October and volunteering weekly as a tutor at a local high school. It meant being the one political science major who studied among the physics and engineering majors in Parks College. It meant being one of the few people from Hawaii at SLU. It meant being different was an asset, not a liability.

10 Years Later

Ultimately, being an MLK Scholar meant recognizing that privilege doesn't have to an institutional construct designed to hold others back with the exception of a few. Privilege is bestowed to the few as a responsibility to the many. With great power, comes great responsibility. I graduated from SLU debt free, and the scholarship contributed to that outcome. If graduating on time from a four-year private institution of higher learning debt free isn't privilege, then perhaps I don't really know what privilege is.

Nowadays, I uphold the commitment to diversity and social justice through my work with the Amnesty International St. Louis local group. Being an active member of Amnesty comes with its own set of responsibilities and helps me to have perspective on the full extent of my privilege. Martin Luther King Jr. once said, "Life's most persistent and urgent question is, 'What are you doing for others?"

It's also a question a scholarship program at a Jesuit university asks its potential candidates. Ten years ago, I didn't know much about Martin Luther King Jr. except what I learned in class and from our textbooks. Today, I think he has a continual, ever-changing legacy because what he stands for is timeless, yet timely.

Choose a College Major You Like

It Makes Little Difference in the Long Run

Results from the latest study by ACT found that 1/3 of college freshmen are choosing a major that's a 'poor' fit for their interests. Although the study of more than 1.2 million 2013 high school graduates also found that another 1/3 are choosing a major that's a good fit for their interests, I do worry for the four million freshmen across the country that are only making their college experience harder by choosing a major that doesn't fit their interests.

When I was a student at Saint Louis University (I graduated in 2010), I met too many students who were majoring in things like biology, chemistry, and biochemistry but hated their majors. They were only majoring in these things because they were told at one point that there were jobs in these fields. They may have only been majoring in these things because they were pre-med, and were opting for a major that seemed complimentary to medicine (pre-med itself isn't a major). However, there's no requirement that if you're pre-med you need to major in biology or chemistry. Some may say that majoring in the sciences is better because it prepares you better for medical school, but statistics show that as long as you meet the requirements for entry and keep your grades up, a pre-med philosophy student isn't any less prepared for medical school than a pre-med biology or pre-med chemistry student.

Spend that Time on Something You Like!

The pre-med example is just one that illustrates my ultimate point: your major doesn't necessarily determine your job prospects or how employable you'll be once you graduate. If people can get into medical school without needing to study a hard science, then people don't necessarily need this degree or that degree to get a job. Granted, some fields do require a specific degree. You're not likely to get an engineering job without an engineering degree, and you're not likely to be a physical therapists without studying physical therapy, but for the most part companies with open positions aren't going to focus on the major. So, why not spend the four years majoring in something you like? Four years is a long time to spend studying something you aren't interested in only to prepare yourself for something that you might not be interested in either.

At SLU, I doubled majored in international studies and political science with a double minor in communication and Russian. It's a mouthful. I just tell people I studied in political science. After I graduated, I took a temporary job making cold calls. Next, I became a freelance writer writing about everything from recruiting to nitrogen tire inflation, from government trends and initiatives to small business technology. After that, I started my own content marketing agency. That didn't end up working for me, which was fine because I hated having to convince potential clients over and over again that they couldn't talk about themselves on their company blogs and that the needed to create content that potential customers would like, not just stuff that advertised and made a sales pitch. I like content marketing when it works well. I hate it when it's not working well and now you have to evangelize and give advice. But, they aren't paying you for that advice and they didn't ask for it in the first place. Because they didn't ask for it, it's unlikely they'll implement it.

I digress, but within that whole story I didn't really need or rely on my political science degree. None of my clients cared I had the degree. The telemarketing job overlooked the fact that I didn't have business degree, even though everyone else they hired with me had one. I didn't need a degree, let alone one in political science, to become a freelance writer or to become an entrepreneur. I have the professional background that I have because I was a good writer, spending three years at SLU writing for the college newspaper and having a few journalism internships to boot. At this point in my life (I turn 26 in January and I only graduated three years ago), no one is going to care about my major no matter what I choose to do with my life. Yes, they will care that I got a college degree, but employers care about the fact that I got the degree and they care about the skills that I have. Since major won't matter, even as soon as three years out of higher education (of course, major makes a difference if you want a masters and/or PhD), then choose something you're interested in.

Then Why Do Employers Specify Majors on Their Job Postings?

They do it because they need a way to weed out bad applicants and to deter them from applying, although a requirement like 'four-year degree in marketing" rarely stops anybody. The average job seeker spends 76 seconds looking at a job description, with much of that time typically spent reviewing job title, compensation, and location. If you think that's bad, then consider that the average hiring manager spends six seconds on a resume. Four of those six seconds are spent looking at four main parts of the resume:

• Job titles (42% restrict their hiring based on previous job titles, and these are just the hiring managers that don't have a problem filling an open position)
• Companies You Worked At
• Start/End Dates
• Education

This means that, on average, the hiring manager is spending one second looking your educational background. This is one-third of the time spent looking at your work history. Even if majors were designed to deter people or to encourage certain people to apply, it's not something hiring managers are really spending time evaluating, even when they do look at education. They have other things in mind when looking for the perfect candidate (besides, you know, finding perfect person with everything the employer wants).

Trust me, as someone who has covered the recruiting industry for a year-and-a-half, they don't care about degrees and college majors all that much. They're not good indicators of success in the position, and are hardly ever used as factors to decide on one candidate over another. As the research has shown, employers are worrying about having college graduates who are ready for the workforce and who can write a sentence without spelling and grammatical errors. They're more focused on filling positions with people who can do the job and don't need a lot of training to do it. Studying history, philosophy, anthropology, or another "useless" subject isn't going to hurt your chances of getting to this point than studying something "more practical." Granted, employers are also worrying about things that are outside of your control, like only hiring people who have the same exact job title on their resume, but you also need to be spending time in college developing skills through internships and extra-curricular activities. Simply getting the degree isn't enough and won't necessarily prepare you adequately for the workplace.

If You Want a Practical Degree that Gets You a Job, Then Go to a Trade School

If all you're after is the security that you'll be employable and jobs in your field once you get out, then go to a trade school. Study something like auto repair, veterinary assisting, medial billing & coding, or nursing. These are practical jobs that are never going away, and attending a trade school ensures that everything you do there will have to do with whatever trade you choose to study. You don't have to make room for three semesters of theology or four semesters of foreign language at a trade school. Plus, you finish faster and have to do fewer papers and exams to do it. Why spend four years getting a job when you can do the same thing at a trade school at two, and for much cheaper too? Better yet, there's a lot of jobs that don't even need a college degree. If you're just after earning money, then there are plenty of ways to do that without spending the time and money to go to fancy university in the first place.

College is supposed to be about more than getting a job. College is also supposed to be about exposing yourself to new things, developing your critical thinking skills, meeting new people, and being able to do things that you might not be able to do outside of college. College should be fun, and fun doesn't have to exclude your classes. I got a degree in political science and have turned out just fine in the real world. You don't necessarily need to get a degree in a field that you plan to work in. You really need to get the degree, and get a lot more skills and experience on top of that.

I am Thankful I Don't Have Student Debt

I managed to do something that's unthinkable, and maybe nearly impossible, in this day in age: graduate college without a dime of student debt. On top of that, I graduated from Saint Louis University, which cost about $35,000 a year. If I remember correctly, during my four years at SLU, tuition increase by about 10%. I do believe it actually increased at least three out of those four years.

We Can Actually Thank SLU Financial Aid for This One

On more than one occasion, my father asked me to go to financial services and to ask about a student loan. "Tell them you need a loan," he said. I did that during my freshman year, and I never went back again, despite repeated requests.

When I visited my freshman year, all the counselor did was tell me that I needed to talk to a bank instead. He (at least I think it was a he. It's been six or seven years now.) printed a list of banks out and said that one of the six or seven banks on the list would be a good option. He didn't tell me how to approach these banks, or where branches were located, or even ask how much money I really needed. I expected this to be a 20 or 30-minute meeting, having a discussion and going through how this process works. I actually thought I would be getting some paperwork on an actual loan. Silly me, as all this means work for financial services. I don't think the meeting even lasted five minutes.

I'm from Hawai'i, and I'm attending school in St. Louis. I don't recognize any of these banks. There's no American Savings Bank or Bank of Hawaii on the list. Wells Fargo only sounds familiar, but it's not a brand I really know anything about. Did they really expect to forge such a huge financial relationship with a company I barely heard of? I suppose this isn't much of a dilemma for most people since they probably get the loan before starting college or the next semester.

So, I never got a student loan. I was always able to avoid it because the financial services department was so unhelpful. It wasn't that I didn't want a loan, but it's hard for my parents to help me when they are 4000 miles away and they're not even on the same land mass.

How College Did Get Paid For

About a quarter of my total college tuition (for all four years) came from the Martin Luther King Jr. Scholarship, which is awarded to SLU freshmen who show a commitment to diversity and who demonstrate leadership. I am grateful for this scholarship and when I can, I interview incoming freshmen for scholarship selection when that weekend rolls around in February or March.

For the first two or three years, my great aunt helped a lot. She had a lot of money, but didn't do much with it in her ripe old age. When she passed on, I believe the money she left for me was used for college as well. I think after she passed, my parents covered the rest of the tuition.

Without Student Loans, I Can Have a Business

More than 38 million Americans have student loan debt, totaling nearly $1 trillion. Student loan debt now surpasses credit card and auto loan debt in this country. Those numbers are staggering, and even though I do have credit card debt (most of which I've accrued after I started the business), there's no way I could have a business if I had student debt. That would have been an additional cost that I would have had to account for in the beginning, making it harder to generate enough income and to be able to put something back into the business. With a ton of debt right after graduation, there would have also been a lot of pressure to find a steady career, instead of taking the chance to venture on my own. I am very grateful that I do not have the debt to weigh me down and to narrow my options for wealth and career.