[Advice] Recent(ish) Grad - Not sure of future in Geology
Greetings, and please bear with me as I am not the most eloquent especially in stressful situations.
I am a recent grad (2013) from a prestigious woman's college. I graduated with a Bachelors of Arts (not B.Sc.) in geosciences and my coursework included the basics (mostly with no intense lab or at most a basic grasp of field work): structural geology, oceanography, geomorphology, earth materials, coastal zone management, sedimentology, isotope geochem, advanced planetary technology, basic chem, physics, astro, calc II and multivariable. While I was not the brightest in my classes, I would say I was a struggling average student.
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I have 1 REU where I did ecology fieldwork for a summer and was able to present my findings, although very basic, at an ASLO conference.
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It is important to note that I did not go to college with plans to become a doctor, lawyer, nor geologist as I was the first from my family to go to college to begin with. My plan in high school was just to get into a college and graduate. Being that I was at a liberal college, I took different kinds of classes but stuck with sciences, enough to also get a minor in psychology. I never really excelled at anything, to the standards of my college, but hey I managed to graduate so I must have been decent. (as you can guess, I am not a very confident person)
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I was also very shy within my geos department so I do kick myself for not networking more, but what's done is done.
After I graduated I didn't really have a plan and got my first "official" job outside of college jobs, at a dealership and learned the basic clerical duties, accounts payable/recievable, scheduling, and customer service. And learned how to deal with HR, managers, coworkers, etc.
It took me a little over a year to learn as much as I could from that job. I worked with every department from sales to finance to parts to helping the warranty administrator. It was painfully obvious that I wanted to learn as much as I could and do more than what my job title described. So after a year and a half, I put in my notice and my manager and basically everyone I worked with agreed that it was time for me to pursue something more than working at that dealership.
So now, I have been at a law firm (corporate/IP Lit), well more like a contracted company who provides workers for this law firm, for 1 year and I have learned as much as I can. I started out slow like my first job, learning about reception and administration, scheduling meetings, caterering for events, etc., but now everyone who I work with knows that I have reached that limit where I am bored and want to learn more than what I can. The firm administrators have been giving me more and more responsibilities, like dealing with Certificates of Insurance and processing invoices, but I want to do more than just sit at the front desk and look pretty. The problem is that I don't know what I want to do.
I took the ASBOG FG in the Fall with the hopes that if I pass I can apply to environmental consulting firms but I didn't pass. Most of the reason why I didn't pass was because I didn't feel motivated to study. I bought the regreview guide and for the first month of studying I felt like I was in college again, I remembered topics and was interested in geology again. But towards the last 2 months of studying I lost that motivation, I didn't feel like I was good enough to be Geologist and when I was trying to study harder topics and dense materials, I lost that motivation to keep studying.
Sidenote: I did apply to one environmental consulting firm that combined my interest in the sciences with my reception/clerical work experience, but they didn't hire me because I did not have enough accounting experience.
So now that I am looking for a new job, I don't really know where to look because I still don't know what I want to do. I know that I want to work in a company or industry that has substance - meaning that it is making a positive impact in the world (like if I were to work at a dealership again, I would want to work for Tesla or if I was at a law firm that focuses on energy or the environment). And I even started looking into working for water resource departments but most opportunities that I want to take are for internships that require you to be a student.
The thought of gradschool is not even a solution because I wouldn't know what field to go into.
So the advice part: what are careers that can combine my work experience in administration with my interests in geology? Should I take the ASBOG again? What are my options?
Posted Feb 25, 2016, 1:19 AM UTC · edited