By Ryan Maloney, assistant women's volleyball coach
I graduated college in 2009, one of the most difficult times in recent memory for college graduates to find jobs.
This was written on June 9, 2009 by one of my favorite authors, Seth Godin:
"Fewer college grads have jobs than at any other time in recent memory -- a report by the National Association of Colleges and Employers annual student survey said that 20 percent of 2009 college graduates who applied for a job actually have one. So, what should the unfortunate 80% do?
How about a post-graduate year doing some combination of the following (not just one, how about all):
- Spend twenty hours a week running a project for a non-profit.
- Teach yourself Java, HTML, Flash, PHP and SQL. Not a little, but mastery.
- Volunteer to coach or assistant coach a kids sports team.
- Start, run and grow an online community.
- Give a speech a week to local organizations.
- Write a regular newsletter or blog about an industry you care about.
- Learn a foreign language fluently.
- Write three detailed business plans for projects in the industry you care about.
- Self-publish a book.
Beats law school.
- Run a marathon.
If you wake up every morning at 6, give up TV and treat this list like a job, you'll have no trouble accomplishing everything on it. Everything! When you do, what happens to your job prospects?"
Job prospects are better today than they were in 2009, but the message is just as relevant in 2016, in some ways more so.