Alumni Perspective: The Job Market

by Evan Sprague

My being on the cusp of twenty-five makes me “sage old” about as much as almost making minimum wage makes one rich. I don’t profess to have copious amounts of life experience, and I have yet to finish my first lap around the proverbial “block”. That said, I have traversed grades K-12 and weathered the squall of the ferocious undergraduate program. When a budding young teenager is preparing their triumphant foyer into the collegiate realm, I am a Jedi Master (especially considering the journey I took to finally reach my BA).

I know a certain teenager at the point in her life that we all dread; a senior in high school trying to figure out what exactly she wants to do with her future. It can be a daunting task, especially with all the adult figures in your life telling you that the choices you make now will forever seal the inevitable fate of your remaining years on this earth, as if life is the ancient temple in the opening scene of Raiders of the Lost Ark and a single bad step can bestow a murderous onslaught of pain and turmoil upon you.

I asked said young person what she wanted to do. She’s not quite sure, but has taken an interest in photography as a creative hobby. Of course I made the humble suggestion of pursuing it as both a major and a career. Her response was straight from the horse’s mouth, like she was quoting from a stock article in the NY Times. She said - and I quote - “Video is a fluctuating job market.”

Wow. You don’t say…

What I’m about to say isn’t necessarily directed at this person, so if you’re reading this - and you know who you are - I know you’ll make the right decisions for you. My point in this post isn’t that this girl should go into photography; I’m not the boss of her life and I don’t claim to always know what’s best for her. However, the comment that she made got me thinking about a more general concept.

This really struck a chord with me. When you’re 17 you’re supposed to have limitless inspiration and imagination. You’re supposed to be brimming with spirit, life, and creativity. You’re supposed to be an allegory for hope and innocence. One thing you’re not supposed to be is tossing your passions and dreams to the wayside because of the “fluctuating job market”. That phrase should not exist in your vernacular.

That said, it does. And this teenager is one of many out there right now who are repeating that same thing to themselves, dodging a shot at greatness to ensure that the paychecks come rolling in steadily. Even many college students in creative programs are switching majors, sometimes even entire universities to pursue a field that yields higher financial promise – all in a blind panic and fear that in ten years they’ll be in a dusty shack with no power or water, sucking beans out of a can.

Our society is dumbing itself down in the hopes of economic reconciliation. Parents are telling their children to search for jobs in high demand, forgetting that creativity and imagination are what breathe life into a dying job market.

I say to hell with what’s in high demand. I say to hell with what’s stable or financially secure. It’s important to find something you’re truly passionate about, research it’s job market and demographic, practice at it until you’re awesome, then make it so.

The biggest problem with our economy is that everything is becoming solely about money. Money is good, it pays our bills, but not at the cost of our humanity. Businesses in the 1800’s were more typically owned and operated by the craftsmen himself. He did the work, he used his skills to put food on his table and a roof over his head, and it didn’t matter if it was painting or making shoes. Then entrepreneurs came along and figured out methods of pushing out as much product as possible and removing the passion and craftsmanship from the business.

Our economy was thriving much more when people were doing things themselves instead of dropping pistons onto engines moving down the assembly line.

Take, for example, a person who aspires to become a musician. If you want a fluctuating job market, professional musician is about as a fluctuating as it gets. If you want it bad enough you might practice your instrument constantly, network, and look at a marketable means of getting your foot in the door. Maybe you can’t pay your bills by straight up playing your music, but what if you got your degree in sound engineering and worked in a recording studio? You’d be close to musicians, you’d get to network, and you might even pull down a decent salary. And who knows, maybe you can get into a band and moonlight playing gigs at jazz or rock clubs. Doesn’t that sound like a more attractive job than simply giving up and getting your degree in accounting or business?

An experienced and talented writer/actor in Phoenix once told me to wake up every morning and make a list of the five things you want most in life. Constantly repeating these things to yourself will breed motivation, discourage stagnation, and the universe will eventually align itself to provide. There’s a job out there for everyone and everything, you just have to find it. That’s one of the trials of life. No job is in such high demand that you can get your bachelor’s in it, march down to the nearest office and hop into a cubical without so much as an application; especially not in this economy. Every job takes work, every job takes countless hours on the phone or on the internet, submitting resumes and applications, weathering interviews (if you’re lucky enough to get that far), and writing cover letters. You’re more likely to excel in something that you’re in love with as opposed to the semi-decent-paying field you got into because it was a stable job market.

Life is about taking risks, and most of the time you’ll come out on top. There are twenty-four hours in a day. If you wake up at 7:00 AM every morning and go to bed at 11:00 PM, you’re waking life has only sixteen-hour days. Your job will work you eight hours a day, plus an hour lunch break, so you’re gone for nine hours a day, leaving only seven hours each day at maximum that you’ll be able to do anything not work related. Other than sleep, we spend more than half our lives at work. And that’s just factoring a standard 9-5 job; most jobs that pay a decent salary require you to put in ten or eleven hours a day, some even more. It’s critical that we spend this precious time doing something we’re passionate about.

I guess what I’m trying to say with all this is do what you love, and encourage your children to do what they love. Accept nothing less, and you’ll receive nothing less. When we get to the end of our lives, the accomplishments that we leave in our wake will be the only tangible things we’ll have to show for ourselves. An economy with no passion will surely wither and die, and no accounting or business job is going to save anyone.

You've Graduated. Now What?

"Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity." - Seneca, Roman philosopher, mid-1st century A.D.

You've just spent 3 years or so getting your degree. If you're a regular reader of this, that degree is probably in Digital Video and you've been forged in the crucible of one or more projects under my supervision. You know your stuff now. You really know it. You are prepared.

So now what?

Some of you will wait for opportunity to come knocking. Some of you will settle into life here in Arizona, or maybe back in your home town. You'll wonder why you're not working in this field that you love. You might even become bitter that your degree hasn't done more for you, that UAT hasn't done more for you, that I haven't done more for you. And unfortunately you might get stuck in that mode of thinking and if you do, you can rest assured that the elusive opportunity you seek will most certainly pass by your door without knocking.

But some of you - far too few in my humble opinion - will chase the dream and do whatever it takes to grab opportunity by the shirt collars and get its attention any way you can. You'll move to Los Angeles, or New York, or Austin, and you'll slowly but surely make it happen. You'll work for the Discovery Channel or on big-budget films like Avatar or maybe you'll rub elbows with one of our icons Robert Rodriguez. You might even stay here in the Valley and find a way to make a name for yourself here.

So what's the difference between these two groups of alumni? Well, the second group, the one chasing the opportunities - they make their own luck. They know that it's not enough to simply prepare. They know you have to chase it. You have to want it. And you have to be willing to go outside of your comfort zone and take a risk.

This week, one of my recent grads went through a mini-crisis that is both the reason for this blog entry and the proof of what I'm talking about. This grad went out to L.A. for a few days to hang with some of the other UATDV alumni who have landed out there, and he got a dose of how tough this business can be. The guys he spoke with out there - well, they're all looking for work right now. That's how it is sometimes. One day you're working on Avatar, the next you're "between gigs." It's rough, and it's not for the easily discouraged. Add to that the fact that this particular grad - whose demo reel is stellar (see below) - was being told by studios that he'd need four years of professional experience before they'd even consider him. All in all he came back from L.A. feeling very discouraged.

But did that stop him? No. He sat down with the Arizona Production Association guide and started researching postproduction houses here in the Valley. Turned out one of them had an opening for a freelancer with just this grad's skill set, starting immediately. On Monday was feeling like he'd had the wind knocked right out of his sails; but on Wednesday he started his first day working for a high-end post house on a project for a national client. Why? Is it because he's just lucky?

I say yes, he's lucky. Because he's done the preparation for the last three years and now he's actively pursuing the opportunities. He's not letting the business and its fickle ways get him down or stop him from making it happen. So let this be a lesson to all of you who are still waiting for opportunity to knock: You either make your own luck in this life, or you don't. It's all in your hands. Go after those opportunities. Chase 'em. Because they aren't going to chase you.

“Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work.” - Thomas Alva Edison, American inventor of the motion picture