I sometimes wonder if a time will come when I’m telling my children about my time in college, and they will inquire about my major.

“I was a journalism major,” I’ll say. They will laugh and say, “Daddy, if you studied journalism, why haven’t we ever seen you on the Cerebral News-o-tron?” (Remember, this is roughly the year 2023.)

I will tell them to quit bugging him because daddy found a different job and to go play with the robot dog. Then I’ll go back to work, which I presume will be easily accomplished from home and have a lax “drinking home-brewed beer on the job” policy.

As my oddly detailed projection suggests, I’ve come to suspect more and more that my ultimate vocational destination will be on a tract quite different from what I pictured.

I came to the University with very little in mind beyond “I’m gonna write for a newspaper.” And while I’ve enjoyed my classes and the experience of reaching some of those goals, they now seem even less feasible or even desirable. I have to admit that the constant parade of guest speakers intoning, “Newspapers are dead; I’m already rich; see you later,” was not particularly reassuring.

Nevertheless, I’m not upset or disappointed, which brings me to my real advice: Consider all of the jobs your studies may qualify you for. You might be surprised by the applicability of the information your education has bestowed on you. You may even find yourself happier working in one of these ancillary fields than the one you’ve always pictured for yourself.

If you can’t picture what I mean, an easy way to consider the possibilities is visiting a job-posting Web site and inserting yourself into the different positions, considering how you might use your skills at each job.

As a journalism student, a similar process led me to the somewhat sub-whimsical but reassuringly practical world of book publishing. Instead of trying to edit a story such as “Local man has cat-juggling hobby” to fit a newspaper page, I can edit entire books about the history of mammal and reptilian juggling, blissfully absent from having to fit anything. After all, every extra page is one more the company gets to charge for editing.

The same can work for you. Don’t pigeonhole yourself into thinking you need to seek jobs in a particular field. An entire vista of job opportunities might be waiting right outside your comfort zone. Then again, maybe not. In that case, you may send me your resume. I may have need of a part-time home-brewing assistant.