or Dealing with misguided expectations
I never knew what I wanted to be when I grew up.
I always had a long list of different jobs I started reciting every time any one would ask me the inevitable questions grown ups ask kids "what do you want to be when you grow up?"
My list of jobs included many unrelated things such as becoming a hairdresser, a dolphin trainer or a ballerina.
I read somewhere that grown ups ask this questions in the hopes of discovering a great answer for themselves. I used to tell this as a joke, but not anymore...
When it was time to choose what to study in college, I remember feeling torn between studying Journalism or Psychology and ended up deciding to go with the first choice, just because it was the option I had been contemplating for longer.
At the end of my first year of college, I decided to do an internship in a newspaper, so that I could try out the reality of being a journalist in a national newspaper. After my month long experience had ended, with quite a few published articles, I was convinced I didn't need to spend 4 more years studying to become a journalist, as I could already do the job.
I started focusing on the other areas my course provided and so began my Passion Hopping.
I felt the pressure to find a Passion.
I would convince myself I had found it.
I would try it out for a couple of months.
I would get the "this isn't it" feeling.
I would hop into the next Passion.
This was the driving force that designed my professional path.
I always felt quite ill adjusted for this, but have recently discovered I'm not the only one "suffering" from this condition. What shocked me the most was finding people at the beginning of their careers also feeling this way: like the idea you had of a certain job isn't the reality of it, or better still, the way you thought you would feel being an architect, for example, isn't the way you feel now that you are one.
There's something missing.
For this issue, I don't have any answers I have only questions:
- is this true of every professional life? Those people who feel they have found their calling and jump out of bed excited to go to work each day, do they experience these frustrations occasionally?
- is this frustration a sign that you should change career paths or just a normal feeling that should be ignored?
I never knew what I wanted to be when I grew up.
I always had a long list of different jobs I started reciting every time any one would ask me the inevitable questions grown ups ask kids "what do you want to be when you grow up?"
My list of jobs included many unrelated things such as becoming a hairdresser, a dolphin trainer or a ballerina.
When it was time to choose what to study in college, I remember feeling torn between studying Journalism or Psychology and ended up deciding to go with the first choice, just because it was the option I had been contemplating for longer.
At the end of my first year of college, I decided to do an internship in a newspaper, so that I could try out the reality of being a journalist in a national newspaper. After my month long experience had ended, with quite a few published articles, I was convinced I didn't need to spend 4 more years studying to become a journalist, as I could already do the job.
I started focusing on the other areas my course provided and so began my Passion Hopping.
I felt the pressure to find a Passion.
I would convince myself I had found it.
I would try it out for a couple of months.
I would get the "this isn't it" feeling.
I would hop into the next Passion.
This was the driving force that designed my professional path.
I always felt quite ill adjusted for this, but have recently discovered I'm not the only one "suffering" from this condition. What shocked me the most was finding people at the beginning of their careers also feeling this way: like the idea you had of a certain job isn't the reality of it, or better still, the way you thought you would feel being an architect, for example, isn't the way you feel now that you are one.
There's something missing.
For this issue, I don't have any answers I have only questions:
- is this true of every professional life? Those people who feel they have found their calling and jump out of bed excited to go to work each day, do they experience these frustrations occasionally?
- is this frustration a sign that you should change career paths or just a normal feeling that should be ignored?
