Tag Archives: choosing career path

My Future Career Probably Doesn’t Exist Yet

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This past Thursday, I attended a “Women in Tech” panel at the CMC Athenaeum, featuring three CMC alumnae. I really enjoyed hearing about each of their experiences while at CMC, and working at startups and major corporations, such as Kaiser and General Mills. I learned about the fast-paced and sometimes chaotic startup world and the most valuable college classes they had each taken in college. Each woman was very passionate about her career, and provided candid advice to the audience about regrets, experiences, and achievements.  One of the students in the audience asked “What is the best piece of career advice you’ve received?” The women all provided valuable advice, yet one comment really stuck with me. “Your future job may not even exist yet”, one panelist said.

I found this advice to be simultaneously comforting and terrifying. Just as I struggle to determine my major, I am also hesitant to declare one single career path, as I do not have the skills nor information to make either of these major decisions just yet. I have many future internships to complete and many classes to take that will help me make these decisions. So, what’s the rush in being certain of my future now? It is comforting to know that my future career may not even exist, because it relieves me from the pressure of defining it and sharing it with the world right now.

At the same time, the thought that my future career may not even exist yet is more than slightly terrifying. From the day students enter kindergarten, they are asked “What are you going to be when you grow up?” This question programs students from the very beginning to be forward-thinking and certain in their decisions. Most young students will say doctor, baseball player, or actress based on what their parents have told them they should aspire to be or what they have seen on television. I’m pretty sure that in kindergarten, I said that I am going to be a businesswoman because my five-year old self knew that my mom was some sort of businesswoman. Little did I know that there are thousands of careers within the field of business. Because our society seems to expect certainty from us, it is difficult to accept the ambiguity of my future career. Yet even while I create as much structure and certainty as I can in my everyday life through my weekly planner and  Google Calendar, I also recognize that it is ok to not have everything planned out.

The worlds of business and technology are constantly changing, and many of these changes, like the advent of artificial intelligence, will not only change how we work but how we live. Who knows, a life-changing piece of technology could come out this week! Like that panelist said, I encourage more students, no matter how young or old, to not feel pressure to define their future career, and instead accept, and maybe even embrace, the uncertainty of the process. The next time someone asks me what I’m going to do with my career, I just might respond with “how could I know? My career doesn’t even exist yet”.

No Longer Wanting to be a Journalist?

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I have always wanted to be a writer, and ideally within the realm of creative writing. However, being realistic, I have also recognized for a long time that one cannot simply graduate from college and become a full-time novelist—at least not if one wants to actually be able to pay rent and eat. This in mind, being a novelist has always been my “slightly unrealistic” career choice that I am determined to pursue, but is also secondary to something slightly more… likely to have a salary.

But what was this “real” career going to be? As much as I want to be a writer, with my busy life I find it hard to sit down and write consistently without solid motivation. Asking myself what best motivates me, and figuring that out to be a looming deadline and the idea of being accountable to others, I put two and two together and settled on magazine or newspaper journalism. For the past two or three years, when asked what I wanted to do after school, I would answer, “Well, I want to be a writer but I’ll probably go into journalism.” It sounded perfect to me, since I would still get writing published frequently, would write because I would have deadlines and topics assigned to me, and could explore other interests such as popular culture and current events.

The past couple of months, however, I’ve started to question this “perfect” career path more and more. Being a journalist still appeals to me; it’s easy to imagine the places I could possibly go and the people I could meet. It sounds like a job that would lead me to be much more engaged with the world more than, say… being a writer, sitting alone in a room with a laptop. And being engaged, through having a variety of experiences, meeting new people, and making a difference, is very important to me.

At the same time, I’ve started to realize that image of the Journalist is less that of a supreme writer—though this is important—and more that of a Researcher, researching the latest scoop and following a story through to its end. The journalist is out there to relay the “truth” or, at least, their opinion, to the public—not just to write. As my passion for literature continues to develop, I’m starting to wonder which I would like more—being a journalist and involved with the world? Or concentrating on something literary, my true passion? (Of course, the ideal job for me is a combination of these two: book critic.)

It is because of this re-thinking that I have recently turned to publishing as another plausible career path. Although it is a business that does not necessarily involve writing, I would be constantly emerged in the world of literature and books. This is not to say I would never try journalism; I’m still very young and am open to a variety of possible careers and internships. I have also started to consider continuing studies and eventually becoming an English professor, which is a profession I used to always believe I would not like. I’m not sure if I would be a good teacher or not, but the idea of being so knowledgeable about a field and then sharing my passion with others appeals to me. It’s too early to truly decide what I want to do, especially since it is now apparent that my ideas are changing constantly.

Of course, no matter what I ended up doing, I will always work on my creative writing on the side.