Learning the Hard Way

[nix]

There has been a recurring theme among my friends now, and it is an issue that has started me thinking heavily on a great many things. After just barely a year since the graduation hymns have faded into a blur, an unexpected obstacle has hit a number of my peers straight in their faces - the real world.

Seventeen years of classroom instruction have produced an interesting entity; people who have a mix of an eagerness to transform their environment, a fear of being left behind by success, and an unwillingness to detach themselves from an atmosphere that has coddled them nearly all their lives. When the time has finally come to bid those tender arms away, the indecision, the fear of going at it, perhaps a little more alone, holds them in its sway.

I have three friends now who have, over the course of the month, expressed their anxiety over their present careers. The choices are limitless, most of our resource speakers of days past have said. But to these friends of mine, the unbounded holds no importance, unless it is packaged with the ability of insight; the ability to decide what they can call their own, what path will make them happy.

Myself, and I am sure, many others, wish that amidst all those years of didactic lectures, a greater sense of real preparation had been accomplished. As early as high school, students must be exposed to the multitude of options that surround them. The knowledge of career choices is every bit as important as the mathematical computations and literary appreciation taught to us by our teachers. The skills are only as significant as what they are to be applied to.

More often than not, when a graduating high school student is confronted with which course to choose after high school, he or she is uncertain as to what doors lie open at the end of the tunnel. And this uncertainty remains in their college years. I've heard of many stories of would be lawyers who take up Pol Sci, and other stereotype Pre Law courses, only to realize by Senior year that they didn't want to be Lawyers anymore. Or how about a friend of mine whose brother finished taking up Med School only to decide that he wanted to become a lawyer? There is something seriously flawed with the preparation process.

There are many possible solutions that can be contrived from this quandary, but one thing must always remain constant: early on, students must be guided towards becoming decision makers; people who are given responsibility in a diverse set of learning circumstances not limited to the school's environment. I'm not talking about clubs, groups, or the like, I am referring to real world interactions with professionals. Perhaps an extended internship that is not only limited to a specific department, company, or profession, but on several combinations of all three. The methodology must be more experiential.

I would also suggest a system of apprenticeship where at least one teacher has a small number of students, anywhere between two to five, directly under him. The teacher would meet with his students at least once a month to follow up on their advancement. These meetings would not only center around the student's academic performance, but on his interests and his inclinations. The advice that the teacher can impart will be invaluable to the student's future.

I have offered only a very minuscule insight on what I feel, are simple solutions to a very serious malady. Many may disagree with my assertions, but I am only speaking on behalf of my own experience and the encounters that have been shared to me by my friends. But not everyone has been bitten by the uncertainty bug. There are those who are bent on making a name for themselves in the fields of expertise they have so carefully chosen. But for every resolute professional, there are many more wage earners who are tapping their desks with their pencil tips, wondering, if that was all that they had set out to be.

[Mikoid]

Well written, Nix. I think that you've stumbled upon one of the most profound questions asked of every twenty-something, career-bent lost soul. When the zeal and novelty of employment and profit have faded away, are we really happy? Could our academic formation have averted this dissatisfaction?

"Hindsight is always 20/20," they tell me, and it's tragic to see so many people plodding onwards, content with their jobs, oblivious to their dissatisfaction, only to find that they no longer like what they're doing.

I work for an Internet company, and in the course of a year I've interviewed a plethora of individuals who want to start an Internet career. I've found myself across the table from bankers, analysts, writers, ad agency people, out-of-college youths, philosophy graduates -- all applying for specialist positions in our company. It's sad that I have to turn so many people away, or pretend to listen seriously to people who have absolutely no chance of getting the job.

I've written in another forum about what I think is the moving force of this generation: the ability to embrace change. It's a generation of risk-taking, of constantly increasing competition. Those that prosper embody a quality that I'd like to call personal entrepreneurship -- the spirit of seeking opportunities in a world where prosperity comes by staying outside the comfort zone.

It's difficult to re-invent yourself when you're getting a steady paycheck. It's easy to be complacent because people have a natural resistance to change -- and a powerful inertia drives one on until it's too late to do anything else except wallow in an undesired career.

Nix proposes that we introduce high school students to professional life while within high school. Granted, there could have been more career-oriented talks offering more professional relevance to the college curriculum. We could have used a simple career path diagram saying "Take Economics in College and the output careers could be in banking, government, research, etc..."

I still believe that high school isn't the time for a career decision -- there's a time for that in college. High school is a time for personal formation -- where attitudes like competitiveness, morality, and a sense of justice can be nurtured in individual students.

In college, things like the practicum, career talks, and job fairs help us make the big career decision. All of these combined still don't paint an adequate picture of what it means to follow a certain career path. Why? It's because they come too late in the game -- when we've already made the decision to follow a certain academic major. The big course questions stop being asked after sophomore year, when you're armlocked until graduation.

There's a major gap during the early years of college, when you still have a chance to shift. When people enter a course, only a handful are really there because they're committed to the particular career output. Many of them entered for the prestige (for high-profile courses), or because they were easy to get into (for low-profile ones), or to avoid tough things like Math (I fell under this category).

No one really explained to me what I would become when I got into Management. Maybe they tried, but it took reams of accounting worksheets and bell curves from hell to tell me that I no longer wanted to pursue a finance career. By that time, it was too late to shift without sucking up an extra year.

Fortunately, I was able to reinvent myself as an Internet bloke after graduation.

Nix, you're right -- more attention can be paid to the choices we have to make at critical points in our lives. However, they are ultimately our decisions and we live or die by them. Only hard-nosed experience can make us aware of our follies, and no amount of hand holding can keep us from that finality.

One more point in this convoluted reply. Beware of the people you listen to -- age is no measure of wisdom in this high-tech age. Sure, the old fashioned rules apply -- hard work and consistent performance. But the notion of conservatism is long dead.

Instead, I propose a philosophy of personal entrepreneurship. Stick your neck out and stay smart. Don't keep anything nailed to the floor, and be prepared to move at the earliest opportunity. The most liquid capital is that of the mind. Prosperity comes from outside the comfort zone, in the razor-thin layer of tension where everything is in flux.

In academic terms, look for courses that aren't too specialized. People who specialize are faster out of the starting gate, but may not get as far.

This may sound like rhetoric, but it rings true. I still believe that success comes by embracing the inevitability of change.

[Mister Dean]

If there was absolutely one thing that I wished I learned back when I had the chance, it would probably be learning to slow down.

Yes, life is hard and we must be practical, but I can't imagine myself saying on my deathbed, I wish I spent more time at the office.

Somehow, though, I will be working to the bone. I'll probably die working. Ah, for the want of direction!

[Aragorn]

It's funny, but somehow, your thoughts have coincided with mine...Paul Gauguin once said, 'Where did we come from? Where are we going?" I think that right now, us twenty-somethings are at a crossroads, and our first taste of the real world has left a somewhat bitter taste in the mouth.

But, as John Lennon once wrote in a song, "Life is what happens when you're busy making other plans." Work, as important as it may be, and as big a part of our life as it is, isn't the only aspect of it. Life is the smile on your friend's face when you do something nice for him or her. It's the quiet chats you have with your siblings late at night, and you're laughing over something stupid. It's the friends that you pick up along the way, the really good ones, who share all the moments of your life with you, good and bad.

Too often I've made the administrative portion of my job the main focus of my life. With a centerpiece like that, who wouldn't get bored? It's the little joys you encounter (and which are easily taken for granted) that make up life's profound pleasures.

Maybe that's how people older, and wiser, than us have managed to survive their seemingly droll careers.

[batang uliran]

Some of the thoughts in this thread have reminded me of a story of a very good friend of mine and one of the reasons I'm very happy for her is because I appreciate the dilemma she faced having faced these same decisions myself some time ago.

My friend entered UP Intarmed like myself and finished med school with grades much lower than she was capable of. She came to the US where she did well during her training in internal medicine and even won a prestigious regional research contest sponsored by the American College of Physicians. She chose to specialize in cancer medicine and got many offers eventually settling on the Cleveland Clinic because hubby dear was going to attend his Renal fellowship in nearby Case Western Reserve. Midway during her first year of fellowship, she decided she wanted not only out of her fellowship but out of clinical medicine. She quit, took care of her hubby for about 2 years staying home and when hubby got accepted to a hemodialysis position at the Brigham in Boston, she decided it was time to renew her career as well. She applied for a training position in medical informatics at Harvard where she was accepted and they sponsored her masters in medical informatics at MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology not Mapua!). Well, she started that a year and a half ago. At this point she is happier and is about to start on her thesis to complete her masters. BTW, she had a GPA of 5.0 (which is straight As) at MIT and is looking forward to a fruitful career in IT preferrably in a health related field. She has been urged to take a PhD some friends perhaps in Computer Science.

Forgive this rambling account but I'm very proud of my friend and she has shown me and others that it's never too late to make these hard and tough decisions even if it seems you are throwing away years of training and education. My friend is much happier and fulfilled and I think she has found her niche in this world which is more than I can say for many of us.

[zimdude]

... and I personally am not really sure what I am doing, sometimes I am flying off in many directions...

[zimdude]

"Don't let your schooling get in the way of your education"

- Mark Twain