Generation Z Gets To Work

Raised by brooding cynics and witnesses to the economic collapse of 2008, this year’s college graduates are anxious, entrepreneurial and determined to avoid the mistakes of their predecessors.

- Adam Piore

MAYBE IF HE’D BEEN BORN A BOOMER or a millennial, and grown up with the generational message that you can be whatever you want to be and things will work out, Zack Bauders, 21, would’ve given more thought to making a living as a professional photographer, like his father. He’s certainly got the talent.

His work includes a great action shot he snapped of former Navy quarterback Keenan Reynold, midstride, his arm cocked for the throw. He also took a moody picture of a nighttime meteor shower over a mountain and a stream and contributed regularly to local magazines in his hometown of Philadelphia.

But Bauders didn’t graduate from the University of Texas last month with a degree in photography or anything related to the visual arts. Instead, he chose actuarial science—a vocation, he believes, that will ensure he always has a well-paying job analyzing risk and calculating rates for insurance companies. To him, the virtual guarantee of future work was one of the career’s most appealing attributes. “If you had told me I would be a successful nature photographer or landscape photographer, I would have done it in a heartbeat,” he says. “But that’s not a sure thing. I knew I was good at math and I could apply those skills and get rewarded for it.”