Strongly agree with your points, although I also don’t think they’re mutually exclusive to the content of this post.
I think some of the most value I got out of university (and high school, to be honest) was the ability to try out a bunch of things at once with relative ease. I have a lot of interests that change and come and go rather quickly, and in the university setting, it was strangely easy to get involved in whatever new thing that caught my attention, whether via a course, a club, meetings with a professor, an internship, a volunteer opportunity, etc. (Though I attended a small liberal arts college, which might have made this process easier.) I learned a lot about what I like, what I don’t like, what I’m good at and what I suck at a lot more quickly than I think I could outside of university, and I think a lot of this became valuable data for deciding on a career, in addition to opening doors to opportunities.
I think a common mistake I see in university students is thinking “I just want to focus on school” for their first three years, trying to secure an internship during the summer of their junior year, and then hoping that’s sufficient to get them a job. I don’t think this is a great idea. At the same time, I think narrowly focusing on identifying and pursuing a high-income, stable career path (or whatever one’s ideal career plan looks like) carries a lot of risk of burnout, poor performance, and misery if you’re unlucky enough to get it wrong. I think I see more students err in the former direction that the latter though, although I imagine EA students probably have a higher tendency to over-optimize their career path.
I guess I somewhat lucked out in that a) my courseload was light enough that it allowed me to get very involved outside of class, and b) a lot of the things I was excited about were also employable skills. I guess if this isn’t the case for someone, the “seek joy” and “plan your career” might come more into conflict, but that wasn’t my experience.
Strongly agree with your points, although I also don’t think they’re mutually exclusive to the content of this post.
I think some of the most value I got out of university (and high school, to be honest) was the ability to try out a bunch of things at once with relative ease. I have a lot of interests that change and come and go rather quickly, and in the university setting, it was strangely easy to get involved in whatever new thing that caught my attention, whether via a course, a club, meetings with a professor, an internship, a volunteer opportunity, etc. (Though I attended a small liberal arts college, which might have made this process easier.) I learned a lot about what I like, what I don’t like, what I’m good at and what I suck at a lot more quickly than I think I could outside of university, and I think a lot of this became valuable data for deciding on a career, in addition to opening doors to opportunities.
I think a common mistake I see in university students is thinking “I just want to focus on school” for their first three years, trying to secure an internship during the summer of their junior year, and then hoping that’s sufficient to get them a job. I don’t think this is a great idea. At the same time, I think narrowly focusing on identifying and pursuing a high-income, stable career path (or whatever one’s ideal career plan looks like) carries a lot of risk of burnout, poor performance, and misery if you’re unlucky enough to get it wrong. I think I see more students err in the former direction that the latter though, although I imagine EA students probably have a higher tendency to over-optimize their career path.
I guess I somewhat lucked out in that a) my courseload was light enough that it allowed me to get very involved outside of class, and b) a lot of the things I was excited about were also employable skills. I guess if this isn’t the case for someone, the “seek joy” and “plan your career” might come more into conflict, but that wasn’t my experience.