Does just about everyone work in a cubicle after college?

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The general process seems to be:

Go to school.
Take out loans, go to college.
Apply to jobs, pass interview, and then make money by working in cubicle.
Make more money while working in an office.
Buy a house
Have kids
Grow old
Die.

Pretty bland and depressing from my point of view. It seems that where you went to school and want your gpa is doesn't really matter very much after you get out of the academic world(All employers care about is that your skills match the specific position). I want to go to graduate school but I am somewhat scared($35,000 in loans currently), and I think that after I get my graduate degree the reality is that I will just be placed inside some office slaving away to some boring desk work. I wish I could do more than this in life.

Not me. I worked in a factory.

I have an office ... and a shop to supervise. Unless there is an important meeting, email, or phone call to handle, I can usually be found out on the shop floor, getting my hands dirty and complaining about the coffee.

So, this is the part where you tell us what you'd rather do. Or are you looking for ideas? Well, here goes:

Join a military branch as an officer
Join the Peace Corps
Teach English in a foreign country
Do freelance work while you write a novel
Do missionary work for your church

None of those options are 'safe' or particularly well paying, but your degree won't go to waste and your cubicle time is very limited.

So far it looks like I'm on that path. I'm two year out of college still paying off loans and all day I stare at a computer screen in my cubicle. I really need a vacation. My advice to you enjoy college, and try to do something you are passionate about. I think I finally found an area I'm have a deep passion for. So as soon I pay off my current loans and save up money, I'm going back to school to get my masters.

Cubicles are not bad. One big open plan office for ~100 people can be. But then. I like my job despite that.

That is depressing- I was extremely serious in school and got mostly A's on my report card. My A's don't help me at all in the office- Only for further schooling. If I knew I was just going to work in an office doing repetitive boring work for the next five years I probably wouldn't have studied so much in school. I should really try for academia. I am applying in 2012.



No desire to join the military at all.
Nor the Peace Corps(I studied abroad in school).
Teach English abroad looks like a good short term option, although I need to pay off loans.
I'm not a writer
I'm an atheist.

I really just need better ideas to make an income for a living.

Nah, I'm doing nothing now that I have finished college. But I'm trying to think of ways to cheat through life so I don't have to work in a cubicle.

What did you study?

Nope, some of us are unemployed instead

I went to school, enrolled in college, took on two jobs, and did both jobs while going to college. The jobs seemed to rotate, but I don't think I ever worked more or less than two concurrently. No loans.

These jobs included shelving books in a library (no cubicle), being an editor at a newspaper (no cubicle, and I spent more time in a courthouse than I did in the office), and being a one-person IT shop at two different places. Oddly, this also involved more time away from my desk than at it. Again, no cubicles.



Sort of... I spent a year in a cubicle as a software developer, then got a job as a chemistry lab rat, then got back into IT, got into management, got back out of management (whew!) THEN got an IT job in a cubicle.



Ok, this part I did. Then I sold the house and moved to an island in the middle of the Pacific. The move involved a job change that got me back out of the cubicle, hopefully for good. I get to do machining, drive a fork lift (this is WAY more fun than it sounds) operate a crane (ditto), do photography, all manner of fun stuff.



Still working on this part. Meanwhile I try not to let it slow me down too much. It takes longer to heal now, though.



Don't have to work at this part. It happens all on its own.



Then do more than this in life. The choice is yours.

Rather than list a bunch of stuff you could do and have you shoot them down, why not share what you're interested in doing? This matters. A lot. No one places you inside some office. You place yourself by applying to and accepting jobs that do this. If you look hard enough and are willing to give up some stuff along the way, there are any number of jobs out there that need doing where cubicles and boring desk work just don't apply.

What do YOU like to do? What are you studying? Do you like it enough to go to graduate school? Will the graduate degree fill a need inside you that you can't otherwise fill? Once you're out would you want to continue in the same field of study, or are you already getting burned out on it? Are there any related interests that would be more in line with what you like to do? Which is more important, the work or the setting? What setting is ideal for you? What kinds of people do you like to work with? Do you like to work with your hands? Do you like jobs where you almost never get the chance to sit down? Help us out here.

Not really. I've graduated college twice and am still not good enough for office work.

It's not what I plan to do once I finish university, but there's no telling what might happen. I really want to continue to study and then work in academia. I'm thinking of maybe being a lecturer, researcher, or archivist.

I feel most comfortabel studying in a university, a safe environment with little pressure/competition, as university isn't that hard for me.

Im afraid of what will happen next, post-grad, if im able to deal with this competitive world of scientific research. May be ending up i a cubicle after all.

Still working on planB, which would be some kind of practical, low education work. That's what I love to do most, just focussing on something stupid for a whole day and still enjoy it after 6 years.

In a welding program at my community college at the moment. I plan to go into auto body / resto / fab (building myself an english wheel atm xD ), or at least for now. I like hard physical work, hell I might even try and get into pipeline welding or maybe an apprenticeship in the boilermakers union. We'll see I guess. I have a lot of options open to me at the moment so It's really just speculation at this point, I may end up just staying and running through the schools eng sci program, and then the mfg tech program. Whatever I end up doing, I want to love it so, I'm just taking it one step at a time.

As far as I'm concerned, my work will be just as much a part of my life as my time spent away from work so It's going to need to fit seamlessly. I like reading everything, I like patterns, counting, mathematics, physics, psychology, competitive sports. I love taking my ideas and putting them on paper, I love to just sit and conjure up ideas, I like to try and view everything from every possible perspective I can, and I love fixing things. I've played music my whole life, welding feels rhythmic like playing drums or piano. Its muscle memory, like learning a new sport, or excelling at an already known one. Work for me is just going to need to be something I can completely engross myself in, and excel at, plain and simple.

Find what you love and do it, carve it out of stone if you have to!

a large majority of college graduates don't work behind a desk

The only really great benefit of getting into a good school is the professionals and class mates who you will get to know and network with - it helps a lot after you graduate!

unless your degree is vocational or your school has a great rate of job placement for its graduates, it won't mean much for you other then you now more from whatever you learned going to school.