I’ve never been afraid of asking big questions.
They’re the best way to get to know people—the opposite of Small Talk.
On dates, especially, I’m the girl who asks if you’re closer to your mom or dad, what your sex life is like and who you consider your best friend. Above all, my favorite question to ask is, “What is your biggest fear?
” Some people have a standard canned answer like “spiders.” Others genuinely don’t know. A few will have crazy personal and interesting responses that open another window into their humanness. But I can’t tell you how often I’ve heard the following answer and fought the urge to shake first my head and then their shoulders,“Being stuck at a job that I hate.”
I don’t actually do that, obviously. I smile, cue my internal monologue and delicately sip my beer. Well, here’s to finally putting down the glass and sharing why you shouldn’t be afraid of being stuck at a job you hate.
Picking your first job out of college is probably the scariest of them all. It’s a culmination of everything you’ve been working towards for sixteen years of schooling. And it certainly seems like the spotlight is on, all eyes on you. The most common question college seniors across the country are being asked? “So, what are your plans after graduating?”
Commence panic.
So I get it, truly. I’ve been there. I was a bio major on the pre-med track at U.C. Berkeley. I loved learning about the human body and life cycles and hormones and cascading chain reactions. Not once did I think about switching to anything else. In the majority of my free time, however, I didn’t volunteer at hospitals or tutor chemistry or conduct research. I was never published, and I did help a graduate student with her dissertation, but it was about democratic education. Not exactly scientific. I filled my non-academic time with brand ambassadorships and PR internships. I was involved in student government and a 12-hour dance-a-thon for charity. I was briefly a founding member of an education startup.
And then senior year rolled around. It could’ve been the year I took the MCAT. The year I got my letters of recommendation. The year I spent applying and interviewing for med school. It was none of those things. It was the year I took a leap of faith. The summer before my final fall semester, I started interning remotely for The Feast, a little social innovation startup based in New York City. Their appeal to me was simple but profound. They were a group of incredibly passionate, creative and talented people who thought differently and believed that they could change the world. I was hooked. Upon graduation, I packed two suitcases and moved across the country for my first full-time job.
Now, full-time did not mean steady or stable or 9-to-5. I worked all the time, and there was never a guarantee that I could keep working there the next month. I was an at-will consultant, and I lived with my brother for a while to both save on rent and to have time to find people I actually wanted to live with (sorry Craigslist). I applied to other jobs and interviewed regularly since my situation was reliably precarious. Eventually yearning for solid ground and a change in scenery, I left for my current company, a little boutique ad agency called FLY.
All in all, I’ve been so fortunate. I’ve held two jobs out of college that I’ve absolutely loved. But I didn’t get here by following a perfectly ironed and starched plan. I didn’t get here by listening to anyone but myself. I didn’t get here by letting fear dictate any decision. And I certainly didn’t get here by worrying about being stuck at a job that I hate. Why focus your precious energy worrying when you can better spend it dreaming of what’s possible? We aren’t supposed to have it all figured out in our twenties. But we are supposed to live intentionally. We’re supposed to make good use of the privilege we’ve been given. We’re supposed to be brave enough and smart enough to know that if we truly hate a job we’re at, we can leave. We can change our minds. We have agency.
Yes, we need to support ourselves. Yes, we want to make our parents proud. And yes, we eventually might crave some serious stability. But we’ll get there. And in the meantime, we can’t indulge ourselves in fear or complaint. Instead, we should know how lucky we truly are to be able to chase our dreams. Dreams, plural. We can have as many as we want because life is long and we’re in the driver’s seat.
Feature Photo via Capitol Standard