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.