Last week I visited a career day held at the Karolinska – I had signed up for a workshop on how to use ResearchResearch to find funding. Once I had dragged myself over to the main campus from our forgotten little corner of the hospital area, I also signed up for a 15 minutes workshop on “Life and Career planning”. I thought it sounded like it could be interesting.
And yes, that workshop was…er…interesting. And somewhat scary. The workshop leader was a recruiter from some fancy firm (now headhunted to an even fancier one, to start next month, she informed us). She was armed with a beautiful suit and a huge lizard smile. Enthusiasm (madness?) was oozing out of every pore. Facing the hard task to try motivating the bunch off stiff and somewhat shocked scientists that was us she gave it all she had got – using large gestures and flashing that reptilian smile in all directions. She made it very clear to us that our lives were going to be revolutionized. The tool for this revolution was the “wheel of life”. This sounded impressive enough but turned out to be a form where you were to fill in how happy you were with the different parts of your life – family, love, health, personal development, money, work, and so on. She told us that we might now discover that all our problems at work were really because of our lousy love life, or failing health. But now worries, she could fix that – or rather, present us with the tools to do it ourselves! We all looked at her in astonishment.
After dutifully filling in that wheel things took a bit of an unexpected turn for our guide (who, to be honest, probably really wanted to help us). It turned out that all of us were actually happy with our jobs, but we all had the one worry – we were about to finish our thesis or post docs and were trying to figure out where to go next. This was not part of the plan for our guide, but she rallied quickly – “Oh, but that is easy! Just figure out what you want to do”!
Ah, right. Easy enough. Maybe I’ll just go to the pub first…
Sounds like a familiar tale. Sometimes these things are good, sometimes you feel like you’re slipping from bemusement to WTF.
Beer always helps, though.
haha, I love it. Oh, but that is easy! Just figure out what you want to do and once you have figured that one out, you just get right on doing that…. right? ;)
I’m sure she was trying to make a good thing happen though. It is sometimes hard to remember, keep the focus on, that you are somewhat in control of your feelings and if you are unhappy in your job there might be something in there to try and change it (or, that sadness in job spills over to family and friends). Then of course, who has time for friends and family when you are absorbed in thesis writing or doing that important post doc?! ^^
Good luck with figuring out what you want to do next and enjying the present!
@ Åsa – Sure, she definitely had a good point that the various aspects of life are mixed together and will influence each other. I think it was mainly the slightly too hysterical delivery of the message that put me off. And then it wasn’t directly addressing our work related issues. Still she is right about one thing – it’s just to figure out what to do! And I’m hopefully almost there. Soon I’ll be getting to the how to do it :)
@ Bob – I agree. Especially with the last bit :)
Many, many years later, I still haven’t figured out what to do. I strongly recommend going to the pub instead.
Anna: It looks very interesting by “The smile of reptile”, ¿At what specie of lizard resemble?.
Yet it must have been bored.
It’s that easy? I will have my dream job tomorrow! :D
I do see her point about unhappiness in one area of life trickling over to other areas though – my whole life was miserable during my miserable PhD :)
@ Ken – Sound advice :)
@Alejandro – What kind of lizard? Hmm, I haven’t thought about that. It sure wasn’t the cute gecko you were discussing over at Henry’s blog some time ago. More something like this:
(from wikipedia )
@Alyssa – That is very true, and I know exactly how you feel – when things have been hard at work I’ve been totally uninterested in other things as well, I just went around feeling depressed all the time. Luckily things usually turned for the better after some time. I really hope I’ll be able to learn to deal with the hard times better and not take every setback so personally, but maybe that’s just me dreaming. I hope you get you dream job really soon!
Anna: She was armed with a beautiful suit and a huge lizard smile I hope you don’t be the fly, would be terrible!
I hope that you go him very well in all your affairs, Anna.
Thanks Alejandro! And no, I’m most definitely not going to be the fly :)
I think the problem lies here:
a 15 minutes workshop
Some years ago I found myself on a three-day residential workshop looking at this kind of area – called Play to Win. It really helped me to appreciate some things about what I wanted in life, and to see that sometimes we frustrate our own wishes by not realising what those wishes are.
Just filling in a form won’t do much – you have to be softened up first and start thinking about all those life/work balance issues.
And it is never easy putting into practice what you learn. It needs great courage sometimes.
‘Life and Career Planning’? Yeeeuch! With a title like that, I doubt I’d have turned up, or stuck around for long, 15 minutes or not. ‘Life is what happens when you’re busy making plans’, isn’t it? (Something like that, anyway.) See you in the pub!
sometimes we frustrate our own wishes by not realising what those wishes are
Absolutely true. I’ve had a period of doubt and confusion and of not being able to sort out what it is that I want – running in several different directions at once. Very frustrating. Now I think I have made up my mind, but still I tend to sign up for this future career things more out of habit than anything else, and then I get annoyed when they are not super good, probably because I don’t really need them right now. And yes, 15 minutes was way too short to really do anything, which was actually the first thing the teacher said, to be fair to her. Still, she was a bit scary, I don’t think I could have taken longer :)
Lee – Yes, I should have seen it coming. Cheers!