Two quick housekeeping notes before I get going. First, thank you all for wishing me a happy 21st birthday. I’ll have to re-celebrate when I get back in town though :)
Second, apparently facebook has this RSS feed feature, which allows me to directly import whatever I post on my blog to notes automatically. If you were wondering why your newsfeed said “Matt Brown has added 45 new notes” sometime last week, thats why. I’m still playing around with these new features and trying to work out all the bugs. Hopefully, the blog will have pictures up soon.
Now, my original intention was to do this write up of the two big events that have happened in the last week or so...seeing my friend Tony’s Gospel concert, and my 21st birthday. I even had a cool title for it: God, Love and Beer. However, I was having trouble getting some of the timing, and then the laptop I was borrowing ate it.
But thats okay, because finding something else to write about wasn’t hard. A conversation topic has been reoccurring with me and my friends here over the last few days. If you’re an upperclassman in college, I imagine you’ve had it a few times lately as well. It causes worry, anxiety, and is perhaps the second scariest question to somebody of our age (first being “Do you love me?”)
What are we going to do with our lives?
Seriously! In a year or two, we complete our undergraduate education, and most of us have only a vague idea about what the next step in our lives should be. Do we go to law school? Graduate school? Start Working? Holy crap, some of my friends are getting married!!! I can barely hang up curtains and some of my peers are getting married. This terrifies me.
So what am I going to do? Thats a great question. I know that I’m not done going to school, because with only a BA in political science from a state university, I’m looking at being an intern for the rest of my life (which would be pretty short...if I had to intern for another 6 years, you’d be talking me off the top of a building). I know I want to go into policy at some level, because I want to fix some of the glaring problems we have in our society (I think Ralph Waldo Emerson said To know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived --this is to have succeeded. I try to take that to heart)).
But there isn’t a major for “domestic political problems fixing”. What should I actually *do*??
I could do try to become a college professor. The idea of actually wearing one of those tweed jackets with the elbow pads, along with perhaps a bubble pipe, to work every day is pretty exciting to me (actually, I dont need a PhD to do that!). I also love researching, writing, and deciding the academic future of students by pretty arbitrary means.
However, I see one *major* drawback of a life in academia, that I feel like other people often neglect to mention. It isn’t the terrible pay, or the soul-crushing pressure to publish papers. For me, it’s the idea that you could spend your entire life becoming an expert on something, and end up working at a satellite campus of North Dakota State University. You try to surround yourself in culture and books, and you end up in East Jesus Idaho. I don’t know if that’s a risk I’m willing to take.
I could also be a lobbyist. In fact, I’m pretty sure I would actually be really good at this sort of thing. However, being good at that sort of thing also typically means you go to Hell, which I don’t think is worth it.
I could be a member of Congress! Actually....no I couldn’t. Thats like saying I could play point guard in the NBA.
I could be a lawyer, which is sort of the direction I’m leaning right now, after I do Teach for America, because it seems like the safest bet. 75% of the people who are doing policy type work around here are lawyers. The problem, I think, would be finding a way to use my profession to serve other people (being a corporate tax lawyer sounds boring, although I would make gobs of moolah), while still being able to make enough money to not have to eat ramen 3 times a week.
Have you guys figured how what you’re doing yet? How did that process work? Do you have an idea I missed?
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3 comments:
Matt,
Reading this makes me feel so good that I now know what I want to do and where I'm going. :P How I got here? Well...I guess it all starts with being in the shoes that you're in right now. Yet everyone finds the answers to these questions in different ways, so I'm pretty sure telling you how I got here won't help much because I'm pretty sure your path will be different. But I will provide something that can help you in some way. I have two quotes by Gordon B. Hinckley that I've referred back to within my mind time and time again as I went through what you're going through, and that I still reflect upon to this very day. I know you love the words of Gordon B. Hinckley as much as I do, and when I read these quotes, I can almost hear his perennial voice in my mind.
"The course of our lives is seldom determined by great, life-altering decisions. Our direction is often set by the small, day to day choices that chart the track on which we run."
President Gordon B Hinckley
"The major work of the world is not done by geniuses. It is done by ordinary people, with balance in their lives, who have learned to work in an extraordinary manner"
President Gordon B Hinckley
Additionally, I'd have to say that I agree whole heartedly with Patrick on this one. --- "You need to find something, though, that you can [enjoy] and will still allow you to raise a family. Those are the two important parts right there." Make sure you enjoy your work and that you're contributing to the betterment of society (whether that be for many people or for a few).
-Jenaé
Well, look at me. I graduated from college 2 years ago. In that time I have not done one day of work that required a college degree. I keep saying I want to go to graduate school, but I don't know what I want to study, let alone what I would do with it. The only thing I have established for certain is what I don't want to do - coincidentally, the 2 things that I least want to do are the two best things to do with my major.
So look on the bright side. It could be worse. You could be ME.
1. Go to law school with aspirations of public service, so your conscience feels justified.
2. Once you graduate from law school, take a job at a corporate firm. Justify this by deciding that you're going to do this for a couple years to gain experience in the business world, build connections, and most importantly, pay back student loans and build up some savings. Tell yourself that once it comes time for promotion to partner, you'll quit and go into public service or policy, with a nice big resume fully established by that point.
3. Here's the cool part! Once you start spending time at this firm, the myriad evil forces operative at such a place will start to eat away at your soul! So by the time you are scheduled to make your big switch towards a life of serving the greater good, you'll be too used to dinner at Nobu and nice suits to even remember that old idealistic kid version of you. You'll become a partner, and settle into a life of happy soulless materialism. :)
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