How I went from College to Corporate — 1: Navigating the change
“Change alone is eternal, perpetual, and immortal” — these are not my lines, but Arthur Schopenhauer’s.
For me — Writing has always been a form of escape and a means of segue. I still remember sitting on the last bench of the first day of my Engineering Chemistry class, writing a plot that just popped into my mind while the professor was teaching Dalton’s Atomic Theory. I forgot what that plot was about (I ended up selling it for peanuts to someone just because he found the story’s ending exciting and “interesting”), but I’m certain it had an angle of an atom coming to a realization that it can be much more than what it is and becoming a human (basically a satirical F you to Charles Darwin).
Looking back, more than the story, what I see is that on the first day of making that huge leap from school to college — I’m writing a story of an atom (building blocks of matter). Almost as if I am rewriting the story of my life — starting from being an atom — or to be very precise, I’m that atom in the story. Somehow, all of this was an indication for me that I should be ready for the next, and arguably the biggest leap of my life — moving from college to a job!
Like how a battalion is formed before a war, an anxious me took up freelance projects to get a gist of how corporate works. It turned out to be a great decision as with every client I worked with, my etiquette was nurtured — my emails started looking “professional”. With every call I took — I understood the way of building conversation ergo, slowly building my confidence. Not just etiquette and confidence, I learnt time management as well — managing studies and completing such freelance projects was a struggle. I would often remind myself that I was doing myself a favour by going through all this as I was 200% sure that I didn’t want to read Self-help books and waste my time to know how to navigate the change.
By the time I graduated, I had completed plenty of such short stints — my resume started taking shape. It went from me writing “I won 3rd prize in the 3–5 age category Fashion Contest in my apartment” to “Strategizing marketing channels for a lesser known Rock band in a cost-effective manner”. Mind you — I never compromised my studies as well. With this + my academic track record: my interviews were interesting.
If you think having a decorated resume will make an interview easy — let me tell you that it only makes it difficult. Because the person on the other side would be curious to know more about you and would have an ocean of questions to ask. It was in 2020 when I graduated and moved to a full-time job after clearing a 1-hour fun-filled interview. I had little to no break between college and work — I just jumped to a job right after my graduation.
Did my shorter stints help? If so, to what extent did it help? — well, I don’t want to make this a huge word dump, instead more like a story that flows. So it only makes sense for me to save the remaining for another day.
Change gives us two choices — adapt or get trapped — these are not Schopenhauer’s lines, but mine.
For those not aware — I blog on my personal website as well: https://lifein20s.home.blog/
