http://www.ted.com/talks/larry_smith_why_you_will_fail_to_have_a_great_career
A strangely depressing, yet simultaneously inspirational, funny, and thought-provoking talk. Comes on the heels of a phone interview I'm to partake in slightly over 12 hours.
Obviously his goal is not to crush young peoples' dreams underfoot, but he raised a number of issues that resonated with myself personally. Issues I had been wrestling with since I went into crisis. Issues that I had started trying to reveal/review in an attempt to understand and better myself.
I am afraid, but I should not be. Been insecure since being battered about into a state of professional incoherency.
I think I have a passion, or am starting to identify one. For now, I only vaguely see the future it may take me. I want to make software tools, tools that directly or indirectly aid the progress of science. All I lack now is that clarity of vision and focus to proceed. I want more than anything to make something I would use, and want to use.
I still hang on to Larry's "if only I had" mental object floating in my head. And he's right. It hurts. I wrestle with ejecting this object from my mind, and it is harder than I had imagined.
Well come tomorrow, may my light shine and my doubts and insecurities fade. I am confident and I have high hopes, but I know they often fade (inexplicably) all too easily.
10 comments:
Great careers are not a matter of luck or passion alone. It also has to do with not knowing the consequences of one's actions. I have a friend back from Canada who is always changing jobs as an ESL teacher, who goes to various schools and then leaves it after barely a few months, and the longest place she has been in is Taiwan at the best. I used to tell her quite a number of times that it is a great career ruiner for her to pack her bags and leave using some reasons such as instability (economic) when she is earning money.
By the way, are you struggling with feelings of insecurity? It seems that way from your posts recently. I know that feeling because it was weighing on me back in Australia, and I was so lacking in confidence and felt as if I had taken a big blow to my own sense of purpose and my strengths. Now that I have left it, I feel much better ironically, sleep earlier and in fact told myself not to look back at it. People ask me, "But you left so early after 3 months." But the issue is, do they know me or my situation? I had no job for 3 whole months, and all that I ever get called up for was a few days as a casual replacement for a ESL teacher on holiday, and a job on an ad hoc basis as a promoter of perfumes and fragrances. I was losing the chance to use my passions, and that was when I decided that I had it.
Yah, I have insecurity issues that I wrestle with because I feel shouldn't have to feel that way. It tends to happen whenever I am under high stress. It also happens regardless of whether I do work, or I game. When I encounter individuals under scenarios of high (perceived) expectation or high stress, I get buffeted by emotions of personal insecurity that I then have to keep under control.
Anyway, I got that phone screening done this morning. Could have gone better, but I wouldn't beat myself over the head with it.
The interview should be a good experience whatever it is. I would just move on and then look at other chances too in the interim while waiting.
I assume that if you get the offer, you will be able to get out of Singapore for a while? Look on the bright side of things. As they say, hope for the best, be prepared for the worst.
Yes, and arrange to chart a course that would make the move permanent. It is quite a relief to have the ball off my court.
It certainly wasn't a bad phone screening interview by any standards, I just wished I was less rambly, and recognized the need to focus the discussion on job-fit better. The team lead did hint at it at the beginning, but I caught on too late. Anyway, like I said earlier I'm not going to beat myself on the head for it.
On the flipside, I am planning to state my stand about something. I am continuing the learning of my Korean here at an international school but they told me to redo level 3 with another university textbook, if I pass the placement test, because of the silly reason that university textbooks are different. I am going to argue with them about this, because it is in my character to be honest and make my stand for myself. No way am I going to redo the whole intermediate level from scratch!
By the way, without trying to let in any information about what you went through with the interview, is it for a position in a western country or an Asian country? You know, after having lived in 3 western countries and 2 east Asian countries over the last 10 years, I think that there is absolutely nothing wrong with moving to an Asian country as well, if you find a good job to do and people around you who help build you up as a person.
If this goes through (which is still a whiles yet) it will send me to Berkeley, CA.
In a way, one could accuse me of trying to make my way back to my old comfort zone :).
I have been to Berkeley CA before. The area is a very pleasant area, and as you know, UC Berkeley is a university campus heavily populated by Asians and Middle Easterners of various bents which means a lot of diversity in other words. As for me, I am looking at advertisements now, and as much as I know that it is tough because of the current job market, I am not giving up just like that. The worst thing one can do is to fit in with everyone else's expectations if that is not what you want at all.
Talking about passion, there is one thing which I will be able to tell you more about. I knew somehow that one of my passions is Korean pop culture (and/or Korean culture), and that was why I chose to learn Korean. It is true that Korean pop culture is different from the real culture in the streets of Korea, and somehow during my time in Korea, I dealt with problems of being made not to feel good enough on account of my ethnicity and nationality when it came to being unable to teach or lecture there. Granted that it has nothing to do with the Koreans I knew but the system, I still liked Korea. A friend in Sydney, Australia, tried crushing my dreams without actually knowing that he was doing it, when he said, "I think that your whole interest in Korea is nothing but a fantasy, and that even if you want to do something related to Korean culture, you have to take a long time of retraining to do so." After that, I distanced myself from him consciously, as much as I knew that he meant well, because I felt that he had changed in Australia. Maybe all that sleeping around changed him....talking about sleeping around to get connections to help you...please, it's a rather stupid joke to make even if he is gay.....
You have to know your passion(s). Whatever people say, you shut out their words. There are people who want to cut you down to get you to fit into the mold they have fixed for you, such as my high school frenemies, and there are those who mean well, but do not know everything or enough about you to make good assessments. Even the latter can be disadvantageous to you as a person.
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