I am of the opinion that no one is quite prepared for this. And you know why? From age six at the latest, we're all schooled like it's our job. Okay, we're not
all schooled like it's our job...I have taken a sociology class or two, after all. However, "average" middle class Americans are definitely schooled. Educated. "Prepped", if you will. Well, I won't. Nope. College doesn't prepare you for the real world. Ha! After those four glorious years of semi-independence and grown up-edness, I believed in a nice smooth (though maybe tearful) transition to the "real world." Boy was I in for a surprise. Yipes.
There are some things you just can't learn in a classroom. Like how hard it is to wake up before 9 every morning, or how difficult it is to make friends when you're not thrown into classes and dorms together. Things are so much easier in college. I mean, I can't just enroll in a Tennis I class anymore without doing some serious research. No oh-I-guess-I'll-take-it-next-semester. Now it's all, Google tennis in the area and see who offers it for the cheapest and blah blah blah blah blah. This is just one example. FYI I've given up on actually improving my tennis "game" anymore. From now on, I'll only have the skills I remember from Tennis I, spring semester, senior year 2005. And I bet regular coaches don't give you free cherry limeades from Sonic for doing well in class. Blerg.
So who's with me? I guarantee you that every one of my best friends from college has said to me at one point, "I just don't think I was meant to work." Oh, and I said it to each one of them, too. Going to class, hanging out with friends in the library whilst "studying." Yes, that feels natural. But knowing what you want to do in order to support the lifestyle to which you'd like to be accustomed, and actually getting that first job you hope will lead you down the right path to grown up bliss? Not natural for a young woman of 22. That decision is just too big for one person to make. And then once you make the decision, or you fall into it somehow, it's not always clear you've made the right decision. (Counting sick days and annual leave time and holidays and all that stuff is just flat out intimidating. It is much preferable to travel year round on the budget of independent wealth.)
I think the problem starts about sophomore or junior year of high school, and it just doesn't go away. Admittedly, we're all socialized to ask the young people what they see in their future. It's just part of normal conversation. But with those loaded questions comes so much pressure that we youngins just can't shake! People ask you these questions like, "What are you going to do?", and you're expected to answer with some form of clarity. Then, of course, if you don't know what you want to do and you admit it, some well meaning soul will tell you, "Oh there's no rush. I don't even know what I want to do and I'm 80." You appreciate the sympathy, but you think to yourself,
if I don't need to know now then why is everyone and their mom asking me this question? Honestly, at that point in my life I even started making things up that sounded plausible so I wouldn't look like a clueless goon every time someone popped the question. "Um, I'm thinking about applying to law school." Yeah, right. Oh, at the time I kind of thought it could work, so it wasn't totally a lie. The point is that except for the lucky few, hardly any of us has a career plan well mapped out when we graduate college, or even grad school. I know I can't be the only one. We're just barely figuring out who we are as adults and we think we're supposed to know what the rest of our lives is going to look like.
How are we supposed to know exactly what to do after college? Some of my friends went straight into grad school, either knowing precisely what their career goals were, or just postponing the inevitable of getting a job and joining the ranks of the working people. I was blessed to find a job about a month before I graduated college, so I had that nice safety net of knowing what I was going to do come June 2005. Well, I knew what I was going to do but I didn't quite understand how to do it - how to exist outside my norm. How did one live without going to class every day? I'd been a student all my life, so I was good at it. I loved it, actually. So now came the greatest challenge of them all...working for a living. Well, I'll have you know that work is for the birds. It's just so...regular. There's so much routine and order, at least for some. It seems like the most exciting chaotic jobs only come with a lot of advance training, and I was trained to look at the world sociologically, not to cut someone's head open and do brain surgery.
Even with the best of intentions and the greatest of co-workers, work isn't always everything it's cut out to be. For those who don't know what they want to do, have no five-year plan, and don't know how what they're doing now can catapult them into what they'll be doing next, the real world can be a scary place. It certainly was for me. Of course, I did come up with a tentative five-year plan. (I kind of had to, since people still refused to stop asking me what was coming next.) I was going to work for about three years, go to grad school, and then do something...else. The "else" was still up in the air, but I had some outline for action and that was enough. Or so I thought.
The five-year plan quickly became the three year plan when I gave it greater thought.
What?--I have to go to work every day from 8:30-5? No, no. You don't understand, I'm used to having 2-4 classes a day, doing some homework, maybe going to orchestra rehearsal, and then doing whatever I want. I don't understand this long day thing you've got going on here. Um, I don't quite know what you mean when you say "paid vacation." How am I not allowed to take a month off at Christmas and a full three months of summer? Hmmm, it's mid-July and I'm WORKING. I don't like this. No. Okay, this paycheck thing. How do I work that out...bills, bills, bills. Do I really need a cell phone? Car insurance isn't a have-to-have, right? Why does everything cost so much money?!?!? Of course, there were perks to the ol' working routine. I didn't have to study for a test for many moons. My weekends were completely free. I didn't have to look at my grades every semester with my fingers crossed. Nonetheless, for me the real world was too much of a shock to the system and I had to retreat. Hello, Grad School! It's me, Undecided!
Grad school it was. I just knew that this would be the answer to my problems. I would learn, I would teach, I would get my doctorate, and I would spend the rest of my days in the ivory tower, sharing my immense knowledge of sociology with all the eager young minds of the day. (Insert incredulous laugh here.)
Of course, once I got to UK my plan changed again.
Oooo, being a professor isn't as awesome as I thought it would be. I have to publish how many articles? Wait, why don't professors get to focus more on teaching than they do on research? What's a CV and why do I have to do one? You want me to go to a conference and...present?!? No no no no, can't, I'm busy...every time. Well, okay I do like grading papers and giving feedback, so I can go to a smaller school with less research emphasis and focus on my teaching. Oh WAIT...I'm responsible for two classes of freshman and I'm dreading every day I have to go to that class. No, I will not give you a make up exam because you overslept! What do you mean you didn't know the assignment was due, it's on your syllabus!!! No, I will not give you an extension cause you weren't in class to hear the announcement...read your syllabus!!! Being a teacher is tough. I wasn't thrilled to be responsible for these kids' learning, and Lord knows they weren't thrilled about learning what I had to teach them. Even to this day I refuse to read my teacher evaluations. I told the admin assistant in my office to just put them in my file and never send them to me. I don't want to know what they thought of my professoring. I did inadvertently get some feedback from a student who wrote in his "fictional" paper that his Sociology TA was a fairly easy teacher and was pretty funny. Okay, I liked that he called me funny, but that was enough. I was done.
I know I'm not the only one who's faced this predicament. We think we have an idea of what we might want to do. Then we try it. We hate it. What next? Mid-stride I considered dropping out of school and getting a job, but I decided that having a Master's was a big deal and I'd really regret not having it if I left. Thank goodness I reached this realization at school and had the free chance to talk to a career counselor about my future. I took tests, I read pamphlets, I assessed my personality. I'm an ENFJ...no, INFP...okay, I really don't remember. I'd have to look through my files. (INFJ? That sounds right.) All I know is that I started realizing that exactly what job I performed wasn't as crucial to my decision-making process at the time as finding a job with the qualities I wanted to have in my work life. For example, I didn't want to deal with the public all the time, and I didn't want to work in a really high stress environment. As I reviewed the results of the various assessments I took, I noticed that Grant Writing kept popping up as a possible career path.
Excellent notion, I thought. I knew I didn't want to ask people for money via voice, but I'd done Development work before and I always liked helping the Development Director work on grants. I like writing.
It's a viable option, I thought. After much painful consideration, and many appointments with the UK Career Counselor, I decided to get an internship that involved grant writing. Practical experience is highly underrated. It can make or break the job search. Classroom experience turned me away from wanting to teach sociology to college underclassmen. Renting event space to brides taught me to avoid any occupation in the wedding industry. I was determined to see, ASAP, if I was cut out for grant writing.
Well, I never got the chance to find out. I took an internship with the local Girl Scouts council in Lexington, and I did all sorts of things for the Development Office. I kept up the giving database, I helped organize fund raisers, I took control of stewardship for annual giving. I researched funding opportunities for our grant writer. What I did NOT do was write grants. Ever. Not once. But you know what? I didn't mind that much. Through the most unexpected of ways, I gained enough experience to steer me in the direction of Development and Advancement Services. By the time I was ready to start applying for jobs, I knew what kind of job I was looking for...ish. I stuck to the higher ed and non-profit sector, and I applied for jobs in Development. I'll have you know that I never anticipated doing this kind of work. It never popped into my head as a possibility for making a living. However, through all my bumps, experiments and stumbles, I found something I knew I could do with relative satisfaction so I could pay my bills and start paying off my student loans.
So that's how I ended up at the Smithsonian. I applied for about 25 jobs online through various fundraising org websites, and I got two interviews. One in DC, and one in Boston. I arrived in DC on February 26th for my interview with no expectations. I didn't know if this would be a good fit for me, but I thought it was worth finding out. I'm glad I did. I knew after the interview that I wanted to work for the Smithsonian, and I wanted to live in DC. But here's the thing - I only knew what I wanted for the short term. And I was okay with it. My interviewer asked me what my career goals were, and I made something up that sounded horribly naive and convoluted. I didn't fool anyone. She and I both knew that I had no clue where I wanted to go in my career. In fact, I still don't know and I've been gainfully employed for over 5 months. I enjoy gift processing, and the whole Advancement Services field intrigues me. But long term?
Well, I've decided that I don't have to have career goals or any sort of long term plan. Why should I? After several years of worries and anxiety, I've realized that I can do just as well when I don't try to look at the whole picture at once. The way my life has gone thus far, I know I'll look back in 30 years and think,
Oh, that's how I got here. Until then, I won't know exactly where the ol' job road is leading me. I tend to fall into situations. I learn something, I meet people, I find out a little bit more about what I do and don't want in a job, and I fall into something else. And that works for me. I wish I could tell everyone graduating from college that it's okay not to know. I wish someone had told me that I would really find my way more by accident than by design. Maybe people tried to tell me, but I was too freaked out by growing up to really listen.
Naturally, with all this new found wisdom, I chose to move to a city where everyone my age is only here for a bit. It's such a transition city that no one expects any DC 20-something to be here for the long term. So you know what socially acceptable questions we DC strangers ask one another? That's right, "How long do you plan on staying in DC? Do you think you'll stay here or move on to something else?" Oh good grief! Well, at least I can say with greatest confidence that I just don't know. "We'll see," I say. Mmmm, I just love the promised adventure of that phrase.
The real world is a shock to the system for those of us fortunate enough to enjoy life without it for the first 22 years of our existence. The very rhythm of it all is overwhelming. There are so many facets of being an adult that I never anticipated. There's so much to do, so much to pay. But I have one thing figured out: I don't have to have things figured out. Work will be. I will work. Where I work will be determined on an as-need basis. Step 1, complete.
