| | As a senior in college, the notion of post-college life is no longer on the back burner. It's becoming real, very real, and there is much scrambling among my hallmates, classmates, and teammates alike. I know people who are on several post-graduate tracks- graduate school (Nina), a postbacc program (a teammate), and working in "the real world" (a different teammate). My inbox slowly expands with email after email from employers, Cornell career services, and other listserves I signed up for back when I thought they'd offer me opportunities.
Looking at these three paths, I wonder if there isn't a fourth, fifth, or twentieth thing that I haven't considered. Nobody starts out at the top of something- if they can, then other people must also be able to do so too. So if we temporarily accept that there's a procedure to get to the top of something, should we also assume that your first job out of college has to suck? I don't think it should mean that, but nearly every single person I know who has left Cornell to enter the working world has told me that it sucks. Is that a comment on Cornell, college in general, their workplace, or the splash into the real world in general?
As I look at the options that are made available to all students, it makes me think. 4 years ago, I was a senior in high school. College fairs back then offered no more insight to me than did this year's career fair or that of the year before. To be sure, I owe a large debt of gratitude to the staff at my high school who wrote letters to Cornell after I had been waitlisted. One thing that is different between high school and now is that I have had experience in making things happen in "the real world." While in the past, I had obtained a street-performing license and a TEFL certificate, at heart those endeavors required that I pay money to someone else to be able to do something that I wanted. One exception to this pattern is that I set up an organization for international students at my high school which has been flourishing to this day. There might be a lesson there, that you can set up things with no more than an idea and other like-minded people around you. Whatever the case, in my senior year of college there is an exception. Something is different.
During the winter of my sophomore year, I realized that with my interest in Chinese and rowing, that there had to be some way to blend the two. After that flicker in my head, the following happened: I remembered that the Olympics would be in Beijing in 2008, and further thought that US Rowing would need a translator who understood rowing. The next step would be to meet someone who could help, and with that I asked my freshman year coach to introduce me to Mike Teti, the Olympic Rowing coach. While he wasn't the exact person to talk to, as the coach of a world record-setting crew which ended a 40-year gold medal drought for the US in the men's 8+ event, his words carry weight. I heard back from him, sent my resume to US Rowing, and not long after that, I had positive phone calls with the national team manager (incidentally a former high school classmate of my oldest sister) and the executive director of US Rowing. By fall break I was in Princeton interviewing and looking at the boathouse of the national team. The following July I was at Beijing Capital Airport meeting the US Rowing delegation.
I did it. I made something happen. I shifted the balance- no more would I have to pay to get what I wanted, people were willing to pay me to get something they wanted. As James might put it, I moved from the "consumer" end of the scale to the "producer" end. Now after all that, all that I did and made happen through determination and taking on manageable tasks, can I really think about a regular desk job where someone else feeds me orders? It's a tough call. I don't want to have to "drink the kool-aid" of the corporate world and sell out some of the most precious years of my life. If I have an idea, and I think it'd be best if I spent my time setting up this idea, then why shouldn't I? Besides asking why I shouldn't do it, I'm fairly sure of why I should. It's something that I can see myself doing, doing passionately, doing whether everything is great or not, and that's what makes it seem to me like it's something I should be doing. Having had experience going into jobs where before I even got changed I felt like my energy would be spent needlessly all for some hourly wage, I want to try something new.
There are people less than 4 years older than me who are living large, flying in private jets, but why is it that I can't imagine so many of the people who have entered the workforce as doing the same thing? I see shows like "the office," and I just think about how they must have been written by people in some office somewhere. It is not work that I reject, but monotony. I need to wake up and know that I am moving something forward towards a tangible goal. When I reach that goal, I will know to move on rather than condemning myself to a hampster wheel. To me, the greatest tragedy is to lose that voice that says, "Get up and get moving!" If the gadfly in my head telling me to make something happen is silenced in any way, then my life goes from adventure to just plodding along, looking at the shiny things, taking for myself what's easiest to reach. Even though much has changed (for the better!) since senior year of high school, I find that the quote I chose for the yearbook rings as true now as it did then. In closing, patient reader, I leave you with that quote:
“I tell you that as long as I can conceive something better than myself I cannot be easy unless I am striving to bring it in to existence or clearing the way for it.” - George Bernard Shaw
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| | Posted 9/24/2007 12:35 PM - 12 Views - 0 eProps - 0 comments
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