Is international relations degree a waste of time?

[Anonymous No.55165249]

im very passionate to work in this field and need a degree to get my foot in the door but unsure if im following the right path and if my degree is actually useless. I did a bunch of research on jobs post grad in the field but now finding out work is harder to come by than i thought. Should i bail and just work something else

[Anonymous No.55165282]

>>55165249
I have a family member that did one at a top 40 uni. She ended up working odd jobs for like 2 years and then went to law school. Makes bank now, but if she didn't get an advanced degree, she'd probably still be waiting tables or working a bar.

[Anonymous No.55165284]

Yes, unless you want to teach. All the material is public and free to read and if you want to get into the field itself its enough to go to conferences, small diplomatic gathering and lectures by ambassadors and NETWORK, showing that you have interesting views and can argue them, asking questions and listening

[Anonymous No.55165291]

>>55165249
Unless u have a connection to get a government job it sounds pretty useless. Especially if you're a white male the government won't hire you over a BIPOC

[Anonymous No.55165299]

>>55165291
no connections needed. Just be interesting and diplomatic

[Anonymous No.55165304]

>>55165282
Damn, which country is this?
if you do a post grad degree thats quicker than usual right? im thinking about combining with an econ degree and making it a double

>>55165299
no connects needed?

[Anonymous No.55165323]

>>55165299
Family member is a social butterfly, with connections + good GPA. sorry to shit on you but you either had familial connections that made interviewing optional or got extremely lucky.

[Anonymous No.55165327]

>>55165304
No initial connection needed. I have a friend from a working class family, did a half assed master in sociology and pol science and is now diplomatic attache in India

[Anonymous No.55165335]

>>55165304
USA

[Anonymous No.55165341]

>>55165249
You'll be working as a concierge or at a no-name newsletter at best... unless you have connections
College is for hard sciences and math, or else it's babysitting for rich kids until their parents pay for enough credentials to get them into a job where they'll fit in to continue tonscrew up society (government, law, medicine, education, etc)

[Anonymous No.55165361]

>>55165249
I would say so. All the girls that dropped out of my Ap calc class in Hs ended up in some retarded shit like that. When you asked what they wanted to do with their degree they had no idea other than muuh UN muuh globohomo. Yeah, full of roasties doing secretary&PR for globohomo jews. On this case you'll be a man but a gay man doing secretary stuff like sucking the dick of the CEO of jewish globohomo inc.

[Anonymous No.55165365]

The USA is a collapsing country so we don't 'need' a talented diplomatic corps, just aging boomers and the brown thots they hire to worship their cocks.

>>55165304
Don't listen to dipshits like that he can't even spell and is probably a pajeet.

[Anonymous No.55165369]

>>55165323
Initiative and willingness to learn and adapt. The entire field screams for competent non snooty young people

[Anonymous No.55165401]

Would doing a double degree in econ be wise? i could work econ, secure the bag after a decade shift into politics?

[Anonymous No.55165411]

>>55165401
Would help

[Anonymous No.55165412]

>>55165369
Like I said, social butterfly. You'd think she was a humble peasant working 3 jobs just to get by if you interviewed her. Probably a sociopath.

[Anonymous No.55165425]

>>55165369
No it doesn't you fucking retard, kill yourself. Stop trying to trick people into worthless degrees. Hurr it worked for my cousin oh she's also the queen of blowjobs and bill clinton LOVED to have her hurr hurr.

[Anonymous No.55165438]

>>55165412
That is the thing, those in the field are not easy to deceive, they smell bullshit from amile away, if they are competent. Me; I am not in the field, I am tourist that wanders from field to field getting bored fast and going back to neetdome asap

[Anonymous No.55165454]

>>55165425
I told anon that IR in and on itself is not an entry ticket. A degree helps always, but especially in IR it depends on the personality that decides between eternal water carrier and going up on the career ladder

[Anonymous No.55165482]

Its over.

[Anonymous No.55165744]

>>55165249
Yes unless you are going to get a PhD or go to law school. Alternatively, you can use your electives to take the required courses for a separate graduate degree program in another field. That's what I did and now I work from home and work like 2 hours a day.

[Anonymous No.55165806]

>>55165744
which degrees anon?

[Anonymous No.55165832]

>>55165249
IR, Polsci, economics, etc, all of these are just generic bachelors degrees that basically guarantee you need some kind of graduate degrees or connections. Jobs in ACTUAL diplomacy? Good fucking luck lol. Entire field is full of rich kid nepo babies.

[Anonymous No.55165872]

>>55165806
Economics bachelors then statistics masters. Now I am a data engineer.
>>55165832
To be fair with econ most serious unis will have classes in the econ department which you can leverage to get into the data science field. Like they will have a "policy" track in which case you'd be right and something like an "econometrics" track which could be helpful

[Anonymous No.55165931]

>>55165872
you might as well just not do IR and just do statistics at this point
we had plenty of social science internships, but they mainly went to math/cs students. what's the point. IR coursework requires reading a shitload with like 20-30+ page term papers if the program is legit. Couple that with a math major and you're probably going to blow your brains out

[Anonymous No.55165983]

>>55165832
This. I did my undergrad in Pol Sci and couldn’t find any good work at all. Was doing menial labor jobs with people who never went to college. The game changer for me was going to grad school and getting my foot in the door at a government agency at the lowest level, which is sort of the only way to do it if you have no connections. After grad school I got several promotions and now work at the same agency making something like five times the money of when I first worked there.

>>55165872
Learning and developing data science and research methods through Econ and stats programs is a great way to score public policy jobs these days.

[Anonymous No.55165992]

>>55165832
>Entire field is full of rich kid nepo babies
That explains why your foreign policy is shit and the US is going the way it goes, to the shitter. Every somehow street smart pajeets runs circles around those crooks and frauds

[Anonymous No.55166096]

>>55165992
You think the diplomatic sectors of other countries aren’t chock full of nepotism? What world do you live in?

[Anonymous No.55166124]

>>55165992
Our foreign policy is designed to support the needs of the class that our diplomatic corps largely comes from ie richfags. So it's effective at that. Also India is a shithole and virtually everyone with any intelligence or talent escapes as soon as they can. This isn't just my racism speaking, it's verbatim what multiple Indians I work with told me.

>>55165983
You and I followed literally the same track. In fact my first job with a polsci degree was cleaning sewers and digging ditches for the city. But I leveraged that into a graduate internship with the Mayor's office, which I leveraged into a few temp jobs for the County before I got my foot in the door at a state agency in a low end job. Boomers are retiring en masse now so right now is the time to get in position.

Got two promotions in my first year and have just been sliding up the payscale. Boss is grooming me for a six figgy position, she's been with the agency for 40 years and takes a monthlong vacation to Mexico every year. I could probably make slightly more in the private sector but security is much better with the state.

[Anonymous No.55166143]

>>55166096
There are of course he cousins of the nephews of some backbencher being water carriers there, but those are never going to make it into positions of decision making, analysis or negotiations, or any of the other actual fun parts of IR. They are better secretaries that sit their time off before they get some backbencher role or other political dick sucking position where they cant do harm. Especially small countries prefer some working class child that stands with the feet on the ground than some high on his own farts fuckwit

[Anonymous No.55166197]

>>55165983
what did you study at grad school? what agency and what role do you have you sound similar to my trajectory

>>55166124
which state agency did you work at anon your future looks like mine. dont doxx but roughly describe. gonna work on muscles so the ditch digging stage is more bearable

[Anonymous No.55166271]

>>55165992
The majority of our desirable ambassadorships are rewarded to political donors. Just look at who we make our ambassadors to Western European countries or Japan. It's beyond retarded.

[Anonymous No.55166307]

>>55166124
>private sector

Be careful what you wish for with that. Private sector seems to be moving more quickly away from WFH, and in my experience public jobs tend to be much more (though not always) laid back since there’s no profit incentive.

>>55166197
I studied public policy in grad school, which sounds sort of like political science except it’s not. My grad program was heavy in econometrics, statistics, and research methods. Undergrads in Pol Sci (unless they really seek it out) don’t get much experience in working with data or research analyses/methodologies. Having these skills makes you more marketable. I work for a government agency in a major metropolitan city doing urban planning now.

[Anonymous No.55166364]

>>55166271
Just look how incompetent western ambassadors and their bosses are. Ambassador is not a fun job. The work on the ground and the analysis is done in the background, as it should be. Ambassador is a political job, and beside the Russians and some central Asian powers you are right. The fun part in the field is getting up in the middle of the night driving to some backwater police station in the middle of the desert, negotiating with the local police chief and having a drink and convincing him that the idiot tourist from your country that got caught with half a pound of weed doesn't need to be put in jail for 100 years but its enough to scare him a bit and then fucking with that idiot on the way to the airport

[Anonymous No.55166786]

>>55166307
& others

maybe i will shift to econ/data science subjects? or should i do a full double degree?

i live in australia so not sure about our grad programs/how similar it is to USA

[Anonymous No.55166840]

I have a masters in International Security and work in corporate security if you have any questions. I think it was worth it

[Anonymous No.55166892]

>>55166840
Was international security the undergraduate degree as well? or was post grad?

im not sure if my uni/country offers that

[Anonymous No.55166914]

>>55166840
What school of thought do you follow?

[Anonymous No.55166946]

>>55166892
I did history, politics and administration for my undergrad/bachelor
>>55166914
For the US? Something like jacksonian Nationalism, I like the ideas posen outliner in 'restraint'. Cut back the International policing, maintain a huge blue water navy and cut defense costs.

Other then that realism. Although my home country is lost anyway

[Anonymous No.55166997]

>>55166946
Yeah, you will likely never make it anywhere in the US or the western world, if you let your competition know, that you are not a full blown New Liberal. Must suck, the reason why I dropped out pretty fast, there is currently no place for realists or even neo realists in the west

[Anonymous No.55167070]

>>55166997
I work in the Private sector so it's really not an issue. Started with 42k usd and after 4.5 years just promoted to 85k. Got plenty of vacation days to but taxes and social security take a good chunk of my pay
I wouldnt last a day in the public sector, id be called a nazi and fired on the spot

[Anonymous No.55167118]

>>55167070
Good for you, I hope you can convince at least some of the retards that copy paste the policy suggestions to adapt some of the more sane ideas back into the public shit show. I unfortunately have no private sector here and working for Americans would be for me personally equal to treason

[Anonymous No.55167136]

>>55167118
All the best to you to anon.

[Anonymous No.55167159]

>>55167136
I do my best, you do your best, may the world return in our life time to a more sane state before we end in MAD

[Anonymous No.55167200]

>>55165249
its the degree i picked as the fake defree on my CV. its perfect because nobody ever enquires about it, and you just need basic general knowlege

[Anonymous No.55167341]

>>55165249
If you're charismatic and want to be a political commentator. Or perhaps work for a think tank?

[Anonymous No.55167372]

>>55167341
the thing with working in the open is, you have to adhere to the rules of the game and the fuckwits currently in power. Its less pay but its intellectually more satisfying and you don't wish to hang yourself one day having to play by their rules

[Anonymous No.55167408]

>>55165249
There's very little demand in that field. Your only hope would be mega nepotism.

[Anonymous No.55167419]

>>55166946
Thanks for the redpill but the degree itself, was it called international security? pol-sci? international relations

also can you redpill me on hamilton? i thought his economics was better to jefferson? i was under the impression he was agriculture minded and not developing business and economy? but im a foreigner looking in ofc

>>55167408
hmmm i was thinking of adding econ as a double. maybe data science after this threat, would you have recommendations?

[Anonymous No.55167551]

>>55166307
Yup thats part of why i have little interest in private. I don't want to be a productive member of this society anyways. I take pleasure in knowing that tax cuckolds pay me to shitpost.

>>55166197
Pollution related, but it doesn't matter. Unless you have a specific passion/field that you're extremely interested in focus on generally applicable skills. Lotta the admin jobs are among the best paying, low end admin workers eat shit typically though.
Another big part of why I went with government is it tends to be behind the curve on new tech and also it's a lot harder to outsource. So really it's just a better deal in this market.

One of the main things though is developing skills and knowledge that you can't just google. Like I always paid attention when geezers told me stories about how shit worked at the agency before i was fucking born, literally. Now almost all of them are retired and within 5 years I'll be among the few who still knows where the bodies are buried.

[Anonymous No.55167631]

>>55167551
interesting thanks alot for redpills anon, do you think i should try and do a double of econ/data science? or just stick with international relations?

also any tips for job hunting post-grad?

[Anonymous No.55167651]

>>55167341
If you want to work for a major think tank like Brookings or RAND you’d better have a phd from Harvard or something comparable.

[Anonymous No.55167676]

>>55165249

Yes, it took three years of my life i wish i could get back. I had doubts the entire way wish i'd listen to my gut. Now i'm pursuing a comp-sci degree and i'm a hundred times happier with my outlooks.

[Anonymous No.55167747]

>>55167631
Any kind of research or data coursework that you can take will be helpful, or similarly taking courses in GIS and learning how to use that as a component of research projects. Pol Sci is a popular major; lots of random Stacies and other normies do it. You need to differentiate yourself from those people. If your school has a honors program in the department where you can do independent research work that could be helpful. Still, with something like Pol Sci you may have trouble landing a decent paying job without having a graduate degree.

Regarding work: If the problem is you don’t know anyone in the professional sphere, what this means is that you need to get your foot in the door at the very bottom. That means an internship. Yeah, internships are lame, but how it works. But the good thing is that government internships are typically paid ones. My graduate department was full of people who did an internship as a mandatory requirement of the major then ended up working at the same place as a full-fledged employee. I finished my grad program about four years ago and I now work at the same place I interned making $106k a year as a full time employee.

[Anonymous No.55167752]

>>55167651
Damn niqqqa, PhD for a tink tank? i understand its very competitive for high ranking ones like you mentioned. what about lower roles/less prestigious think tanks?

>>55167676
damn. blackpill. what if i did a double in econ/data science, i dont have the mind for compsci. very passionate about politics as gay as it sounds

[Anonymous No.55167776]

>>55165249
No. I have one. But you have to combine it with a law or business degree. Then you are in demand. Make the degree practical.

[Anonymous No.55167854]

>>55167631
It's a numbers game and don't feel too bad when you don't get picked.I also recommend finding a career coach with experience in your particular country/field to spruce up your resume once you have a few of those basic positions under your belt. The key is filling your resume with the right buzzwords to pass the HR filter. Even with worker shortages a lot of agencies still have lazy HR bitches that auto trash most resumes with badly designed filters.

[Anonymous No.55167868]

>>55167854
>finding a career coach

[Anonymous No.55167902]

i did this degree
masters
ended up in gov
work as hard as you can on internships
its easier to be slack in arts compared to stem, so WORK HARD
you need to do stuff to set yourself apart
toastmasters would be another good thing
work hard to get a good supervisor
try and have a language if you can
chinese, french, arabic are useful
lots of very smart people in gov, analytical as hell
so get reading
fp, fa, even stuff like wsws is useful to get you thinking

[Anonymous No.55167907]

>>55167868
Career coaches who actually know what they're doing are rare but highly effective. I went from like 2% further engagement on my applications to 15% after paying one like $250 to go over my resume, ended up getting a job like 2 months after working with one for a few hours. Highly worthwhile investment on my end but your mileage may vary.

[Anonymous No.55167929]

>>55167907
anon "career coaches" are an grift industry like "personal trainers" or "dog walkers". If you are too lazy to put in the elbow grease yourself you are not worth it

[Anonymous No.55168286]

>>55167929
you don't know what you don't know
not everyone can write like a copywriter (professional manipulator)

[Anonymous No.55168321]

>>55167854
Thanks anon, really appreciate the advice

would you give advice on what subjects you think would be good for a international relations (basically pol sci if youre american) and if im thinking of doing econ as well. data science seems heavily shilled itt too, maybe ill check that out with course coordinators

[Anonymous No.55168348]

>>55168286
most people can use a search engine and read on a rudimentary level and are able to differentiate between something that looks like shit and "professional" and copy paste, entering the blanks, all for free

[Anonymous No.55168530]

>>55167752
Think tanks aren’t a large industry. Nobody wants to pay money for policy papers written by graduates of random non-prestigious universities. The lower ability people go into non-profit and advocacy work, the middle achievers go into bureaucratic government, and the high achievers become professors or think tank employees.

[Anonymous No.55168565]

>>55168530
Damn thats craaay, high achievers mean high grades yes? or high prestige uni's? both?

[Anonymous No.55168671]

>>55168565
no. That anon is just trying to black pill to eliminate potential competition and you are no different, trying to bait anons into worthless degrees

[Anonymous No.55168731]

>>55168671
well what would you suggest?

[Anonymous No.55168748]

It's not a waste of time if it's how you want to spend your life. The money will come if you're good at it.

[Anonymous No.55168778]

>>55168731
If you really care, read read read read, go to conferences, free lectures with free buffets that are organized by different groups, from military, over diplomatic to private philanthropist societies where usually only a few dozen people show up, inform yourself on what they do, learn their lingo, ask questions, seem interested, be interesting and network and you will get a foot in the door.

We are in a time of demographic decline, that is your chance, to stand out from the mass of idiots that wasted their time doing what everyone else did and are like every other brick in the wall

[Anonymous No.55169126]

>>55168565
>>55168671
Listen, there just aren’t that many postings at places like the Brookings and Hoover Institutes, RAND or high ranking political science departments at universities, so naturally many of the people who work at the places have Ph.Ds from Harvard, Berkeley, Stanford, etc. because it’s that competitive. It’s not a black pill it’s just the truth. You’re not going to get hired at one of those places just because you have a B.A. or a graduate degree from Dumbfuck State University. You need to understand what your chances are realistically.

[Anonymous No.55169206]

>>55169126
You know what is really obnoxious, some fag that cant shut up and whose only "accomplishment" in life has been using daddys cc to go to an "elite" university. The only people impressed by such losers, are normal faggots, and in IR, nobody needs normal faggots, except to organize banquettes and send out invitations.
In the field, when you have to interact with real people and you cant shut the fuck up how YOU went to Berkeley, Harvard, Cornell, and sniffed on your own asshole for 5 years, you can forget that anybody will take you serious

[Anonymous No.55170379]

>>55169206
The people that introduce themselves with
>I went to some University that teaches the same as every community college
are the once that usually don't get the jobs, unless HR went to the same snobby club, and if they went to the competing sportsball team they are also out

[Anonymous No.55170458]

>>55169206
>>55170379
What are you guys, feds?

I've taken courses at CC for shits and giggles and I've finished a BA at a top 40 uni. There are different standards. The CC has to lower the standards. Go take a couple of courses at one, they're cheap. You'll know why they need to lower standards. And guess what? A good percentage still fails out.

[Anonymous No.55170495]

>>55170458
This isn't the 70s. The lecturers at "elite" universities use the same material as those in community colleges. The only thing one pays for the "elite" ones is for nepotism.

[Anonymous No.55170573]

>>55170495
CCs were probably legit in the 70's. You're a fucking retard and probably not even from the states, it's not worth talking to you. I honestly hope you're not some retarded HR drone. If you are KYS. There is degree inflation

[Anonymous No.55170615]

>>55170573
A degree alone doesn't say anything, no matter if its from an expensive or cheap university. It's the student that studies for himself and expands his knowledge on a subject. Too many young people confused university with high school, that is why university degrees have become so worthless. Everyone has them and they say nothing about the ability of the graduate

[Anonymous No.55171524]

We're back

[Anonymous No.55171535]

>>55171524
Back where?
Also I feel like something in this thread is being looked over because the lingua franca is American and I speak multiple languages so I always forget it

To be good in IR, be it in the field, in analysis or anywhere else it is necessary to speak as many languages as possible. 2, good, 3 better, 5 Perfect. More You get hired no problem

[Anonymous No.55171634]

>>55171535
>Back where?
Back in business.

[Anonymous No.55171643]

>>55171634
War is always a time of diplomacy as well, or at least it should be. Not just spies and cowboys