Jabberwocky
Frumious Bandersnatch
- Joined
- Nov 3, 1999
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This is from an often really good blog, wait but why?
Full article here: https://waitbutwhy.com/2018/04/picking-career.html
I?m just gonna share the subject lines and images. It?s a long entry, so give yourself plenty of time to go through it. It may be my favorite entry Tim has done yet, and I hope you enjoy. How I wish I?d read this when I was in high school or college...
Here is a teaser:
Enjoy! I loved it especially the illustrations. Especially the Yearning Octopus:
Full article here: https://waitbutwhy.com/2018/04/picking-career.html
I?m just gonna share the subject lines and images. It?s a long entry, so give yourself plenty of time to go through it. It may be my favorite entry Tim has done yet, and I hope you enjoy. How I wish I?d read this when I was in high school or college...
Here is a teaser:
Tim | wait but why? said:Your Life Path So Far
For most of us, childhood is kind of like a river, and we?re kind of like tadpoles.
We didn?t choose the river. We just woke up out of nowhere and found ourselves on some path set for us by our parents, by society, and by circumstances. We?re told the rules of the river and the way we should swim and what our goals should be. Our job isn?t to think about our path?it?s to succeed on the path we?ve been placed on, based on the way success has been defined for us.
For many of us?and I suspect for a large portion of Wait But Why readers?our childhood river then feeds into a pond, called college. We may have some say in which particular pond we landed in, but in the end, most college ponds aren?t really that different from one another.
In the pond, we have a bit more breathing room?some leeway to branch out into more specific interests. We start to ponder, looking out at the pond?s shores?out there where the real world starts and where we?ll be spending the rest of our lives. This usually brings some mixed feelings.
And then, 22 years after waking up in a rushing river, we?re kicked out of the pond and told by the world to go make something of our lives.
There are a few problems here. One is that at that moment, you?re kind of skill-less and knowledge-less and a lot of other things-less:
But before you can even address your general uselessness, there?s an even bigger issue?your pre-set path ended. Kids in school are kind of like employees of a company where someone else is the CEO. But no one is the CEO of your life in the real world, or of your career path?except you. And you?ve spent your whole life becoming a pro student, leaving you with zero experience as the CEO of anything. Up to now, you?ve only been in charge of the micro decisions??How do I succeed at my job as a student???and now you?re suddenly holding the keys to the macro cockpit as well, tasked with answering stressful macro questions like ?Who am I?? and ?What are the important things in life?? and ?What are my options for paths and which one should I choose and how do I even make a path?? When we leave school for the last time, the macro guidance we?ve become so accustomed to is suddenly whisked away from us, leaving us standing there holding our respective dicks, with no idea how to do this.
Then time happens. And we end up on a path. And that path becomes our life?s story.
At the end of our life, when we look back at how things went, we can see our life?s path in its entirety, from an aerial view.
When scientists study people on their deathbed and how they feel about their lives, they usually find that many of them feel some serious regrets. I think a lot of those regrets stem from the fact that most of us aren?t really taught about path-making in our childhoods, and most of us also don?t get much better at path-making as adults, which leaves many people looking back on a life path that didn?t really make sense, given who they are and the world they lived in.
So this is a post about path-making. Let?s take a 30-minute pre-deathbed pause to look down at the path we?re on, and ahead at where that path seems to be going, and make sure it makes sense.
Enjoy! I loved it especially the illustrations. Especially the Yearning Octopus: