By Hilaire Fong
DAILY BRUIN CONTRIBUTOR
hfong@media.ucla.edu
After graduating UCLA, some students end up with jobs that seem
completely unrelated to their majors, or they find creative ways to
apply their educational background to their current work.
Throughout her career, Eugenie Trow has found a relationship
between two seemingly unrelated fields: math and theater.
“Theater was something I always loved and could never
leave alone when I was little,” Trow said.
Her mother asked her if she thought she could support herself as
an actress. After talking with her mother, Trow decided to double
major in math and theater from the College of Saint
Catherine’s in Saint Paul, Minn. in 1966.
Trow received her master’s in mathematics at UCLA in 1970,
then went on to teach math and theater at Antelope Valley
College.
Having a theater background allows Trow to recognize other
points of view more easily, she said. This helps her when teaching
math classes and also makes her more open to new ways of explaining
math concepts, she said.
“English and liberal arts majors feel more comfortable
with me as a math teacher because they know I respect what their
life’s work is,” she said.
Likewise, having a background in math benefits Trow in the
theater department.
Theater students borrow concepts from math backgrounds to spot
logic and facts in people’s opinions, she said.
In math, you spend lots of time simplifying, Trow said.
Simplification can be applied to directing.
“It’s the “˜less is more’ concept,”
she said.
Trow realizes it may be a struggle for people to switch
careers.
To financially support themselves, people with single majors can
teach classes in the old areas, while pursuing the new areas, she
said.
Other people like Trow have found ways to put both their degrees
to use.
After spending seven years at UCLA, Bob Green found a career
that suited both his majors.
A graduate of the 1972 UCLA School of Engineering class, Green
now works as a patent lawyer for a firm in Pasadena.
Green always knew that law is something he wanted to try. After
graduating from engineering school, he stayed at UCLA to attend law
school.
Because of his technical background, people told Green nobody in
the legal profession would respect him.
That has changed completely, Green said.
Today, people with technical degrees are sought after by patent
firms, he said.
“I firmly believe an engineering education opens
doors,” he said.
To operate in the field of patent law, you do not have to be a
genius, but you have to have enough knowledge in both technology
and law, he said.
Being a patent lawyer has its benefits over being an engineer,
he said. Patent lawyers go from project to project more quickly,
whereas engineers go into more depth on longer term projects.
Another UCLA alumnus decided to pursue a career different from
what his degree was intended for.
Sheldon Hambrick, who graduated with an engineering degree, now
manages a team in a software company that’s part of the
commercial real-estate market in San Francisco.
After receiving a bachelor’s degree in aerospace
engineering from UCLA in 1990, Hambrick worked for the Navy in
weapon systems logistics at Point Mugu.
“After three years of working for the government, I wanted
to be more adventurous,” Hambrick said.
Deciding to get a graduate degree to broaden his skills and
switch careers, he received a master’s in business
administration at USC’s business school in 1994.
Hambrick made the career switch because of the tough competition
in the engineering field. He saw thousands of engineers with more
experience than him being laid off.
Before landing his current job, Hambrick worked at IBM, Oracle
and a small software company in Orange County.
The main commonalities between engineering and business are in
analytical skills, Hambrick said.
It is not likely that a South Campus student would switch to a
North Campus major, Hambrick said. South Campus students tend
to be more conservative, analytical and more rigid in thinking, he
said.
A person does not necessarily need the educational background
for a job; they need to show that they’re well-rounded and
can get the job done, Hambrick said.
“Changing your career could be tough,” he said.
“It depends on how good of a salesman you are.”