I’ve recently had the privilege of speaking on a few panels on the topic of finding meaningful work.  Our audiences were current college students, and I think events such as these really give undergraduates a good feel for the many different, and undoubtably circuitous paths you can take after graduation.  I’ve yet to be on a panel where a participant said that her life ended up exactly as she planned when she was twenty-two.  Nearly everyone reports a wide range of experiences – and jobs – on the way to finding work they feel passionate about. 

For most, life after college is a journey without a clear cut road map, no matter how hard you may try to plot one out.  This is why I get a little concerned when people in their thirties and forties tell college students that their top priority is to figure out who they are and what they love to do.  When undergraduates hear statements like this, they feel pressured to figure everything out right away, when the truth is that it’s impossible.  All of the thoughtful self-assessments and career aptitude and personality tests in the world won’t give current students a crystal ball.  At twenty or twenty-one, there’s just no way to know for sure what you’ll be happy doing for the rest of your life. 

I tell undergraduates that the best thing they can do for themselves when preparing to enter the real world is to make an intelligent first step. After considering the type of work they enjoy doing now, the environment they feel most effective in now, and what they’ve learned in school, they should select a job that will teach them some of the general skills (interpersonal communication, writing, project management, etc.) that they’ll need to be do well on any path they decide to pursue in the future. 

The first job is usually not the be all end all of career satisfaction.  You need to work for a few years, grow into your adult self, maybe even get a few gray hairs, to determine what that is for you.  None of my fellow panelists walked out of the graduation ceremony with a rock solid sense of who they were and what they wanted out of life.  Neither will you, but you will eventually be just as successful, if you are willing to take things one step at a time.