The not-so-distant future
I definitely have been less than perfect in terms of updating this week. Even as the internship itself winds down, I’m finding that there haven’t been enough hours in the day to get everything done. This week was also particularly event-packed, which is actually what I wanted to write about today.
After attending Monday’s Career Panel (on careers in international conflict resolution) and Tuesday’s Career Workshop, led by Craig Zelizer, I spent several desperate hours wondering, “what am I going to do with my life?” It’s not a particularly fun conversation to have with yourself. But it’s about time that I did some thinking, especially because one of my original goals for my time working at PON was to get more ideas about possible careers in the field of ADR.
And I was forced to do some thinking during Tuesday’s Career Workshop. The most jarring moment occurred when Craig showed everyone how to do an exercise called Visioning. In a group of three or four, one person would be asked questions about their future plans, such as, “it’s 10 years from now – what are you doing?” So in my group, that person was me, and I found the exercise incredibly challenging, in various ways.
I found it very hard to articulate my plans – not because I don’t have any, but rather because I have never thought about how specifically to word my future goals and dreams. I haven’t had to write about what I want to be (when I grow up!) since elementary school. Most of my conversations with my friends on this subject devolve into commiserations about how scary it is that we’ll be graduating from college soon. The process of having to actually describe my future out loud in the Visioning exercise revealed to me how abstract these ideas still are in my head.
The other scary thing about this exercise was the format. It’s one thing to be able to take the time to write out these types of nebulous plans and vague ideas. But I found that when I was asked questions such as, “what does your business plan look like,” I felt anxious, pressured, and on the spot – and I ended up saying the very first thing that came to mind. And what I said usually wasn’t what my answer would have been if I’d had more time to think.
But oddly enough, after hearing myself describe my future, I felt strangely committed to the answers that I gave. But maybe that was the point of the exercise: to not only force you to articulate your plans, but also make you more open to options that you hadn’t really considered viable.
Either way, the Visioning exercise prompted some serious reflection on my part – and probably about time, too. But for now, I’m going to just go with the flow and continue operating under the illusion that I’m not graduating from college in a year!