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Take a Deep Breath and TrustMay 22 '02 Write an essay on this topic.The Bottom Line You don't have to have all the answers on Day One and people usually don't. Your life will send you those answers on schedule. OK. You're graduating. First thing: Take a deep breath. In most cases, it's not a matter of KNOWING exactly what you're going to do but discovering it. And we discover those answers when we put ourselves out there. The answers come through experience. Not through thinking about (read: worrying about) that experience. Of course, it's tempting to expect your perspective to be perfect on graduation day. In that scenario, all that remains is for you to live out the plan in your "given field." But in reality, your perspective will grow right along with you. (And thank God this is the way the wheels turn. If not--if you had a road map of exactly what you wanted to do, and your perspective weren't going to change, your life would be static. Yet if you look at the careers paths of the most interesting and successful people, they rarely proceed along straight lines. I read an article in the USA Today which said that 15% of business CEO's had MBA's. A low percentage. BUT ANOTHER 15% were liberal arts majors! (7/24/01) Liberal Arts, for crying out loud! What does this imply: Life's an active feedback loop. The path you take sends you back information that helps you adjust and refine...the path you'll take. Your career teaches you about your career: what it can be and also what you'll want it to be. And this applies even if you start out in a direction that's the opposite from where you'll eventually end up. The key is in trusting that the information and experience you'll gain from taking the best step you can at the time will be worth more to you in the long run than any possible downside. In short, skills sets are transferable: I have a friend who was a theater director and became an attorney. Unrelated? The labels are unrelated,("director" "attorney"), yes. But the skills are the same: working with people, research, public speaking, organizational skills. To take one, public speaking: she was once training actors to get on stage and speak; now, not only a lawyer but a litagator, she herself is making use of the same skill as she speaks to juries. Your skills translate between jobs and careers. Starting out constructively, then, is about knowing this: Your first stop won't be your last; that you can get where you're going even if you're not exactly sure where that is. You don't need to know what to do but what to do next. And that obsessing and heavy-duty worrying are a big expense of your precious time and energy. Or to say it another way: Use the best idea you have at the time, get started, and keep your eyes open.  |
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