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.

Smith's discussion resonated with me because I felt that it related a great deal to the idea of splitting and because his assertions make me uncomfortable. I worry that, on the one hand, I came to law school because I hadn't yet discovered my passion and on the other, that if law is my passion, I will make excuses for myself and fail to achieve a great legal career. I can recognize that any interest I have in pursuing a career in a large law firm (a career that Smith would almost certainly consider of the "high work load, high stress, blood sucking, soul destroying" variety) is based on fear - I fear that I will not be able to support myself if I don't work in a large law firm, that I will not be able to provide any financial support to my parents when they retire, that I am not creative or capable enough to strike a balance between "doing good" and "doing well." I can also recognize that these fears are (hopefully) excuses and that by relying on these excuses to hide from work that I might really care about I am in the process of splitting. That I am aware of my fears and that I am hopeful that they are excuses has, to my surprise, made me feel more complacent than motivated. I've begun to convince myself that I have at least accomplished something by becoming conscious of the splitting - that I am taking a step in the right direction and can sit tight for a while. Perhaps this is just another split. Whatever it is, I am not entirely confident about how to proceed from here. I accepted an internship related to women's rights this summer solely because the person who interviewed me was more passionate and animated about her career than any lawyer I had met before. However misguided the reason for my decision might have been (I realize that I cannot merely convert someone else's passion into my own), I think this was my attempt to make sure that my fears really are excuses and to see if I really have what it takes to pursue a great career.

-- ElizabethSullivan - 28 Mar 2012

Elizabeth,

Your post made me remember advice I got from a college professor my junior year. I went into his office to tell him about what I wanted to "be" when I graduated and he told me my focus was misplaced - that I should consider what I want to "do" (accomplish on a day to day basis) as opposed to what I want to "be" (a lawyer, a banker, etc). He said this was the only way to attempt to line up your aspirations with reality.

Smith's thoughts resonate with me because I do value human relationships more than career accomplishments and, in a way, that feels like something you are never supposed to say, excuse or not. I find it interesting that your self-recognition has made you complacent - in what ways? And do you think that it's possible that the patience we need to maintain right now, until we figure out exactly what we'll do at the end of this, may feel like complacency in times of frustration? Can there be an element of wait-and-see or is that laziness?

I also wonder - and this may be tangential to your point but it hit me while I was reading - if law needs to be something we're passionate about in order to make this all worthwhile. Or can law be used as the vehicle by which we "do" what we "do," and can our careers still be great, in serving a separate passion altogether?

-- SherieGertler - 28 Mar 2012