Advice to Teenagers Part 1: Think About Your Career Now

Date Posted: November 10th, 2009

One thing I learned from college is that my “college-prep” high school did not prepare me for college. At least not fundamentally. Sure I’d taken 7 AP classes, all honors wherever I could. I took 3 full years of history, 4 of math (including calculus), 4 of English, even an art class or two. I’d been exposed to lots of stuff, but throughout that time I’d never been seriously asked to think about what I wanted to do with a college degree. I was told there was no point to making a decision about what to major in since I’d probably change my mind when I got there. Apparently that also meant there was no point really thinking about it and experimenting with it either.

The problem with this thinking is that college is expensive. If you start your first day of college with the plan of figuring out what you want to do when you get there, you’ll be wasting a lot of precious time and money. High school, on the other hand, is mandatory and free (at least for you). Also most of the stuff you’re supposed to imbibe there is not that important in the long run. Unless you’re going into biology or another related field you don’t really need to remember what mitochondria is or how mitosis works. Which University you get into, how many clubs you were a part of, and how much community service you do doesn’t really matter either unless you aspire to work for a giant corporation. Giant corporations like people who follow the rules.

What is important is that you have an idea of what direction you’d like to go in. College is way more useful if you know why you’re getting your degree. Even if you think you know what you want to do (I sure thought I knew!) I’d suggest doing the following things. They’ll either reinforce your decision or they’ll show you how weak your idea is.

Spend time dreaming about your future
How do you want to make a difference? When you’re changing classes, daydream about your future. Figure out how to make it happen. What steps need to be taken in order to make this dream come to life. Try it on for a while. Pay attention to how it makes you feel. If you feel excited, take note of it. If you feel anxious take note of it.

If you could retire now, what would you do with your time? Seriously. Would you spend it watching TV day in day out? Would you travel everywhere? Would you raise a big family? Would you spend a lot of time on your hobby? Would you write? Would you try to make a difference? What sounds appealing?

Find someone to listen to you
Tell someone about your dreams. Specifically say you’re not sure what you’re going to do or if you’ll take action on any one thing you pick. You just want to make sure you understand what’s involved in pursuing that dream. What are the pros and cons. What you would need to do in order to take action on one of those dreams right now. What you can do right now to get an idea of what it’d be like. You’re looking for someone to tell you when your actions aren’t in line with what you profess you want to do.

Most people I know assume that any dream you confide in them is something you’re going to take action on. When you inevitably change your mind they may get impatient with you, and not believe what you say. That’s why you need to let them know that you’re just dreaming right now. Serious dreaming, but not actual physical commitment dreaming.

Ideally your parents will be the people you can tell this to, but they don’t have to be. If you try telling your parents about it and they freak out, giving you reactionary advice, just let it go and find someone else. You shouldn’t let their issues hold you back.

Some other places you can look for advice include: your peers, your teachers, or your coaches. Keep your eye out for people you can look up to or people who’ve done the kinds of things you’d like to do. Get to know them. If a teacher you admire moderates a club at your school, consider joining. Ask them lots of questions. You’re at a special age because people will be willing to help you without expecting anything in return.

Don’t spend time with people who will shoot you down. It’s not helpful. It keeps you from growing.

Get as much experience as you can
If you want to be a doctor, spend some time after school volunteering at the hospital. If you want to be a programmer, work with some friends on a compelling programming project or help out with an open source project. If you want to own a small business, try to get a job at one that’s similar to what you want to do. The more experience you get, the more you’ll get to know what you really want to do.

If you feel uncomfortable about getting experience in an area you think you’d like to work in, you have a problem.

Visualize what it’d be like to do what you want to do
Almost as important as real experience is visualization. Figure out how your life would work if you were doing what it is you want to do. What would an average day look like? How much freedom would you have? How much travel would you have to do? Is this something you really want?

A few years ago I got it in my head that I wanted to open up an early music shop. For a variety of reasons I won’t get into here, it wasn’t a terrible idea. I read a few books on opening up a retail shop, knew I had the capability of doing it, and got really excited about it.

After a week or two, though, I started to think twice. My life would be tied to the shop. Eventually I could negotiate a couple extra days off a week, but that’s not a lot of freedom. Also my influence would be limited to people in the Midwest region and maybe a few early music people in the country. Was that really what I wanted for myself? Would I really be making the kind of impact I want to make? Would I have the freedom to homeschool my future kids? No, not really.

I didn’t have to even work at a music shop to see that that path wouldn’t work. Did I waste much time and money thinking about it? No. A few weeks is barely anything. I got the books from the library. Which brings me to the next piece of advice.

Read a Lot
When you get an idea, go to the library and check out some books on your topic of choice. Chances are someone’s already done what you want to do. Read blogs about people in your field. Read Read Read Read Read. You’ll learn a lot about the kind of things you could do with your life. The kind of things they don’t teach you in school.

Again, if your family isn’t supportive you don’t have to tell them about what you’re reading. Read your books and secret, and let them know about things only when you have to. You aren’t doing anything wrong, and the conflict you cause the better.

If I’d have done these things I’d be a different person now. College would have been more valuable to me. I’d be further along with what I want to do with my life. If I could do it over in this way I would.

Tags: Career, College, High School, Purpose.
Posted at 3:02 pm | No Comments »

Advice for College Freshmen

Date Posted: November 4th, 2009

It was in my third year of University that I realized something was wrong. I was feeling resentful about how much time I had to spend working on school work. I didn’t have time to work on the things that were important to me or spend time with the people that were important to me. School had become a drudgery. I didn’t enjoy learning about my major, and even worse, the thought of the work I’d be doing when I graduated made my stomach unhappy. Bad signs.

Third year is just about the worst time to have this realization. By this time I was halfway done with my EE major, and most of the credits I had didn’t transfer to anything else I might have wanted to do. Not that I knew what I wanted to do anyway. Ultimately I stuck it out, cared less about my grades and focused on just passing. I also promised myself I wouldn’t actually work in the EE field. GPA doesn’t matter as much when you’re not working your field of study. A degree, no matter what it is, does.

Those were hard years school-wise. I learned a lot about myself and what I wanted out of life, but the cost–monetary and emotional–were awfully high. I don’t know if I’d recommend it to someone else, and I don’t know if there’s much to recommend to someone that far in. At that point I was already tired of school so dropping everything and starting over would have been hard and expensive.

If I were to have a talk with my younger self, I’d have had it with my 18 year-old freshman self. As a freshman I still had energy and wouldn’t have lost much time or money dropping everything and switching to something more me. Here’s what I would have told her:

The Road Less Traveled is not Necessarily the Right Road
I’d had the weird belief that picking a difficult major that few women did, just because I knew I was capable, was a good idea. If I didn’t care at all about the work I did, I suppose that’d be true. I’m a rarity. People would want to hire me.

But that decision to pick a major where I was in a minority severely limited the number of options I had. Psychology, right out. Journalism, yep out. You get the idea. Engineering jobs would be much easier for me to get and would be higher paying from the start. From a strictly practical standpoint it’s not a bad choice.

The problem is that in engineering I’d do alright, but my fire wouldn’t burn that brightly. I would not be living up to my potential.

Doing something Hard is not the same as Doing your Best
I’d really believed that if I picked a major that was easy for me–psychology or journalism or history or musicology–I’d have been wasting my ability. I was capable of doing things much more difficult, therefore I should do them.

The thing is, if you pick something you’re capable of doing but aren’t really interested in you will always be mediocre. My interest had never been truly in engineering or science or math. It was always a forced interest. Whenever I envisioned how I’d spend my spare time it usually wasn’t doing that stuff. I liked those things, I wasn’t afraid of them, but I didn’t love them.

If you can’t imagine spending your spare time doing something, you really shouldn’t be majoring in it. Even if you’re capable, you’ll never be as awesome as if you’d focused on something you loved.

Making Money from Something You Love Won’t Necessarily Cause You to Hate It
The belief that being financially dependent on something you love is a bad idea is a complicated misconception. It’s true if your self-worth is tied into how much money you’re making from your love. If you’re awesome and unappreciated it can be easy to develop a bad feelings toward your loved work. A classical musician who can’t find anyone interested in her music might not be the happiest person ever. An artist who can’t find a buyer has similar problems. She may have to play music or make paintings that don’t meet her standards just to make ends meet. More likely she’ll be stuck working odd jobs to pay rent and do her art on the side. How romantic…

This is really an issue of being dependent on a skill that isn’t valued, not of doing something you love. If you’re doing something you love and it’s valued by others life is pretty good. There’s a certain joy in working on something until you’ve mastered it. There’s also a joy in using your skills to serve others. As long as you focus on how you’ll make it valuable to others, you won’t have to worry too much about hating it.

Which leads me to the next topic: what happens if there’s no obvious career path for your passion? Will you be stuck creating a business that eats your life?

Working for Yourself Does Not Have to Eat Your Life
When I was a freshman I hazily saw my future as working for a big company doing whatever it is Electrical Engineers do. School was the hard part, after that life would be easy street. I’d have time when I got home from my 9-5 day to work on the things that really mattered to me without having to worry about making money from them.

My internships taught me that it wasn’t quite as nice as that. Work’s still challenging, it’s just a different kind of challenge than school. It’ll still takes up a lot of time and energy, the only difference is there’s a paycheck at the end of it. Having the energy when you get home to do anything more than stare at the TV is a challenge.

I’d always lived under the assumption that working for yourself was a time and energy suck, way worse than a 9-5 job. From what I’ve read, though, that’s simply not true. Yes it’s harder to get started, but once your business is working, if you designed it right you’ll have a lot more freedom than with your typical job.

Start Thinking Now About How You’ll Provide Value for Others

It’s one thing to have an interest, it’s another thing for that interest to be of value to anyone else. This goes back to the “Hating What You Love When You Try to Make a Living At It” thing. Be open to ways in which you could use your passion to help others. What kind of change do you want to create in the world? What will people pay you for? What will be worth their money? Thinking in terms of service goes a long way toward making the act of making money more palatable. The earlier you think about how you can turn your passions into value the easier it will be to pick good, useful classes and put yourself in positions to meet the right people too.

If I’d have had these beliefs as a freshman, I’d have had a much more useful and less painful college experience. Hopefully all you youngins out there won’t make the same mistakes I did. We need more people who love what they do.

Another Article You Might be Interested in: 15 Signs You May Have Picked the Wrong Major (or Career)

Tags: Career, Character-Development, College, Purpose.
Posted at 1:15 pm | 2 Comments »