Career planning!
As some of you might have noticed, the Deep Insightful Blogging has kind of flagged off a bit since Italy. Prior to the trip, as I’d noted, things were extremely hectic: my “sick” kept recurring, and I was also on a work project at my Harvard job that had begun to feel truly Sisyphean. I needed that trip, and I’m still not all the way back to full-on work mode.
I’m hoping that will change at least a bit tomorrow, because I’ve decided that I’m going to take myself, and my laptop, and my coffee money, down to a coffee shop and spend the afternoon doing a one-woman corporate retreat. I’ve got a doctorate, a book, a newspaper column, two blogs, and a job at Harvard B-school: what can I turn these things into? What should I spend my energies on, given that newspapers and publishing and television and media in general is topsy-turvy, and no one knows what tomorrow will bring? What is really important to me about what I do? How do I define success for myself? And what are the intermediate steps — next week, next month, next quarter — to get me there?
These are tricky questions, and it may take more than one afternoon to get them settled. (Depends on how much coffee I have.) These are, to some extent, the questions that my boss and I study at HBS.
What’s the best career-planning advice you’ve ever gotten? What’s the worst? What’s the weirdest thing someone ever said you should be when you grew up? (I was once told that I’d be good in the Air Force. My terrible eyesight and inability to tell left from right would, I think, rule that straight out, assuming my entire personality hadn’t already done so.)
What’s the weirdest idea you ever had about yourself, in terms of what you should be when you grew up? My first genuine ambition was to be an animal behaviorist, which is something I’m still very interested in. Before that? I wanted to either work at McDonalds, or be a ballerina. Given my strongly held beliefs about the horrors that both fast food and ballet inflict on the human body, this is ironic, but I’m impressed that even as a four-year-old I somehow knew artists had day jobs.
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It’s not really something I ever thought about growing up, but within the last year or so, I’ve had this fleeting musing wondering if I could ever be a firewoman. Those who know me would be shocked to hear this, I’m sure. I don’t even think I believe I’d ever make it. Something about the being brave enough to run into a burning building…
Bad advice: “If you could be happy doing anything else, you shouldn’t go into music.” – Nadia Boulanger
Good advice: “Think about three things: what are you good at, what do you enjoy, and how can you make the world a better place.” – my dad
(possibly obvious from the quotes, but I am now a professional musician!)
When I was very young, I wanted desperately to have my own Land of Make-Believe and be a puppeteer like those on Mr. Rogers.
As an adult, I have wanted to work construction (despite being somewhat of a wimp in the strength department) and a physicist (despite not really being able to do calculus, even if I get the concepts). I decided not to fight my nature and ended up in more bookish pursuits, but I sometimes wonder what would have happened if I pushed myself well outside my natural comfort zones. Maybe MIT is still in my future.
The oddest things I wanted to be as a child were a Paranormal Investigator (very hot career right now ) or a Human Rights Investigator/Nazi Hunter. Seriously. When I was young I remember reading something in the paper about Beate Klarsfeld’s work and was just fascinated. I also always wanted to be a writer.
As an adult I’ve wanted to be a librarian, a teacher, and a writer.
Robin also had visions of being a maid!!!! OR a hairdresser… That was when she was really, really young of course.
I never received any substantial career-planning advice because people assumed I was set due to my good grades and high ambition. So I guess the worst advice I received was not receiving any!
I had to learn the hard way what is and is not a good fit for me. And I learned that, for me, I require variety, problem-solving, the unexpected, and meaning. (I work for a non-profit now and don’t know that I could go back to for-profit unless it were something like a school or hospital.)
The strangest thing I wanted to be was a detective (never had a preference as to police or federal agent). Given the aforementioned qualities I require, detective may not seem so ludicrous, but it also requires interacting with people and lots of them. I have poor social skills and am very introverted. I’m also afraid of guns (was shot by one when I was a kid, so you know…).
So while I might make a good detective, I wouldn’t be happy as one. I’ve had that realization about many careers. There are tons of things I think I would be good at, but I don’t think I would necessarily like going to that work everyday.
However, if I didn’t have a physical disability, I would go to school to become a vet tech or veterinarian in a heart beat.
I think the weirdest career I contemplated was when I was five or six and wanted to be a flight attendant. There’s even audio of me stating that I was going to grow up to be one. I don’t remember any particular advice, though most people expected that I was going to have something arts-related as a career.
I went through phases of wanting to be a singer/songwriter, an actor, on the radio, and a screenwriter. I’d love to be paid for writing, but I’m terribly lazy and horrifically insecure about said writing when it comes down to it. I have a steady job that I tolerate because I get money to do stuff, but cringe whenever someone attempts to tag it as a “career” because it’s just a job to me.
An aptitude test in high school told me that I should be a police officer or a beautician. And they have what in common?
Wow, this is interesting. My lifelong dream has always been to be a novelist. I even have a couple of completed manuscripts, but I’m too lazy/ unmotivated to try to find an agent and get them published.
Mostly as a kid I just loved school a lot. So much in fact that I never left it. I’ve been through both college and grad school, and both my full-time jobs have been at colleges or universities. I’ve been at my current job for about 17 years. The money is quite good (I’ll never be a millionaire, but I’m not out on the street, either) and the benefits are excellent.
I consider it a job, however, and not a career; I can hang up my hat at 5:00 in the afternoon and not worry about it until the next day or Monday.
Momma Week, however, will refer to me as her “career girl.” I think that’s her polite euphemism for “never met Mr. Wonderful and provided me with two perfect Protestant grandchildren.” Guess she shouldn’t have given me all those “men are the enemy!” lectures when I was a teenager. : )
I wanted to be a teacher and an astronaut when I was a kid. My parents are astronomy teachers, so it wasn’t that strange.
My brother, on the other hand, wanted to be a ladybug.
at one time or another in my life, I’ve quite seriously planned to be:
a truck driver (when I was 5)
a novelist (since I was 6)
a peace corp volunteer
a lawyer (particularly environmental law)
a wildlife rehabilitator
a national park ranger
a journalist
a geologist
an accountant
a computer programmer
an archeologist
a professor (particularly in anthropology or comparative religions)
a high school math and science teacher
a nurse
a grower of organic herbs and farm products
a diplomat
a large animal vet
a wildlife biologist
Right now my dream plan is to get a hundred acres somewhere and start a draft horse rescue. I’d train them to saddle and run a riding stable for heavyweight riders. That’ll probably change again in a year or two :-) I’m almost resigned to the idea that I could never stay interested in a single career for long enough to pay off the student loans that got me there. So I work a baseline job that I can tolerate and pursue hobbies instead. Much less of an investment for an eternal dilettante.
It was really awesome that what I expect. I was never interested to stick to a single job and lead my career in that…I believe that teacher or a novelist is the best place where we can lead our life happily and peacefully. what do you say?
The best career advice I’ve ever received came from the mega Type A CEO/Chairman of the Board who helped me start my business in 1990 and met with me regularly during my first 3-4 years of self-employment.
When the business really started taking off, I started turning into a mega Type A person myself, taking on too many projects, working around the clock to complete them, and learning more about sleep deprivation than any human should know from first-hand experience.
I turned to Charley Oswald and asked him for his advice on to handle it. He replied: “You have to make a choice, to decide what you want. You can be in the business to grow it as big as you can, or you can be in it for the lifestyle, for the flexibility it offers.
Charley spent his life building his business as big as he could and achieved considerable success in that regard. Hearing him say that there was a valid option for running a business that didn’t require building it as big as I possibly could was a total eye-opener. It’s a safe bet that it also saved me from a heart attack or stroke before age 45.
I’ve always tended to want to be “just like” people instead of pursuing a particular field.
In elementary/middle school, it was Joyce Kulhawik. She got to wear fabulous clothes, go to opening night for everything from Madonna to the opera, and everyone wanted her opinion.
Then in high school, I wanted to be just like Norah Jones. Yes, she was famous, but in that “I just want to play music and happened to find worldwide success” kind of way. And she always seemed so calm and soulful, even in the middle of the chaos.
In college (I swear!) I wanted to be just like Miss Conduct! You’ve had so many roles and lead what sounds like a fabulous life, but you can still speak to people the way that you would a friend (even if it is a friend you don’t agree with.)
I’m still not sure what I want to be when I grow up… but the people I’ve wanted to “be” turned into the people whose qualities I work to develop now. I try to explore the cheap/free arts performances in Boston, I do my best to remain calm under pressure (still working on it!) and I strive to see every person, no matter how I disagree, as someone’s child, someone’s sibling, someone’s best friend, and to treat them accordingly.
Like most of us, I have dreamed of being a writer. I thought I may work in publishing (and have), but now I’m back in retail. I can’t think of any advice I’ve ever got about my ‘career’, except some friends suggesting I’d be a teacher, which is a career I highly respect and would never, ever want to do: I hate explaining things to people.
I have also wanted to be a crane driver, dermatologist, TV or radio producer, and database manager.
I despise that my job keeps me offline during the day and too tired at night to partake in the online fun.
Weirdest job aspiration….spaceship engineer, when I was 8. My lack of love for physics and higher order math would probably leave that an unrealistic goal.
Then I wanted to be a profiler in the Behavioral Sciences Unit…which ironically enough I went to school for psych and then forensic psych (which was transformed into forensic mental health counseling).
Now I want to be an Army mental health counselor…