Quote:
Originally Posted by Phanuthier
The obvious answer of "what now" has been / will be to get a job, but it seems awfully shallow to just go out and work for the next 40 years without really working towards anything, or at least anything definite. Obviously, there are positions and responsibilities I would like to have in my career, but they all seem attainable and not something that I find to be a something I'm going to really have to work towards, and I guess the lack of challenge scares me that there isn't really anything I am challenged to.
Anyone else here have the same issue? If so, what did you do about it?
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Well you're touching on some fundamental issues from what I can tell. Issues about values and your identity. This will probably be TL : DR for most people, I'll warn ya now.
I think I understand where you are coming from. I worked for five years as software developer and I could see having a long career in that field and toiling along but it just didn't seem like I was doing anything, making any sort of difference. It seemed like I was making my boss richer, and the oil and gas industry more productive (working on oil and gas software.) Neither of those really seemed like great accomplishments to me and the compensation although decent didn't seem to offset the amount of time I had to spend at work, and the ridiculous lack of vacation offered. I knew that at times I was being billed out at 3 times what I was getting paid, the exploitation was quite obvious. Perhaps if I had gotten a dream job in my field I wouldn't have had so many issues with my job and wouldn't have quit work to go back to school. Or perhaps working as a contractor would have lessened the issues I had with exploitation and working for a boss, the inefficiency of the office, the overabundance of paperwork and administration.
But I quit work to take a liberal arts degree. I was interested in discovering what the great thinkers of all time had to say about how to live the "good life." I thought the philosophy dept would answer those types of questions but they were more interested in talking about questions that couldn't be answered and how well you debated and argued. I ended up in the humanites dept where we read lots of classic literature, classic philosophy and newer philosophy of the last 150 years that our philosophy dept didn't really focus on. I guess you could call it in a way a look at the history of ideas.
I guess my view now is that we are socialized to believe that the "good life" is a good career, some fancy toys, a nice house, car, a trophy wife, a dog and 1.5 kids. To that end you see almost everybody in University trying to get an education in order to secure a job. Having had a career type job I know that it is not all that we are led to believe. Sounds like you are starting to realize that. Unless your interests happen to coincide with your job, I think its hard to most of us to say that our career fulfills us. I think for most of us it is our relationships that fulfill us. I think some get great fulfillment out of their jobs but I think those who do have jobs where they help people or create things. Teachers, doctors, counselors, as examples of helpers. Artists of all sorts as creators. Some people want to change the world, some people are content helping a single person. I think the commonality there is that a lot of us want to make some sort of tangible difference in the world, something more than just existing as a small cog in the great capitalist machine that just keeps chugging along. It doesn't help that we are often identified as our function in society, as our job.
What do you do? "I'm a XXXXX". Our identities become closely associated with our jobs similar to how your identity in university may have become closely associated with your major. This can be problematic for anybody who doesn't want their identity to be associated with our jobs. I didn't think of myself of a programmer, and in fact I had issues with a lot of the stereotypes surrounding that identity.
Most of us have different values. At some point most of us realize that we have different opinions from our parents and a lot of society. Despite this we've inherited a bunch of values and opinions from both. Lots of people start off on a career path because their father was a XXXXXX, or because their family encouraged them to head along this or that career path. Unfortunately I think we're being asked to make a choice (at 18 or so, post-high school) where we don't really even know ourselves yet. I think we discover ourselves in our late teens and in our twenties. So how on earth are we supposed to know what kind of job we would like or would fulfill us when we haven't tried most of them out?
Here I am in my late 20's and I'm soon going to be in your position after graduating with my BA. What have I found out about myself? I've discovered through working a variety of jobs and through school that I value certain things and hate doing certain types of jobs. In particular I value creative endeavors like books, movies, etc the products of human society and I value helping others and learning. So I tend to think creating something would satisfy me, or helping others learn would satisfy me. So writing and teaching are two areas I'm interested in.
So I guess my advice is to go out and live and experiment, try a bunch of different jobs, learn a bunch of different things, experience different cultures and ideas. You'll discover yourself, learn about what you value, like and dislike. Based on that you may have a better idea about what would fulfill you.
Hopefully that was on topic.