It may take 20 years to start your vocation
Not that anyone has asked (yet), here's the college graduation speech I'd give today
Good morning students! Congratulations to you and your parents for getting to this auspicious day. And congrats to your livers for surviving your repeated attempts at pickling.
This morning marks an exciting transition for you. Done with your schooling and staring into the grand abyss of adulthood ahead.
What comes next? How will you spend your days?
And like most pressing, what will be the vocation that sees you through the next 40 years?
Some of you think you have that question answered, or at least enough to get your parents off your back, for now.
Some have job offers, some have chosen to delay the inevitable by going to grad school. And certainly some are still in limbo.
Regardless of where you think you are heading, here is the reality:
None of you know what is coming.
Yes, I’m even talking to you pre-meds who have known they wanted to be doctors since the age of 5.
Whatever you think you know about your future will mostly be wrong. Wildly so
And that’s ok.
It’s ok to not know.
It’s ok to think you know and then change your mind.
It’s ok to get fired and do something completely different.
What you need to understand is that it might take you twenty years (or more!) to figure out your life’s work.
No one has been really honest with you about how careers work.
Colleges want you to get a job, any job. It makes for happy parents and helps with rankings. But a job does not make a career.
Going from a job to a satisfying career is a long and winding path.
On this path, you are learning about yourself AND the ever changing job market. New jobs come in and existing ones change.
It may take a lot longer than you think to figure out what you are good at, what you enjoy doing, and what the market is willing to pay you a living wage to do.
If that’s true, if you believe me that this could take awhile, it should change how you think about your path today.
You should feel a lot less pressure and a lot more freedom and openness to the path ahead.
Now, I am not saying you should go be a ski bum for the next 20 years.
You have got hard work to do. And don’t be intimidated by that.
You have more energy and time right now than you will ever have. Don’t believe me? Ask your parents. Don’t believe them? Find a 35-year-old with 2 kids.
In this hard work, it will take time for the right peg to fall into the right hole.
I know this sounds really squishy. You might be asking, how will I know I’m on the right track if it takes this long?
Learning, time, and uncertainty. These are three words you must keep in mind as you go.
First - you have to prioritize learning.
Despite having a lot of formal education, you lack the experience making decisions in the real world, as well as a lot of specific knowledge required by the industry you are entering.
Your first job(s) should allow you to be a sponge. You should be trying to learn as much as possible about what you are seeing and encountering.
One way to accelerate that path is by finding a ‘master.’ A master of their craft - someone truly excellent at what they do.
Nearly everyone I know who had great success in this stage found their way to working with someone whose success they could follow.
There was no awkward ‘will you be my mentor’ conversation. Instead, they found someone whom they respected, who they could work for and was willing to share.
And then what? The young person worked their ass off to create a ton of value for this mentor/master/sage.
If you want to apprentice with the best, make their lives better. Make it worth their time to work with you.
Apprenticeship is a powerful model and you can work your way into it by making yourself indispensable.
Second - Give yourself enough time to get plugged in.
We live in an instantaneous world and you are used to getting things done quickly. You are used to reading a review and buying something perfect for your needs.
Careers do not work like Amazon.
They take time - a slow boil.
I would encourage you to give yourself at least 2 years for any job. I know 2 years - it sounds like forever.
You are leaving a world in which each year has sense of progression.
But what you will see about adulthood - a year is nothing. It passes faster than you ever imagined.
The first year in any job is a crapshoot - you don’t know enough about what you are supposed to be doing to be super effective. Your employer should be investing a lot in getting you up to speed.
You need to give it time to see if you are on the right path.
The second year you will know enough to both contribute, and you will finally be able to perform your job well enough to determine if you enjoy it. As humans, we like doing things we are good at.
Give yourself enough time to get good at your job.
Jumping out of this cycle too early keeps you from seeing if you are on the right path.
This is going to sound depressing - it is ok to walk into a job on Monday morning not sure if you like what you are doing, for a period of time. For a period of time.
Hate your job for a decade, you have a different set of problems. Do this for a year, don’t be too quick to despair.
Finally - be ok with uncertainty.
Careers are not roses every day.
Some times they are great, sometimes they are not. A lot of time you just won’t know.
That’s ok.
You must free yourself of thinking that there is a perfect picture. A future where you have no uncertainty about what you are doing.
That does not exist. The uncertainty is always present because the world is always changing.
Careers are not linear either.
Your life to this point has been one thing sequentially after the next. Your career may have steps forward, it may have steps backward. You may get laid off, you might get fired - none of these things mean you are a bad person.
What you should hopefully see is over time a clear picture emerge of the type of work you enjoy doing and are good at!
You should begin to be a part of an industry that you enjoy talking about.
The content of your job is as important as the tasks you do. This is key - content matters. You should be interested and curious about your day to day.
And guess what, what you become interested in professionally will be something you have never heard of.
Your career counselors probably never told you how excited you will be someday about pool chemicals or restaurant equipment or industrial equipment distribution.
But as insane as that sounds, it probably will be something like that.
The world is made of a million odd niches.
Find yours.
You stand at the beginning of at least a 40 year journey.
That is a long time. You will be working for twice as long as you have been alive to this point.
Turn down your anxiety, be patient, and know it is going to be ok.
Learning, time, and uncertainty.
Focus on learning - find a role where you can begin moving down a path. Ask a lot of questions. And then do what you are asked to do, when you are asked to do it.
Give yourself time - give yourself enough time in each job to figure out if it is a fit.
Uncertainty - Free yourself from thinking that there is a perfect picture.
If you do these three things, I’m confident that at some point in the future, you will have found your way to the right vocation.
Congrats and good luck on the journey ahead.