An Ever-Evolving Career Path
Growing up and throughout high school, I changed my desired career path about a dozen times, but I always came back to creative fields. I have always had so many interests that I’d like to pursue, and this made it difficult to make a final decision. I was even slightly jealous of my peers who were set in their career paths. As Pollack states, (page 49, Getting from College to Career), one of the most difficult questions we can ask ourselves is “What do you really want to do?” The answer is hindered by expectations from others and society, the desire to make a certain income, and our own fear of failure.
In my high school, students were made to choose a career path sophomore or junior year and take coordinating classes in order to prepare for college. My indecision stuck again and I split my career path between psychology and visual arts. Moving onto college, I stuck with visual arts and decided to major in graphic design because I felt the most experienced in that. As Pollack goes on to say that (49),action is the most important in deciding which path to take, and I was doing a lot of over-thinking instead of taking action.
After being a design student for a year, I was doing well but I was interested in more than visual arts. I decided to switch to media and communications because it would allow for me to explore more skills and provide me with a broader field of career options. Within MCS, it took me a while to decide what I wanted to do, but I’ve decided I would like to work in social media or marketing. I’m on my second internship in this area and they have both confirmed that I want to pursue this. I love that I can do such a variety of tasks, like designing content, blogging, analyzing web traffic, and more.
Like a lot of college students, there’s stress and anxiety present for me about finding the right job upon graduation. I’ve taken Pollack’s advice to use social media as a tool for identifying where and which jobs I would like to work. (69) By following companies that align with my brand on Twitter and LinkedIn, I can see the culture that they promote and even some specific job listings on occasion. Representing myself professionally on these platforms can also work the other way around, for brands and companies to find me.
Finally, I take comfort in the fact that my career will be an ever-evolving entity. If I don’t take the perfect job right away, I can use the job I do find as an opportunity for growth. As Pollack notes (85), “a job is not a soul mate”, and as long as you find a job working under a good boss, at a company with a good name, doing something you love, you will be in a great place.
