In just a few months, one more semester, I will be graduating; however, that does not mean I will have the luxury of immediately finding a job with my degree. Many students who graduate are forced to find a job as a means to pay the bills, rather than finding a career. We become bogged down into the routine of waking up and going to work, that we lose sight of our passions and ambitions. It is important for those who have graduated, those who are about to graduate, and for those people just out there working a job they do not love, to never give up on their dreams. Never stop striving to find a career. Never settle for just a job.

So often the terms career and job are used interchangeably when they are two completely different things. A job is something done to earn cash in a short-\term mindset, but a career is a long-term pursuit of a lifelong ambition. Jobs are safe, they are all around us, it may not seem as such, but whether it is at McDonald's, Wal-Mart, a hotel, a hospital, or wherever, jobs are around. A career encourages risks to be taken, as a career forces us to go beyond in order to reach our goals. Jobs offer some means to grow, but tend to be restrictive; whereas a career is where you build up skills from earlier employment opportunities to move up. Careers are a series of related jobs that all correspond to one another.

Jobs are great in the sense they can teach you work ethic as far as time management and socializing with other, but they make goals so definitive that there are no extra skills gained beyond knowing how to get a task done. In a career, the goal goes beyond simply getting something done. It builds skills, experience crucial to the next step, connections, and a ladder for you to climb up within a particular organization or similar organizations.

Understanding the difference between a job and a career is crucial for me. I have worked at the same place for 5 years now and while I enjoy my job and my co-workers, it is not what I want as a career. It would be easy for me to stay within the organization and move up the ladder, but I have no real passion to stay where I am at. Remembering the passion I have for writing, literature, and the world is what drives me to keep moving forward with my degree, which will propel me forward into a career that I can grow in. The passion is the real factor that separates a job from a career. A job is just something I do, but a career, it is a part of who I am. So do not live for a paycheck, do not work a job just to have one, keep following your dreams. You may have to work a few jobs here and there in order to pay for a career, but never lose sight of your passions and ambitions.