Career

Aghh the disillusionment phase – almost everyone will experience it at some point in their lives. For most Americans, it is right after college at the start of your first job. It is a time when your expectations of life most distinctly oppose reality. Because I went to grad school immediately after college, I reached this phase two years after most of my friends. While I was still in school I could not relate to the pain they felt in their jobs. Now I can.

By the last semester of my masters degree, I was so ready to get started in life, to contribute to the world and to work that I probably would have left Paris early. Thankfully I wasn’t given the chance! I was sick of doing stupid marketing cases and things that wouldn’t benefit me in the “real world.” I was in for a big shock when I arrived at my first base in September of 2008.

It took about two weeks on the job for me to start asking the same questions all my friends were asking two years earlier.. IS THIS IT?? REALLY? Is this what I have to look forward to for the next 40 years of my life? Showing up everyday to sit behind a computer, putting in my 40 hours/week, taking vacation from time to time… It was depressing. Over the next year and a half, I think I went through every one of the “seven stages of grief.”

I know that everyone’s experience is different. A lucky few are able to start right away in a job they love. Others are thrown into a job that keeps them so busy that they don’t have time to think about whether they love their job or not. I have a good amount of friends that are in this category; they are pilots, bankers and Navy SEALS. They are constantly under stress and from time to time their jobs can be very exciting. However, not many people can maintain a job like this for their entire career, so most will change jobs after 5-10 years.  I guarantee you most of the people in this category will ask themselves at one point or another if what they will take away from the job (whether it be job satisfaction, job experience, or hireability..) outweighs what they put in (i.e. lack of sleep, neglect of family, constant stress..). The rest of us that are currently working fall into the category of “lucky enough to have a job.”  This category can be split up into two groups depending on which generation you fall into. My generation (Generation Y) is accustomed, for the most part, to getting what they want. We are more capable (or think we are) than what the generation before us thinks. The result is that for the first year or two, or five or ten, we are stuck getting coffee and forwarding emails, and copying paper; basically “waiting our turn.” This was the biggest gripe I had. For the first year or so I felt like a colonel stuck in a lieutenant’s body. For some reason I thought I was capable of having a lot more responsibility than I was given. Why? Not entirely sure. I think our society has a way of convincing us that we can be anything we want to be and so whenever we find ourselves in a situation contrary to that belief, we feel RESTLESS.

Those in Generation Y also think differently about work than former generations do. We prefer “to work to live” while our parents “lived to work.” They were thankful for the jobs they had and worked to provide for their families, and provide they did!! Now, most of us in Generation Y are spoiled. We want it all: happiness, choice (where to live, when to work..), and a lot of pay. For some reason we think it’s normal that we should get all of this and we are always reaching for it. The paradox is that those who have “made it”  aren’t happy.  It doesn’t seem logical but focusing on our own happiness does not bring happiness. Chasing happiness is like chasing the wind, but that is for another post..

I believe that there is a middle ground where you can love what you do but still be outward focused. You can find a job that challenges you, let’s you live where you want and lets you maximize your contribution to society. How do we find that? Let’s find out..