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TEDTalksWhyYouWillFailToHaveAGreatCareer 5 - 29 Mar 2012 - Main.LizzieGomez
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| | I watched this video yesterday and thought some of you might also find it relevant to our discussions in class about "splitting" specifically and our career goals more generally. The video is a TEDTalk featuring Larry Smith, an economics professor at the University of Waterloo. The goal of his talk is to explain to people who think they are going to have a great career why they are going to utterly fail at doing so (he says that people looking for "good" careers are also going to fail, but that is because good careers have, in large part, disappeared - all that's left are great careers and careers that are "high work load, high stress, blood sucking, soul destroying").
According to Smith, the way to have a great career is to pinpoint our passion from among our interests and pursue it. The reason we are going to fail at achieving great careers is that we constantly make excuses for not pursuing our passions: great careers are just a matter of luck; geniuses pursue great careers but I am not a genius; people who pursue their passions are strange, obsessive, and weird and I am not those things - I am nice and normal person and nice and normal people don't have passion; I value human relationships more than career accomplishments; if I pursue my passion I won't make a lot of money. If we perpetually use our fears as a shield, he says, we will never achieve great careers. Instead, we will wake up one day in what Tharaud describes as a "what-is-life-really-about? stupor" and have to explain to our children, who have come to us to discuss their own passions, that "I had a dream once too, kid, but I was afraid to pursue it." By that point, it's too late. | | | Lastly, I once received advice I liked from a partner at a big law firm with a bad reputation. He told me that I would know I was on the right track with my career when I went into work and continued to learn new things. Once I stopped learning, I would have a job and a reason to do something else.
-- SanjayMurti - 29 Mar 2012 | |
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> | Elizabeth, I wouldn't feel too bad about why your selected your internship. The reason goes to Sanjay's last point, which is closely related to Tharaud's view that true lawyers take the trouble to learn. We know close to nothing about what it is to practice law, so our second* best bet on actually learning something about the law is from someone who is clearly passionate about what she or he does. (*I realize this goes against the whole self reflection alternative) I would have done the same thing if I was in your shoes. I find this is true also because a number of lawyers from across different sectors have told me on separate occasions that they fell into what they were doing. I don't think there should be any shame in that or in not having been born with an innate sense of what one is supposed to do or become. Life wouldn't be called a journey otherwise.
And just to get out a lingering thought in my mind: I concede the view that law may be seen as merely a vehicle to help carry out our "passion." But then, I couple this idea with the understanding that law is a weak form of social control, the importance for us to "take it to the streets," the need for us to see the "essence of the thang," and wonder -- why am I in law school? I think someone in class brought a similar concern about this when discussing the this beautiful aspect of the law. I'm putting together what I feel have been some of the key takeaways about the law, and it seems like all these concepts raise such introspective questions that no sterile classroom setting can really address them. Indeed, it appears that the most productive way of getting closer to where we want to be professionally is to reflect on our own, away from law school, law professors, and even the law. My guess is that this goes to the idea that law school as an institution as become less about teaching us how to see injustices and do justice versus than how to get a job.
-- LizzieGomez - 29 Mar 2012 |
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