“It’s A Certification, Not A Degree”

This Wednesday and Thursday I’m writing finals – the last finals I will have to write at my current educational institution in order to complete my Marketing Management certification. When I walk out of class on Thursday night I will have completed every class needed to fulfill the certification requirements, and aside from a form to fill out for program approval, I’m done. Three years of schooling comes to an end.

Over the past few weeks I’ve had a lot of conversations along the following lines:

“I’m writing my last final on the 28th! After that I’m done school!”

“Oh wow! So what are you going to have?”

“My Marketing Management certification!”

“Oh great, so you’re done your degree?”

“Uhh… no, it’s a certification, not a degree. It’s like a degree, but not.”

“Oh. Ohh…. well…. Congratulations!”

“Thanks.”

Today I quickly tossed back some sushi with a new lover of mine and her current primary-ish partner before heading to my friend’s place to crash for the night while listening to them discussing their current job searching and finding woes. My lover has two degrees in the Arts and is working on-call as an assistant at the hospital; her partner has a degree in Law and is currently working at Costco while unsuccessfully looking for new work in policy analysis. It was a bit of a reality check.

Sure, we can all go into the careers we’ve educated ourselves for and make some decent money… or we could do something we actually believe in instead. I could absolutely go into sales, because there’s plenty of work in the field – which was, in fact, one of the reasons I went into it. Apparently there’s big money in things like technology in cell phones, tv, and other (dis)connecting industries. I could sell people all kinds of things they don’t need, don’t want, and can’t afford, as long as I’m okay going home at the end of the day knowing that in the end it was their own decision to buy the things I wouldn’t pay half-price for. “It’s okay – people like to spend money!” Yeah, but even though it’s a rush for me to make them do it, it’s not something I believe in.

In fact, one of my instructors from a year or so ago told the class that there was extremely high demand for marketing professionals and money was practically being thrown at people to come work for large corporations – especially in mining and oil, two industries in Canada that are in dire need of a marketing makeover, what with all this “save the Earth” hippie-talk we’ve been hearing so much of. It takes a lot of hard work to convince people to continue buying and investing in natural resources with all of this environmental discussion going on.

I’m a child of the 80’s – we were taught to do what we love and what we believe in, and that every one of us would be successful, because we’re all special and unique, and after all, “You can be both a ballerina and a doctor!” Except they never told us that everyone else was hearing the same thing, that ballerinas are one in a million (at best) and that to get into med school you need to have top-notch grades, and that even if you do, the odds you’ll have the money to do that kind of school are pretty slim when you’re coming from a family that’s living on welfare.

Sure we’re all special and unique little snowflakes – it’s what makes products like the iPod and Facebook so popular with my generation. We know that if we can customize the colour of our music player and use pre-determined software to create a profile that it means we’re making our mark, and it’s sold to us through clever Generation-Y marketing – hell, I’m not impervious or immune. But by buying into the hype I got more than I thought possible, and it goes beyond the realization that Myspace is a promoter’s wet dream (thanks in part to it being used as an actual social networking tool instead of the sales device it really is). It’s also the story I bought hook-line-and sinker about how learning about something I was interested in would lead to a stable and secure career, allowing me to settle down with a family, a house, two cars and a dog – without wondering whether or not I even wanted those things.

So here I am, 3 years of education smarter and more knowledgeable, and what do I have to show for it? “It’s a certification, not a degree,” and the more often quoted piece that I picked up along the way from a Google search on Socrates quotes: “I know nothing except the fact of my ignorance.”

On the positive side, I’m a month shy of being 23 which makes me young enough to make this a completely fresh start. I wake up and live each day for the day it is, because I don’t know where I’ll be a year from now, 6 months from now, a summer from now, or even a month from today. I could be living at my place for two more months or two more years, with a potential possibility of heading back to school to pursue a BA (a pursuit which might last as little as one year, or even one semester), another job interview for a minimum wage job I might believe in coming up, and a list of marketing jobs to apply for, courtesy of my school’s job-listing service sitting in my inbox, I don’t know what the future will bring.

For now I’m just looking forward to getting tanked with the people closest to me on Thursday night, because they’re meeting me at the bar half a block down from my school right after my final.