Who You Know

By Mallory

Here they are, the two questions college students get asked all the time:

1) What's your major? 

and 

2) What are you going to do with that? 

I figured out question one (for the second time) about a year ago, and it's getting to be that time where I really need to be able to answer question two. I've over half-done my degree. So it's time, I suppose, for me to go do all the things good college students are supposed to do so I won't have to live in a cardboard box someday. For example, this Friday I have an appointment at my school's career services office, where I'm hoping to wrestle out some kind of helpful advice about getting a summer internship. (Yes, for next summer. Notice the panic.) According to the career services office, an internship is pretty much my only hope for getting a job someday. In order to pick the internship I want to apply for, I kind of need to know what kind of job I'd like to have some day, and I really, really don't know that right now. 

Truthfully, I'm in a bit of a weird place where I have to figure out what's important and what's not; what's realistic and what's not; what's a possibility and what's a daydream. It sounds like a bad idea for me to choose a career path ONLY because it's practical, realistic, and will give me a steady job some day. It sounds like a bad idea to chase after some nebulous dream job that I may never be able to actually get. And I'm having trouble figuring out a compromise between the two. 

But at this point getting a job at ALL is going to be a challenge. And to get a job, as we all know, it's all about who you know. And I don't really know anybody. I assume this because the people I do know haven't let on whether or not they're this magical person I 'need to know' in order to do anything in life. But truthfully there isn't really going to be some fairy godmother who comes out of nowhere and hooks me up with a really sweet life. But in all seriousness, I'm less than two years away from the so called 'real world,' and even though John Mayer claims it doesn't exist, rent, bills, work, responsibility, and priorities do. 

So this is something in my life that stresses me out, a little bit. Life decisions just became very, very serious. And I know that, chances are, I could sabotage myself during this whole process in a bad way. But thankfully, it's not in my hands. Once I heard a professor point out something really smart about this kind of thing. He said that God is the most important social networker. While 'knowing people' is important, it's so much more important to know God. And following Him will lead me in the right direction. Unfortunately, this doesn't get me out of my visit to the dreaded career center on Friday. But I find peace in the fact that the most important question on the list of questions I have to answer about my life is... 

What pleases God, and what doesn't?

And the other things will fall into place.

Comments

[JasonS]

Great perspective!