Thanks for this post! I think I would really have benefited from hearing something like this while I was at school / university. There were pretty long holidays during university which I didn’t really use productively. In particular, I think I would have benefited from:
Trying out some pretty different types of things. I was really all in on studying, and didn’t get a sense of what it was like to work at different jobs, and what types of day to day I liked and didn’t like.
Some more sense of urgency. I ended up doing a masters and phd − 10 years in academia—without planning to go into academia long term. I enjoyed it, and maybe I’d have decided to do that anyway. But I was really doing it because in each case it felt like a natural and pleasant step, rather than because it was likely to take me where I ultimately wanted to go.
Practice at putting myself out there. I’m naturally pretty shy and underconfident, so things like reaching out to strangers feels daunting. It’s taken me a while to get to the point where I’m now pretty happy to apply for things or to reach out to strangers to ask for advice. I think I’d have benefited from doing a bunch of this earlier on and realising that actually other people are really happy to help, and that applying for things and being rejected isn’t the end of the world.
Thanks for this post! I think I would really have benefited from hearing something like this while I was at school / university. There were pretty long holidays during university which I didn’t really use productively. In particular, I think I would have benefited from:
Trying out some pretty different types of things. I was really all in on studying, and didn’t get a sense of what it was like to work at different jobs, and what types of day to day I liked and didn’t like.
Some more sense of urgency. I ended up doing a masters and phd − 10 years in academia—without planning to go into academia long term. I enjoyed it, and maybe I’d have decided to do that anyway. But I was really doing it because in each case it felt like a natural and pleasant step, rather than because it was likely to take me where I ultimately wanted to go.
Practice at putting myself out there. I’m naturally pretty shy and underconfident, so things like reaching out to strangers feels daunting. It’s taken me a while to get to the point where I’m now pretty happy to apply for things or to reach out to strangers to ask for advice. I think I’d have benefited from doing a bunch of this earlier on and realising that actually other people are really happy to help, and that applying for things and being rejected isn’t the end of the world.