| | 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. | | | This experience helped to shape the contours of my understanding about what is not a 'great' career for me, but I guess my fear now is that I still don't have a sense of exactly what does constitute a great career. Like Elizabeth, I'm hoping that self-awareness (in my case, self-awareness that I seem to know what I_ don't_ want to do, but not exactly what I actually want to do) is a first step to finding a career I really love. But like you, Elizabeth, I'm also not entirely confident about how to proceed from here. I like Smith's idea that the way to do this is to pinpoint my passion from among my interests and pursue it. I suppose I worry about the possibility that my passion (children's rights) won't translate into a 'great' career, or that I'll choose to pursue the wrong option from among the many possible career choices in the field, and end up in a "what-is-life-really-about" stupor despite my best efforts to avoid that. | |
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< | In beginning to think through how to overcome this somewhat paralyzing fear, to continue to try to pursue a 'great' career rather than surrender to excuses for failing to do so, I think that our 1L summers will be a really good starting point and I think that everyone above offers important perspective on how to really make the most of our summer experiences. I totally agree with what Eben has said and Meagan reiterated that this summer should be a time to reflect. Sanjay, I think your point about being receptive to new or different endeavors is critical, because you never know which of those new opportunities could open your eyes to an entirely new passion. Sherie, I think that your point relieved some of my anxiety that going to law school wasn't the best way to strive to "be" something I'm passionate about, or that the summer position I accepted was not the best way to facilitate my pursuit of a 'great' career. When you posed the question as to whether the law can be used as the vehicle by which we "do" what we "do," and whether our careers can still be great in serving a separate passion altogether, it resonated with me because I think the answer is yes - so long as, like Lizzie notes, we have the capacity to see "the essence of the thang" or to recognize injustices when we see it. | >
> | In beginning to think through how to overcome this somewhat paralyzing fear, to continue to try to pursue a 'great' career rather than surrender to excuses for failing to do so, I think that our 1L summers will be a really good starting point and I think that everyone above offers important perspective on how to make the most of our summer experiences. I totally agree with what Eben has said and Meagan reiterated that this summer should be a time to reflect. Sanjay, I think your point about being receptive to new or different endeavors is critical, because you never know which of those new opportunities could open your eyes to an entirely new passion. Sherie, I think that your point relieved some of my anxiety that going to law school wasn't the best way to strive to "be" something I'm passionate about, or that the summer position I accepted was not the best way to facilitate my pursuit of a 'great' career. When you posed the question as to whether the law can be used as the vehicle by which we "do" what we "do," and whether our careers can still be great in serving a separate passion altogether, it resonated with me because I think the answer is yes - so long as, like Lizzie notes, we have the capacity to see "the essence of the thang" and to identify injustice where it exists. | | | Ultimately, as Meagan suggests, the beauty of the law is its malleability in serving as a vehicle to effect change and ameliorate that injustice within many disparate fields. And so this summer, I want to make a conscious effort to focus on how exactly the law can be used as a vehicle to effect change within the field about which I am passionate. Furthermore, I want to make a conscious effort to identify and recognize injustices in that field, and to align my aspirations to alleviate those injustices (what I want to "do") with occupational realities (what I want to "be") in the manner that best allows me to pursue a 'great' career. |
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