Career Insights: Humanities

Cassie Petoskey:
Welcome to the Weinberg in the World Podcast, where we bring you stories of interdisciplinary thinking in today's complex world. This episode is brought to you by the Waldron Student Alumni Connections Program, a resource in Weinberg College, where we help current students explore career options through making connections with alumni.

In this episode, we're excited to feature a few clips from previous alumni conversations, highlighting memorable experiences relating to majors in the humanities and how those alumni experiences helped in their future careers. First is a closing remark from our conversation with David Gefsky, who graduated from Weinberg College in 1992 with a major in history, where he speaks on the value of curiosity and the many other skills you develop through an Arts & Sciences education at Weinberg College that can help you in a field like finance.

David Gefsky:
The most important thing that I would tell you is be curious. If you're any one of these Weinberg majors that I would describe, you already are, okay? So congratulations. You're already there. There is a level of curiosity that you need to be successful in anything that you do, and you're already doing it by pursuing the majors that you have in Weinberg.

So for me, it was history, but for you, it's whatever it is. So that is the fundamental skill that you cannot teach, that you have to have to be successful in a career, in any career as far as I'm concerned, but certainly in a career of real estate and finance and so forth, because it will make you better at what you do.
So you may think you're studying about the Mamluks and the Ottoman Empire, which was a course, I remember learning about that civilization and why it succeeded and why it failed, and who were the players and what were the incentives, and where were the conflicts and what made it happen. That level of curiosity and rigor that you will someday apply in a job will help you be successful on any project you ever do. That's part one of my answer that I could talk about for a long time, but I won't.

Part two of my answer is the study of humanities in a way is an investment in your soul. You're developing yourself as a person that will allow you to 1) be well-rounded, articulate, intelligent, insightful, informative, interesting citizen of our world. If you read the newspaper or social media, we need more of you, okay? You are going to save everything that we and my parents screwed up. We're counting on you. Sorry, but we're counting on you. That's number one.

The second thing is these other students that are so vocationally driven, I will tell you two things. They are going to be way ahead of you on the first day of your job, okay? Way ahead of you, because of the skillset they're developing, because they're being bred to be great financial analysts day one, ready to work day one. You are not, you're probably doing things to supplement your career and skillset, and you should ignore all that noise. It doesn't matter. You are in this for the long game and what you are learning and enriching yourselves by studying history or these other subjects will carry forward with you for your entire life as a person. There's a level of analytical thinking, rigor, curiosity, writing, problem solving analytics, all that you need to be successful.
And the last piece, the last thing I'll say, you got to be a good person because everyone wants to work with good people. And so you developing this part of your life and this part of your personhood is really important, and it will show in an interview. It will show. When I look for people, I want to say, are they going to get along with my teammates? Are they going to add to our community and our culture here or not? Are you interesting or not?
We just hired an analyst, and this kid is a fascinating kid, and I hired him because I know he has the potential to be great on the skillset. I'll train him, but I hired him because he's a really smart, curious, hardworking kid, and he is going to do great.

Anyhow, good luck to you all if I can ever be a resource for you. But I wish you luck. I've been there. You can do it. You're going to do it, and it's real honor for me to talk to you this morning. So thank you for the opportunity.

Cassie Petoskey:
Next is a quote from our panel, What Can You Do with a Language Major, with Khiabett Osuna, who graduated from Weinberg College in 2011 with a major in Spanish, who talks about the core skills she uses every day as an immigration attorney, Read, Think, Write. Khiabett shares stories and examples of how her work can change rapidly in topic and focus, and how those core skills can help adjust to changing conditions.

Khiabett Osuna:
I think that at Northwestern and especially at Weinberg, I learned how to read, think, and write. I have two younger sisters, so whenever they're having questions about college or anything like that, I'm like, "Look, can you read, think and Write? Then, that's really much all."

It sounds so simple, but it means so much. And thankfully, being a double major in Spanish, I was able to read, think and write in English and in Spanish, which is my job, right? That's what I do. And again, it sounds [inaudible 00:05:05], but it's not. I recently was doing a hearing, like a merits hearing, a final hearing, and I'm with opposing counsel. It's going in this wildly different direction. They're questioning my client stuff that we were not prepared for, and you just have to think on your feet. How do you take these questions? How do you analyze it? How do you flip them to best serve your client and all the while thinking of case law and how to analyze it and get the best outcome for your client. So I'm thinking, and I'm talking on my feet.

One of the jobs that I also had after law school was being a clerk for immigration judges. So you get handed a file about a person. The judge gives it to me and says, "Figure it out. Tell me what it is." So read, think, and write again. And that just is so, because you realize, I think as you go out into the world, what a skillset that is, and it is surprising that it's not as easy as you think or as others think. It really does take a certain person.

I think Northwestern wouldn't be Northwestern if they didn't have the professors or the education or the coursework of that caliber to really get you out and have those skills.

Cassie Petoskey:
Our last clip comes from a previous podcast episode focusing on Chicago Field Studies with Charlies Vasbinder, who graduated from Weinberg College in 2019 with a major in history. Charlie discusses the value of this history major for working in real estate in teaching him how to develop relationships, communicate with a wide variety of people and form arguments on sales pitches.

Charles Vasbinder:
To bring that around to an Arts & Sciences background and why I think it's an effective skillset for doing what we do, it's obviously very person to person, so it's strong interpersonal skills. It's being able to have conversations. It's being able to sound smarter than you might be, and that's a very important part of the business. That's something that I think having a history degree or I guess taking courses at Northwestern that were more, I guess, soft-skill oriented, certainly helped out with on the front end.

And then on the back end, we have to convince the Barnett family every single day why they should be doing this and why they should be in this business. And so it's a lot of argument. It's a lot of persuasion. It's Selling 101. A lot of the papers that I wrote at Northwestern, I mean, you're arguing a thesis. You're arguing why you should be doing something, and it becomes clear quickly if you don't believe it yourself.

So you have to be buying what you're selling, and the skillset is really a perfect alignment with. It's not heavy quantitative. It's not heavy. Obviously, we're not curing cancer or we're not creating the next vaccine for the new COVID variants, but it's sales. It's selling widgets. It's selling money. It's convincing the money that they should be investing, and it's convincing the investors that they should be taking the money. It's a perfect skillset for someone from an Arts & Sciences background, and that would be my take on it.

Cassie Petoskey:
Thanks for listening. If you want to hear more of these conversations, links to the full videos and podcasts are below. For more information about Weinberg College and this podcast, visit weinberg.northwestern.edu and search for Waldron. As always, we would love to hear your feedback. Please email us with your thoughts on the program. Have a great day, and Go Cats!