From the mind of a serial worry’er

Tis’ the season to graduate! Considering it’s that time of year again where thousands of university students are now graduating from their various programs, I thought this would be a relevant post for those of us looking for the answer to the ever-present question “What’s next?”.

For those heading back to school (Masters, PhD, etc.) you know what’s coming, you’ve done your due diligence in filling out the applications, you’ve done your research and finally made the selection. For the rest of us though the path in front of us can seem more daunting and unknown.

Here is where you can have two outlooks; one can be of fear and dread, and the other can be a restless excitement to jump in and figure it out! The problem is that both of these emotions seem to co-exist, one moment you’ll feel like “you can do this”, and the other will be “omg, time to freak out”. Here’s the fun part, these feelings never really go away, but you learn to cope with them better and they in turn help drive action.

Your career and the work that you will do is so important because it’s what the majority of us will do with 80% of our time. Sayings like; “I pulled a 80 hour week”, or “I can’t go out cause I’m tired” will become common among friends.

However, it’s nothing to worry about because you get to decide what you want to complain about and whether you want to at all! It all starts with realizing that your career is something that can be completely defined by you. It’s your baby, you get to decide;

What clothes you want to buy for him/her (getting work clothes and being fashionable)
What toys he/she deserves (getting a salary bump)
What to do when he/she has a temper tantrum (dealing with conflict)
What food he/she should eat as he/she grows (acquiring new skills)
And the hardest part…How to deal with him/her as he/she gets older (dealing with change)

Our careers are something that we all want to believe will be linear and easy to predict. We’ll join our dream job, start working and climb the ladder to the top. In theory it sounds magnificent but like all things it changes. The underlying reason it changes, is actually because we change!

We grow up, we have new experiences, our ideals and views on the world change, and therefore so does our career, because it’s a part of our very fabric. I could conclude this post with a simple “jump in!” but really you’d be going, so what should I actually do?

Here are some strategies that I’ve found to be very useful in helping me decide where and how I want to “jump in”.

Create a list of strengths; ask yourself honestly, what am I good at? List it.
Create a list of interests; what do you enjoy doing on your spare time, what do you like to read about, what are some topics you could talk endlessly about with a significant other or best friend?
List out courses you enjoyed; we all like to think that school taught us nothing, when really the point of school was to help you learn how to learn. Therefore what are the classes that you actually liked to learn about?
Create a strategy; now that you know what you’re good at, what you like and what you’ve learned about, it’s time to understand how to apply it all. Start hunting for jobs on your local job boards (indeed, monster, school portals etc.)
Be your best self; writing out a resume or preparing for an interview can be so difficult because we often don’t know how to put on paper who our authentic selves really are. It’s tough, nobody said it was easy. The challenge is what makes the goal so rewarding. Fear not, look online for some sample resume templates, ask your friends (they know more than they let on, etc) and try asking your school’s career counselling center (they’re actually useful, who knew?!).
Bring all of you to the interview; congrats on landing the interview, now’s your time to shine. Be You. I won’t go into what makes a great interview (tons of great articles online) but being yourself is likely what will net you that job.

I hope the above tips help you in launching yourself. I know for me just writing this blog post out helped remove some of the anxiety I feel and slows the churning of my stomach. Please feel free to send me a message if you have any questions @ chinmayamadan@gmail.com.