Inevitably, it is right about the time where I begin to hear from students who graduated about 2-5 years ago, who send me the following info, more or less, in a similar format:
“Dr. Albert, I have been practicing for 2-5 years now at company XYZ. I’m bored. Is this all there is?”
Ok, first of all, fear not! Life does NOT end when you finish undergrad! Neither does learning. Today, I’m, well, more than 2-5 years out from my own undergrad experience and heading to NYC for training myself, during my time before I head back to law school this fall. I’m old(er), but I’m still learning!
Secondly, know this, if you’re one of those 2-5 year graduates heading into your quarter life crisis: it is now going to be YOUR job to figure out what you want to do next–in terms of your personal life, your education, AND your career. Your ideal job is most likely not written on paper somewhere, in someone’s classified ads. The good news? You just might be in the position to create your perfect job. But, here’s the bad news: you’re going to have to create it, and coupled with that is a four letter word: W-O-R-K.
I think the closest book I’ve gotten to this path is Seth Godin’s Linchpin of late. He argues the same thing I do: your dream job isn’t going to be handed to you. Linchpins, or those who are good at what they do and indispensable in organizations, create their ideal job and make things happen. They are the agents of change who create their own personal utopias.
This post already feels deja vous-y to me, but here are 5 things to consider when you’re at quarter or mid-life, or any other existential time points in your life:
1. Ask yourself - am I doing what I want to be doing? If not, then you’ve got some work to do.
2. Sit down and think about 3 times where you were in your ‘flow’ as Csikszentmihalyi or ‘zone’ as Michael Jordan likes to use - you were happy, the work seemed interesting and maybe even effortless for you. Then, map out what skills you were using in those 3 scenarios. You most likely will start to see patterns of key skills that you love to use in your work. Then, create something that plays to those skills.
3. I still have yet to meet a manager that wasn’t open to any well-crafted and deliberated plans. (My department chair included - I just asked her yesterday if I could propose a crazy idea and she said she’s always into entertaining new ideas!) If you have a crazy idea, ask your manager if you can draft something in writing to share with them and GO FOR IT. The best they will do is see you made the effort and grant you your idea to try. The worst thing: they say no, but they STILL see that you made the effort, which is more than 99% of the rest of the world is ready and willing to do.
4. Also, if they totally blow off your well-researched and thought out idea, ask yourself: is this really a place that I want to be working? If not, again, it’s time for some more homework.
5. As for graduate school, I can tell you that while I personally think education is important, it doesn’t necessarily have all the answers either when it comes to your personal career development. Case in point: moi. I am more clueless now than I have ever been as to what it is that I want to “be” when I grow up, 3.5 degrees in. That’s part of the mystery of life - to have YOU figure out what it is you are here to do. Just like I do. It is incumbent upon all of us to figure this out. And unfortunately, it might not come in the form of a degree, a training class, or from an instructor. It has to come from within us.
There are no easy answers, just better questions!