Stop the Brain Drain

This article from the LA Times speaks for itself!!! Check it out:

"Getting brilliant students to seek jobs beyond Wall Street"

The financial industry has long concentrated its search for new blood on the well-manicured campuses of America's elite universities. But that pipeline to talent is facing some push-back.

From Pawn to Player

While visiting friends in DC over Labor Day weekend, I spent a lot of time conversing about the disappointing state of our country, and the vast potential that CMU students seem to have to create positive change. At a party at his apartment, Brad Hall (Mechanical Engineer, 2010) mentioned to me his feeling that Carnegie Mellon should focus on how we can best prepare students to create jobs (rather than to get hired within an existing system/company). I thought this was wonderfully articulate and timely, and asked him if he wanted to write a blog post about this. We decided to write one together – it’s a dialogue. Enjoy, and please leave a comment with your thoughts!

* * * * *

Erica,

Carnegie Mellon is a place where people are given the opportunity to do what they want. It has been, for me, the perfect storm of freedom and opportunity. However, these gifts come with the ever-calling need to be exercised. The only true mistake one can make at CMU is to not explore the freedom and responsibility to make new, to become new, to embrace new. Everything else is second to that.

One surprising discrepancy is that CMU is touted as being a school where you go to get a great job. First of all, the meaning of greatness has a very limited scope if it can be achieved by obtaining steady and high paying employment. Second, why is it that all of our training asks us to build, discover, and create, yet we are satisfied with being an addition to someone else's pre-existing creation? My whole college experience was a trial meant to teach me to trust myself to have the foresight to recognize opportunities, and the boldness to seize them. In an absence of that opportunity, I have been trained to make my own. That is the result of a CMU education.

So why are we content with the moniker of being a school that gets you a great job? Shouldn't we strive to be the school where we create new jobs, new industries, and new value to the world? Our education expects us to be the job creators, not job consumers.

To be clear, I am currently employed by an engineering consulting company, and I am very honored by and thankful for that employment. If you, unlike so many of our peers, are also employed, you should count yourself lucky. However, if you are also like me, and are searching for the means to follow a passion or dream, you and I need to realize that dream jobs are not found, dream jobs are created. Created by you and me; created out of passion and desire.

Our education gives us the training required to make a passion into a career: the ability to forge the new from thin air. Boldness is the only additional ingredient required.

Be bold.

Brad,

Amen! I agree with you on all counts, and perhaps your vision is, in fact, within the realm of possibility in the not-so-distant future. I feel incredibly fortunate to have had a Carnegie Mellon education that has provided me the tools to create a life for myself, rather than to be a victim of circumstance (and a depleted job market). But I am also really lucky in that I have a safety net to fall back upon in the case that my boldness cannot immediately provide me with the resources to be financially independent, just yet. I have no loans to pay, and my parents are supportive of my idealistic desire to make the world a better place, even if that means I’m borrowing money from them until I can support myself.

That said, I am also aware that not everyone has this safety net, and that a lot of people can’t afford to spend time after graduation creating a job for themselves. By and large, we don’t have (or make) the time to think about how we might best apply our skills and interests toward bettering our community, our country, our environment, and our world. And so what ends up happening is that we float from one system (the educational system) to another (the occupational) as a pawn in a very large game of chess, in which we are not in control of our next move, our path, or our final destination.

If we were to transition from the pawn to the player, we would gain a big-picture perspective on the current state of the board, and perhaps be able to develop a better sense of how we want to play the game. Or maybe, we’ll decide to play another game altogether. How would we go about doing this? Conceivably, Carnegie Mellon could encourage entrepreneurism (and it does, through the Kaplan Fund), and the Career Center could help connect students to each other who are passionate about similar causes, and might want to work together to bring something new into the world. What else?

My other thought, to play devil’s advocate, is that there is something to be said about changing the system from within. The current systems we are working with (political, agricultural, education, economic) are lumbering giants deeply rooted in our way of life, and a small non-profit organization does not have the resources to pick a fight. A lot can be done by CMU graduates who work for corporations within these systems if they are willing to share their CMU spirit and challenge the way things are currently done.

Erica,

The analogy is perfect: going from being the pawn to the player. How does that look from a community perspective?

First, I think it takes more recognition and encouragement of our already existing entrepreneurial enterprises. As people start to venture out to make their own changes, we need to recognize them, support them, and give them the resources to continue on their way. Carnegie Mellon is already making huge strides and deserves a lot of credit. The culture needs to shift from the worship of large industrial companies and job fairs that serve the mass and more towards a culture of design which serves the individual. The questions we should ask students should start with their goals, and move towards the practical. What do you want to accomplish? What path do you envision to get there? What skills and assets do you have that will help you on the path? What ones do you need to learn/acquire/collaborate with? Where will you acquire capital? Who is your target market?

I think CMU is doing a better and better job of asking these questions.

The second part, is instilling confidence. Even with all of the help and support and recognition CMU can give to its young entrepreneurs, they must still thrive in the free market. That means finding space for your work, finding people who want it, and finding a way to make a profit off of what the work is worth in the free market. That is no simple task. So help can go a long way, but in the end it's up to the individual, or the group, to make it on their own. I think of the academic model at CMU. Difficult classes, challenging tests. The student must, in the end, face these challenges alone. The hidden part is all of the resources that are at a students disposal to accomplish and achieve through the academic rigor. And I think that is what it really means to survive in the free market. The path is difficult, and you have to walk it. But if you have the intelligence to look around you, there are tons of things that can help you achieve your goals. It's a combination of knowing your own abilities, and knowing you have can find help when you need it.

That should be the thing a student walks out of CMU with. A job is great, but self-confidence is infinitely more valuable.

Summertiiiiiime

In late February, it occurred to me that if none of my job applications were to prove fruitful, it would help my cause to find something totally kickass to do for the summer.

For me, summer has always been a time to explore: the world, my interests, myself. In the summer after my freshman year, I biked from Florida to California with an organization called Bike & Build, raising money and awareness for the affordable housing cause and building homes with Habitat chapters in different towns along our route. After sophomore year, I worked in a Microbiology lab at Montana State University in Bozeman, studying water contamination on the nearby Crow Reservation, and then traveled to Ecuador with Engineers Without Borders. After junior year, I had the opportunity to backpack in Chile and Bolivia with my first friend ever (we met when I was one week old, and she was two weeks old) and then worked in NYC for the Department of Parks & Recreation, designing rain gardens for city parks. While some were more transformative than others, these experiences have helped to clarify the things that I care about, and to formulate my personal and professional goals. If nothing else, I hoped that the summer after my graduation would direct me in a similar way.

So, in thinking about how I might like to spend the summer, I reflected on an experience I had during high school. For three weeks during the summer after 10th grade, I was a participant on a community service trip to the San Blas Islands of Panama, where we worked with the Kuna Indians to build a school out of local materials. The experience I had with The Road Less Traveled is etched in my mind as the one that sparked my interest in poverty-related issues overseas, and I thought that maybe, I could spend the summer igniting that same interest in the souls of other 16 year olds.

With this thought in mind, I applied to be a leader with the Road Less Traveled. The application, itself, took me almost a month to fill out, as I spent an obsessive amount of time answering 13 short answer questions. In five single-spaced pages, I described my energy level, my experience working with teenagers, my strengths and areas needing improvement, and my experiences traveling and working with indigenous communities.

To give you a sense of what I wrote, this was my response to a question on why I was interested in the position: "To me, the most appealing aspect of being a leader on a Road Less Traveled trip is the opportunity to engage interested and like-minded students in an on-going dialogue about the importance and complexity of service and inter-cultural interaction. I look forward to the chance to inspire young people to continue to lead lives of public service, with the understanding that a well-informed diagnosis of existing problems (within our own communities and elsewhere) is key to implementing sustainable and appropriate solutions. Additionally, I am excited to travel to places I have never been before, to think on my feet when conflicts or unexpected events arise (because I know they will), and to create a warm and welcoming environment for the students, so that they are challenged, and pushed beyond their comfort zones, but never feel unsafe." As you can probably tell, I was thoroughly excited about this opportunity!

About a week after submitting my application, I had a really fun interview with the logistics director at RLT, in which we talked about my interest in the position, my values, my hobbies, ability to improvise, and how I would handle various social situations. What would I do if I found out kids were drinking alcohol on the trip, or having exclusive romantic relationships? The interview was nothing like anything I had ever done before - it was a challenging conversation in which I openly and honestly shared myself, my beliefs, and my experiences. And two weeks later, I was hired to lead one trip in Ecuador, and one in Colorado! What an incredible sense of relief I felt to know that I had a plan for my life after graduation, and with the big day just two months away, I felt like I could relax and breathe for a second.

Interestingly, it wasn't until I arrived at staff training and was surrounded by 46 other leaders - likeminded in their passions and love for adventure - that I felt completely comfortable with my summer job. While my classmates seemed to be headed for the corporate world, I was preparing to sleep in a tent in the mountains of Ecuador and work with teenagers, and build bathrooms and paint educational murals at a small school. And when professors asked about my post-graduation plans, part of me felt proud and excited, and part of me felt embarrassed. What would they think of me if I spent four years getting an engineering degree from Carnegie Mellon only to spend the summer working as a camp counselor? There was no way, I felt, that I could relay to them how my experience in Panama had shaped my life, and how meaningful I anticipated this summer being. I see, now, that the reason I didn't feel I could convince the world (friends, professors, strangers) that what I was doing was legitimate was because I couldn't convince myself. I was not totally sure that this was the absolute best use of my time, and I wondered whether I wasn't setting the bar high enough for myself to do something great.

I graduated from college on May 15th, and two weeks later, packed my red Osprey backpack (love that thing), and headed West to Colorado to take a Wilderness First Responder course (required for my job). There, I spent ten days getting to know a group of people passionate about adventuring in the great outdoors and sharing these experiences with others. We learned how to deal with altitude sickness, hypothermia, and heat shock, to fractures, dislocations, wounds, infections, burns, head injuries, chest injuries, lung injuries, seizures, asthma, strokes, and heart attacks... and that was just our trauma unit! Our medical unit covered mental health issues, abdominal pain, diabetes, asthma - to name a few. After the WFR course, I headed down to meet the rest of the leaders working for the Road Less Traveled (RLT). Staff training was absolutely amazing!! It was incredible to be surrounded by so many energetic, fun-loving individuals who all, in their own way, are eager to explore, learn, and contribute something meaningful to their communities. I felt I had truly met my people

In Ecuador and Colorado, I learned to balance the responsibility of taking care of a large group of teenagers with taking care of myself, understanding that my ability to do one was inextricably linked to my ability to do the other. During these trips, I worked 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, earning a whopping $2.08/hr, and had some of the most beautiful, challenging, peaceful and rewarding experiences - exploring new places with new people who soon became family, and exploring myself. I wrote more in my journal this summer than I had written in the past two years combined, and came back to New York at the end of the summer feeling like I had achieved a sense of clarity about my next step. I realized, also, that life (and my life's work) is about the journey, not the final destination - about the process, not the product. i am slowly putting the pieces together, making personal connections, learning new things, experiencing new places... and for now, that's valuable.

I Love This.

Just Apply, Already! And Also, More Confusion.

In the midst of all of this internal dialogue, confusion, and self-doubt, I applied for a bunch of jobs. On the Google homepage, I entered every permutation of the following keywords: water, environment, teaching, education, food, agriculture, policy, engineering, recent college graduate, unconventional, bicycle, non-profit, foundation, development, sanitation, public health, alternative energy, international, farming, organic, … you get the idea! I searched job-posting websites like environmentaljobs.com and read career blogs that featured a new, interesting job listing everyday. I tore out Outside magazine’s feature on the Top 50 Places to Work, watched TED talks to learn about interesting organizations, searched Idealist.org regularly, and filtered through career center websites at universities that promote opportunities in the non-profit world.

Here is a sampling of some of the jobs I applied to, people I emailed, and organizations I contacted:

(1) Nuru – non-profit that does development projects in Africa

(2) World Bicycle Relief – non-profit that hooks kids in Africa up with indestructible bicycles so that they can ride to and from school everyday

(3) Oxfam – non-profit working to find solutions to international poverty and injustice

(4) Water for People – non-profit based in Denver that designs and implements drinking water projects in developing countries

(5) The Green School – international school in Bali, Indonesia (constructed out of bamboo) that emphasizes holistic education

(6) Bicycle City – develops cities for people, not for cars. There’s one currently under construction in South Carolina.

(7) Mark Bittman – NY Times columnist who promotes health and sustainability in America through the lens of food and agriculture. (I sent him a few emails, to no avail.)

(8) National Geographic – one of the world’s largest scientific and educational organizations, promoting environmental and historical conservation and world culture through photography, journalism, travel, etc.

(9) World Resources Institute – independent, non-partisan, environmental think tank

(10) PEW Center for Global Climate Chance – think tank focusing on climate change

The list goes on. For the hell of it, and also because I thought it’d be awesome to learn how to farm, I applied for a job as garden staff at Blackberry Farms in Tennessee. I applied for the Global Health Corps to work with a public health non-profit in Africa. I applied to work for Conservacion Patagonica to help construct a National Park in Patagonia, and to the Oliverian School in New Hampshire – an alternative boarding school (located on a farm) for kids needing a different kind of educational environment. I applied to be a water engineer/scientist at Oklahoma University, and when I decided I might need to be more open-minded, I even applied to work at CH2MHill – a civil engineering company.

Throughout this process, I struggled to feel as if I had any sort of direction at all. I needed more experience to know what I wanted to do, and until then, I was just throwing darts at a board encompassing all of my potential interests, hoping that one or two would stick.

With graduation soon approaching, I had received no response from most (if not all) of the places I applied to work. This was quite frustrating – did they forget that there was a human being with feelings and a timeline on the other side of that email application? My most disappointing experience was with the World Resources Institute, where I had applied on April 6^th for a fall internship. I sent personalized emails to the HR director, and asked a family friend if he would send an email on my behalf to a man he had worked with in the past who was now on the Board of Directors at WRI. I called and left voicemails for the HR director, and went down to DC to personally drop off my resume and cover letter. Even if I were completely under-qualified (I don’t think I was) for the position, I would have appreciated an email saying “Sorry, you’re not who we are looking for.” Is that so unreasonable? Is that too much to ask for?

There were moments when I definitely felt hopeless. Someone, please, explain how a graduate of Carnegie Mellon University could have so much trouble landing a job I’m excited about? Or feel so lost in this entire process? Was it naïve of me to venture out onto this unconventional path? Some of my friends were having success finding jobs at engineering companies – is this something I should reconsider?

* * * * *

On May 4^th, I wrote the following journal entry:

I don’t know if I have ever felt in such a state of emotional flux as I do now. I keep going back and forth between feelings of happiness and excitement (which I have taken to be my normal self) and feelings of confusion, sadness and uncertainty. And I haven’t given myself enough time and space to sort through all of these feelings and understand where they are all coming from.

Firstly, I feel bittersweet about graduating from college, and beginning the next chapter of my life. I have grown so much in the past four years and I feel ready to take that jump into the “real world” (I hate that term), but the fact that I do not know where I will be or what I will be doing after I graduate makes it difficult for me to get excited about the next step. As I feel myself before more detached from my CMU community, I do not yet have a sense that I will land on 2 feet when it comes time for me to say goodbye to this part of my life.

Secondly, I am still very overwhelmed by the shear number of paths I might embark upon, and also concerned about the seeming elusiveness of all of the opportunities that I have tried, unsuccessfully, to reach out and grab. I could literally do whatever I want next year, and the infinite possibility has almost paralyzed me in a state of fear. What is worse is that I am so busy listening to other people’s suggestions that I haven’t really taken the time to sort through my own thoughts. For example, I applied to work at the World Resources Institute, and since then, got myself all excited about living and working in DC… but is that really what I want? To live in a city and work in an office building where people go outside for cigarette breaks and sit and a desk for 8 hours a day and wear nice, business attire?

One of the things I have learned about myself is that I can make myself happy wherever I am. Yes, I would love to live in a place where I can ride my bike everywhere and play outside in the mountains and breathe fresh air, but if that fantasy doesn’t becomes a reality for me next year, I know I will be able to supplement my experience with the things I need to make my life feel complete, whether it be weekend trips, yoga, etc. But why am I thinking about supplementing a life with things to try to make an okay situation better, when I’m not even tied down to an okay situation in the first place? Why don’t I just aim for a great situation! Okay, so what would this look like? What are my preferences?

Based on my preferences, I guess I should just keep opening doors that will lead me in this general direction, and eventually something will work out, right? But what if I continue to get no response? Where would I go and what would I do, if I have decided that I don’t want to go back to New York? Point to a place on the map, and move there? How far away do I want to go? Do I want to stay in the US? Do I want to stay close to my friends and family?

* * * * *

You can imagine just how confused I was feeling! I will tell you that this story has a happy ending (for now)… and I can say this because it is now September 1^st, and I have had a great summer and I have a job that I am really excited about. But, I will save those stories for a later entry.

200 Days

Hello, again! I have just discovered that it has been exactly 200 days since I last posted. Occasionally, during these past 6 months and 19 days, something noteworthy would take place, or I would come to a realization of some sort, and I would consider writing about it to you all. But for one reason or another I would decide not to, and then I’d continue going about my day.

Sometimes I wonder if it is narcissistic to have a blog (is it of any use to anyone besides me?), but today I have convinced myself that it is worthwhile enough to be revived. And, consequently, today I am also wishing that I had a super power that enabled me to take snapshots of my mind whenever something noteworthy was taking place, or immediately following a realization relevant to this blog. I imagine those snapshots being “data photographs” that would make today’s revival so much easier! How cool would it be if I could simply download all of those snapshots onto my computer, and so instead of sitting here trying to recall all of the things I had, at one point or another, wanted to write to you all, I could double click and voila, remember everything and type madly away! Or better yet, I could just upload all of the photographs directly to the blog.

But this is not the way life works! And so, I will try to remember all of those snapshot moments, and begin transcribing them from pixels to words.

On your marks… get set… GO!

What I Do ≠ Who I Am

February feels like spring – like a new beginning, because I think my breakdown (refer to previous blog post) might have sparked the beginning of a new perspective.

I left Pittsburgh for winter break on this self-prescribed mission to connect with myself, and figure out what I want to do next year. Time alone for personal reflection sounded exactly like what I needed to figure myself out… but in all honesty, I think I ended up feeling more lost and more confused than when I started the process. So, in the midst of my confusion, I found it cathartic to vomit my feelings all over my blog. And in the following couple of weeks, a series of conversations and events occurred (oh, the universe!) that have channeled my thoughts in a bit of a different direction. So, let me tell you what happened:

When I first got back to Pittsburgh, my friend and I went to eat gyros (my first experience eating at the CMU trucks, something I felt I needed to do before graduating), and he mentioned that he had read my latest post. Oh god, I thought. I was still feeling self-conscious about my public display of self-doubt, and after clicking “Publish Post,” I almost wished I hadn’t... But I did, and there was no going back, so I said, “Oh yeah, what did you think?” And he said something to the effect of, “Labels are the problem”. I thought about this for a moment, and he continued, “I really hate when people say they’re a vegetarian. No! You eat a vegetarian diet.” I could see where he was going… “I study materials science and engineering, I’m not a material scientist.” Maybe this distinction seems obvious, but it felt great to hear someone articulate this idea out loud. Maybe this societal tendency to tag ourselves with label upon label upon label (I’m an engineer, I’m straight, I’m a Jew, I’m a Mac person) – to define ourselves by the things we do, or the things we believe, or the things we like – is at the root of my self-doubt.

If I am what I do (or believe, or like, or…), then what happens when I wake up one day and decide, “Actually, I don’t really know if I am passionate about civil engineering.” Such a thought would have the result of effectively stripping me of a concrete definition of myself. And then, completely naked, I’m left to wonder: “OMG, Who am I?! I don’t even know anymore!” The funny thing is that, regardless of what I am studying in school, or what I want to do with my life, I am and always will be ME: Erica Spiritos… which leads me to the second in this series of events.

The other day I was fiddling around on Facebook, and a little chat window popped up on my screen – a friend from high school who I hadn’t spoken to in four years wanted to say that he had read my latest blog post, and was grappling with some of the same questions. (As a side note, I think if we allowed ourselves more opportunities to have these kinds of discussions, I/we might not feel so alone. In fact, I’ve started to realize that most people are dealing with these issues). So anyway, we started talking about how so often, we feel defined by our major or our job. At school, for example, “What’s your major?” always seems to be one of the first questions asked in a conversation with a new acquaintance. And in a lot of ways, this piece of information is revealing: our major dictates how we spend our day (which classes we take), the people with whom we spend it (other kids in our department), what we think about (issues relevant to our field of study) and possibly what we hope to do in the future (typical career paths).

All of these things are consuming, and so they are easy to mistake as defining. But maybe they’re not. Maybe this whole concept of ‘who we are’ is the root of our tree, and ‘what we do’ is just one branch, one manifestation of who we are – but not who we are. What lies above the surface (the tree and all its foliage and flower) is what we present of ourselves to the world: what we do, what we eat, how we dress, with whom we interact. Underground, the roots are tangled and complex, just like this elusive definition of self. They are messy, but they are what allow the tree to stand strong and tall during stormy weather. Okay, I know I am being a total hippie, but it makes sense in my head: everything (the roots and the tree; who we are and what we do) is connected, but in order to feel complete, we have to grow down into the Earth as much as we need to reach toward the sky.

Dear God, It’s Me Erica.

I feel, and fear, I have reached a bit of a standstill in my Innernet Search, and in my ability to turn my personal goals that float in and out of focus inside my head into something REAL. I fear I’m hiding behind “I don’t know again” – telling myself I don’t know what I want, or how to find it and go after it. Part of me thinks this is an excuse, and yet part of me really thinks that this is the truth.

In all honesty, I feel like I’ve been running on autopilot for four years –going through the motions of college life. I arrived at Carnegie Mellon four years ago already having selected a major!! This sounds totally ludicrous to me in retrospect, but it is completely 100% normal at this school. I became a Civil Engineer, I think because other people suggested that I might be good at it, or that I might like it. My dad is a Civil Engineer, and some part of me probably wanted to gain his approval. All of the other reasons I mentioned in my first blog entry are true, but just not the whole truth. In four years, I never strayed. Not even once, to see if maybe I would prefer something else, and now in January of my senior year, I don’t feel like a Civil Engineer, and I don’t really feel like much of anything.

I get that this is a self-deprecating thing to say, and maybe it’s not entirely true and I am just being hormonal right now. But the funny thing is that I feel a bit like a broken record when a new acquaintance asks me what I study – is it really Civil Engineering? Or is that just the department in which I took the most classes because at 18, I had no f*ing clue what else to do? Last night at 1am, I was filling out a profile for myself for a Newsweek Women’s Leadership conference that I was nominated to attend in New York this weekend, and I was asked, in 250 words, to explain my vision of a better world 30 years from now. I feel like I have answered some version of this question eighty-two times: in my Truman and Udall Scholarship applications, in interviews, at other conferences I’ve attended. At this point, I hardly have to stop and think about the answer because I can so easily just write what I’ve been writing for the past few years. Write about the environment. Write about sustainable development. Write about water. These are things I care about, but I am starting to feel that at 21, I have already put myself into a BOX!!

I have always had long, flowing hair that everyone loved. People said, wow, Erica has such great hair. It was always about the hair, and in my freshman year of college, I was so SICK of being defined by my hair that I chopped it all off. That is what I feel like now. I feel like I’ve been packaged to fit nicely on a one-page resume, and sometimes (like right now) all I want to do is just say, screw it! I’m shaving my head. I’m starting over. I AM GOING TO UN-PACKAGE AND UN-EDUCATE AND DECONSTRUCT MYSELF, AND FIGURE OUT WHO I REALLY AM.

But for some reason it’s not that easy to undo 16 years of schooling in which I’ve followed a structure that has brought me to the place I am at right now. Is it reasonable or responsible for me to start questioning every single thing that I thought I cared about? I feel I’ve gotten so good at doing what other people suggested that I do: apply for this scholarship, apply for that summer program, send that extra email, don’t you really want it? Maybe I want it. Maybe I’m tired of applying for external approval and recognition for things I may or may not love, for things that may or may not be true to ME.

I’ve felt lost before. And in these times, I have friends and family who try to “get me back on track” and remind me of the things that I care about (or the things I’ve said I cared about). Don’t worry, you’ll figure it out… you always figure it out and you always do something great. Talk about pressure.

I guess what I’m saying is that I really want to stop asking people, and listening to people about what I should do. I want to stop reading self-help books about other people who have figured it out. I want to stop applying for things because the opportunity showed up in my Inbox, and it matches all the other things I’ve done before so why not.

Over break, I had many, many, many conversations with my sister Hillary (currently a freshman at Duke) about her path. She was afraid that she did not have a clear path, worried about not having picked (like a flower) a major, and she wanted to make sure that she selected a set of classes for her spring semester that were really representative of the things she is interested in. My initial reaction was to say that the classes one takes in his or her freshman year of college don’t really matter so much, and so there’s no need to stress about creating the perfect schedule. But I realize now that it’s not about classes. It’s about striking a balance between who one is as a person, and what is expected of members of a college community. Sometimes it’s so difficult (at least for me) to shut myself off from all of the voices that constantly surround me, and play over and over in my head about what I should do. I practice yoga so that I can learn to find my own voice amongst all the others, but I’m not quite at that point where the volume of my soul is loud enough for me to hear over all the noise.

I don’t necessarily want to “tie up” this entry with a nice little bow, because that is exactly what I am trying not to do with myself. So, I’m just going to leave you with those thoughts…

Let Go

Today's post is a guest entry, written by my friend and classmate at Carnegie Mellon, Anna Lenhart. Anna is a senior in Civil Engineering and Engineering and Public Policy, and is looking to leave her mark on this planet. Read on...

Our generation of achievers was raised with a “do, do, do, network, search, apply” mentality that is incredibly difficult to let go of. To some, the thought of not worrying about next year is absurd, but the funny thing is that when we stop worrying about tomorrow, we begin to connect to and understand the experience we are in today.

February of my junior year, a culmination of illness and apathy for schoolwork encouraged me to take a leave of absence from school. I realized that I could return to my hometown and pick-up a part time job, but that wasn’t the break I was looking for. I wanted to feel alive again. I wanted to feel connected. I had no degree and little experience outside of academia, so for me it wasn’t about figuring out what I wanted to do for a year, it was about finding something to keep me alive for a year – emotionally and physically (providing enough money to put food on my plate). I had met some Americorps VISTAs over spring break and decided to apply to the program.

When I began the Americorps application process, I was looking for some kind of environmental activist organization that would provide me with experience for my Environmental Engineering, Engineering and Public Policy resume. Understanding that the west coast is on the forefront of environmental activism, I applied to every VISTA position that seemed somewhat fitting to my skill set.

As you can imagine, I was surprised when I received a call from Shakti Rising, a social change organization in San Diego that empowers young women and girls often recovering from co-existing illnesses such as addiction, depression and eating disorders, in reference to an RD position. When I submitted my application to Shakti Rising I thought RD meant Research and Development, a position that would be well suited for someone with my level of research experience… It meant Resource Development.

In that interview I learned more about this life-saving organization, and after a second interview (despite my lack of fundraising experience) Shakti Rising decided to offer me the position. At the same time, the 4-H state office in Vermont offered me a VISTA position as an agricultural/environmental engineering instructor – the kind of position that would be perfect on my resume.

The decision preoccupied my mind for a week, and on the day I was supposed to make my decision between an opportunity that seemingly had my name written all over it, and another in which I had no background experience, Erica told me to throw a coin in the air. As the coin hit the ground, before I saw my fate, she told me to ask myself, “What do I want to see – heads or tails?”

Three weeks later I was on a plane to San Diego. I had one year before I knew I would return to Carnegie Mellon, one year to simply LIVE.

The year of service did 2 things: (1) it shifted my perspective on life, and (2) it highlighted my skill set in concurrence with my passions. Non-profits offer their staff and volunteers the opportunity to not only heal through service but to test their skills on various organizational challenges. As the assistant to the Director of Resource Development, I struggled to help the organization raise money through grants and donor relations. I was, however very perceptive of the way things operated and the way information was transferred and stored in the organization, and had several ideas for improvement. Shakti Rising graciously allowed me to try my hand at designing a Client Relations Management (CRM) system for their organization (which was risky considering that I had NO experience with the system, or databases of any sort). Needless to say, the system is up and running, and I still assist with making it more user friendly and effective. The whole experience shed light on my ability to see the big-picture of an operation and my ability to teach myself whatever skills I need to execute a project I am passionate about.

Do I know what I am going to do next year? Nope, not a clue. Am I worried? Nope, not at all. I know that there are plenty of organizations out there that have a missions I believe in, and I know from experience that when I believe in a mission I can direct my skill set to make change. So I guess I do know what I am going to do next year - I am going to change the world.

Sometimes it is not about looking for what you want to do, it is about telling the world what you believe in (through a resume, application or email) and letting yourself experience something.

Searching for Jobs á la Smorgasbord

Last night, I read the following passage from a book my mom gave me to read, Women Who Run With the Wolves by Clarissa Pinkola Estés:

“Imagine a smorgasbord laid out with whipped cream and salmon and bagels and roast beef, and fruit salad, and green enchiladas and rice and curry and yogurt and many, many things for table after table after table. Imagine your survey it all and that you see certain things that appeal to you. You remark to yourself, ‘Oh! I would really like to have one of those, and one of that, and some of this other thing.’ Some women and men make all their life decisions in the way. There is around and about us a constant beckoning world, one which insinuates itself into our lives, arousing and creating appetite where there was little or none before. In this sort of choice, we choose a thing because it happened to be beneath our noses at that moment in time. It is not necessarily what we want, but it is interesting, and the longer we gaze at it, the more compelling it becomes.”

I thought about the times I have done something because it was convenient, all the while subconsciously convincing myself that it was exactly what I wanted to do. I thought about how easy it is to get sucked into this trap in which what is available is more enticing than it would otherwise be, just because I am desperate for something. I thought about relationships I have had not because we were compatible, but because I wanted a boyfriend, and he was there. And then I thought about Teach for America, a program I applied for because it looked interesting, and I felt I needed a plan.

Sometime around October, my friends started getting job offers. All of a sudden, it seemed that people had plans for next year, and that my friends and professors and family expected me to have an idea of what I was going to do after graduation. But I didn’t have a plan, and what’s more, I hated answering the “future” question with an apprehensive, “I don’t know yet.” I wanted to be able to provide an answer just so I could rid myself of the uncertainly.

I first entertained the idea of applying for Teach for America at a time when I thought I wanted to spend one year doing non-profit, water-related work outside of the U.S. before applying to graduate school. All of my googling had left me disillusioned when I started to realize that non-profits don’t typically hire students straight out of college. And even if I could land a job, or secure an internship, how would I possibly choose between the thousands of non-profits that do the kind of work I might be interested in?

Suddenly, a two-year teaching program in the U.S. that was actively recruiting engineering students (an opportunity that did not line up with the priorities I had previously laid out for myself) started to look really intriguing. After sending in my application, and being selected for a phone interview, I felt the excitement building: I was finally close to having a plan! I thought about how awesome it would be to teach math and science to disenchanted students. I thought about interactive learning experiments we might do, field trips we could take, and how I would decorate my classroom. I thought about the impact I would have on the future leaders of our country, and how it would be an incredible learning opportunity for me to work in this environment.

My fantasies put me in a state of denial about what I truly wanted to do next year. Teach For America appeared on the smorgasbord alongside roast beef and yogurt and green enchiladas, and I started to realize that I never asked myself what I was actually hungry for. As you might have guessed, I was not accepted into the TFA program. For various reasons that I attribute to fate, (because I was too blinded to differentiate between what I wanted and what was convenient) my phone interview was a disaster, and only after I hung up the phone did I admit to myself that it wasn’t what I wanted, after all.

Clarissa Pinkola Estés says that most of the time, what we want is probably not on the smorgasbord. “We will have to quest for it a little bit – sometimes for a considerable time. But in the end we shall find it, and be glad we took soundings about our deeper longings.”

I'm the kind of person that will make the most of any situation, and I know that Teach For America would have been a meaningful experience. But I'm realizing that I don't want to live the kind of life where I'm making decisions based on what's easy and accessible and possible at the moment. I think, at least for now, I'd rather sit with the uncertainty and know that when I do finally decide to reach for something, it will be because I have been honest with myself about what I want.