This period of trying to figure out what I am going to do after college is probably the strongest test in employing the concepts I have been writing about, so I thought I’d sit down and see how they applied to each other.
To begin with, let’s talk about the situation. I have decided to forego the sure bet that I had after college, which would be to pursue my PhD. Primarily, I think I decided this because I saw a unique opportunity for myself after I graduate. After carefully checking with different professors and mentors, it became clear that whether I went to get my PhD now, or after a few years, the strength of my candidacy would be the same. So while I was sure that eventually that was what I wanted to do, I did no harm to that plan by putting it on hold for a few years. So, that meant that I could have two to three years to do…whatever I wanted. For my whole life, what I have been doing at the present moment has had a relatively direct impact on my options for the future. My time was always in some respect owed to a future version of myself. My time has always been the currency with which I paid my debt to my future happiness. Yet here were two years that, if I chose to use them, were completely free. Not owed to anyone, or anything. If I could find a way to make it happen, I could do it. I could meditate for two years in Tibet. I could wait tables in Oklahoma. I could hitchhike through Europe working odd jobs in exchange for a place to stay and some food. I could create any adventure I wanted out of these next two years. Yet every opportunity has a price.
The price of options, the price of freedom, is security and certainty. By not going straight to graduate school, I took a chance. I knew how that road would turn out, more or less. I would get in somewhere, and if the advice I was receiving was correct, I probably would get in a lot of somewheres. Yet, I chose to see what I could do with a few free years. And I have no idea how that choice will turn out. As my Mom has pointed out, that choice is certainly something to be proud of in and of itself. I did say, “I will walk the world of real dangers, and real wonders, rather than remain in my cave imagining but never knowing what monsters and angels lurk and soar outside my walls.” I did say that I would be the type of person who is willing to leap when he does not know where he will land. I did say that I was going to see what adventures life has to offer. So, I am being who I want to be, at least in this.
Yet, how I deal with the moment to moment reality of this uncertainty is a different matter entirely. And, I can’t deny that I am frustrated, worried, and even disappointed by the whole process. I have worked very hard to put myself out there in various job markets that I found interesting, with little of that communication coming back. In some ways it is understandable, as I moved away from what I was most qualified to do and tried to compete in pools of people more specialized than I am. But, at the same time, a Stanford degree is supposed to be good for something isn’t it? If a Stanford undergraduate degree can’t even get you talked to, than what’s the point? How am I supposed to create an adventure if nobody will even let me try? Granted, that is the nature of the beast when it comes to looking for a job for most people. I am not sure why I thought that I would have more control over my own destiny in that regard. But still, it is extremely frustrating to be putting out effort for what seems like nothing.
That frustration is compounded by the worry produced by the clicking clock counting down to graduation in all of our (seniors’) heads. For me, it is a bigger worry than for most. I took a chance, and decided to take a leap of faith without much of a safety net. I wanted to create something with these free years, but not creating anything is not really an option. If I don’t figure something out, I don’t have many places I feel completely comfortable going. Sure I have people who will take me in, but it’s not the same as going back to Mom’s. When you do that, you know that your Mom is supposed to be taking care of you, so you don’t feel that bad. Anybody else and you are imposing. So while everybody says this job search thing takes time, it is hard to be patient when I know the consequences to not figuring it out. I don’t really feel like I can give myself the luxury of this not working out.
So, what narrative, what person is it that I wish to be when faced with this type of uncertainty? I definitely will be faced with it again if I continue to take chances rather than lock myself into the limited world of secure choices. At the most basic level, I want to be someone who can go through a situation like this without the angst, but of course the question is how. I think the narrative perspective that it is healthiest to have begins with the understanding that I have made the right choice to take this chance. I will never again be this young, this free, this mobile, this untethered by duty to myself and others. If I went through life and never saw what I could have done with these few years, my life would have been lesser for it. The next step is to acknowledge that not only did I make the right choice, but I am doing the best that I can to make the most of it. I am doing more now than I was a few months ago, but that is only because I have taught myself how to be better. I am learning how to connect with the wide array of opportunities the world has to offer. So, I should see myself not only as a person who has made the right choice, but as a person who is learning how to deal with such a choice, rather than a person who is succeeding or failing at that choice.
How should I approach the rest of this situation? I think I should approach it as someone who is trying to have fun with the process. I am constantly networking and communicating with all the opportunities I come in contact with, so I should have fun with those communications if I am going to be doing them anyways. While it is serious, and there is a lot riding on how the conversation progresses, I can do nothing but be myself while trying to get these companies and whoever else to consider me. And, I am a fun loving person. In order to enjoy the process, though, I must have faith that I will find a way to create something. It may not be the adventure that I had dreamed up before hand, but it will be something. I have set out to create something of these next few years, and I am not sure what it will be yet. But just as when I sit down to write, or go out to play ball, I have faith that whatever comes out of me will be of value. I have made a habit of creating valuable experience with little of objective value. I am creative, and I will find a way to spend my time valuably. Even if it is just traveling the country seeing people I normally wouldn’t have the time to see, and who I might not have as much time to see after I enter grad school. I know that I am a finder of opportunity, and so I can trust that my instincts in that regard will guide me even as I see more traditional routes darken and fade away. In a dark world I am attracted to light, and so I do not have to fear that I will find it.
This is the narrative I must live in. Not the disappointment of not “succeeding” in some traditional sense. Not under the weight of explaining to everyone I know how I didn’t turn a Stanford degree into gold immediately upon graduating. The gold is coming, I already got that. I am trying to do something else, I am trying to find a different sort of gold, a gold that can only be found in the unique conditions right after college. If I am the only one who recognizes what I found, so be it.
And, this is the new process of narrative control at work. It is exciting to me to see how easily narrative, faith, instinct, living without regret, and all the other tenets of my earlier writing come to bear on a situation. I think that when I write essays like “The Foundation” and “Instinctual, Faith-based living”, they seem so abstract as to appear pretentious, even to me. What is the point of all this jabber about perceptual reality, subconscious and conscious thought, the nature of consciousness, and the rest of it? But these thoughts, these innocuously abstract thoughts, build on top of each other to create something simple. Once I understand the terms I wished to think about things in, it is not hard to utilize those terms. This essay was about common feelings, and simple changes in mentality. Yet what makes it profound is that what drives these simple revisions of self is a whole ocean of thought about why such revisions have real and tangible power, and all the various currents I have identified as useful ways to employ such revisions.
This essay even hints at the abstract notion of consciously training yourself to attribute the correct meaning, to create the correct narrative, so that it can be done more instinctually later. I am learning how to deal with profound uncertainty so that I don’t have to think so hard about how to do so in the future, I can just handle it. It is all connected, the abstract and concrete, if you choose to see it. For a little while, I think I was a bit down on my writing just as I was down on the job search. (Weird how our sense of worth is so interconnected on different measuring sticks). I thought it might be too complex to be worthwhile to anyone. But I am realizing that it is the complexity of thought behind the simple answers that gives them credibility. I believe in the process because I have thought about it deeply. I will continue to dig deeper, to search for deeper implications of logic in order to solidify the process even further. You can’t understand how profound an answer is unless you understand how profound the question was that prompted it. Every answer I give from now on, even though it is simple, carries the weight of all the questions that prompted me to answer the question in the way I did. I understand the full weight of my words, and I put this blog up because I want people to understand their full weight as well. I am not really trying to impress people…I just want to be understood.
