Starting around age 17, and continuing well into my 30s, I became a sort of unofficially Obsessive-Compulsive Analyzer of Majors, Programs, and Careers. My reference to the psychopathology is not meant in jest – notebooks, spreadsheets, hundreds of hours searching through websites, internet forums, career advice books, probably 30 applications to different graduate programs… I’ve been convinced – I mean really certain—that I was meant to be a doctor, lawyer, teacher, physicist, data analyst, computer scientist, biostatistician, pharmacist, pharmacologist, manager, tutor, writer, journalist, policy advocate, economist… and with each new conviction, the deep dive began: not necessarily into the subject or the field, but into the route. How do I get into this? What prerequisites do I need? What tests do I need to take? Where will I work after? How much does it pay? What are the best schools? What are the scholarship opportunities, and on and on and on.
I can’t say for sure why I was seized by this process in the way that I was—maybe it had to do with prestige, or maybe my wide and transient academic interests. Or maybe it was just an overactive “greener grass”/FOMO-type instinct. Either way, I’ve gotten pretty darned close to my 10,000 hours in this domain, and am only just now starting to settle down into a clear and convicted path forward. That may sound like an admission of having wasted a great deal of time diving down these rabbit holes, but I prefer to think of it as a refinement of my goals and a discovery of myself. In addition to all that racing-to-nowhere, I had the opportunity to participate in 3 different graduate programs, to work as a small business manager, teacher, librarian, customer service rep, pecan farmer, truck-unloader, gourmet cheese p
urveyor, grocery-bagger, janitor – you name it. I explored a half-dozen start-ups, read probably 500 books, taught myself a great deal of math and programming and Spanish, raise two kids, and generally lead a pretty interesting and varied life. And during all of that, I discovered a few things about myself, careers, and educational opportunities that I’d like to share with you, hopefully sparing you a handful of the rougher lessons Professor Experience taught me.
Firstly, with respect to the Self:
1) If you think you cannot do something, give it a real and dedicated try. When you’re unable to locate a path forward, maybe you’re looking in the wrong place. Like the old joke about the drunk. (*Drunk is stumbling around a lamppost outside the bar* -- Man: “What are you doing out here, buddy?” Drunk: “Well, I scheem to ‘av lost my wallet.” Man: “Oh I see. Did you drop it around here somewhere?” Drunk: “Nah, lasttime I seen it wuz in the parkin’ lo’.” Man: “I don’t understand—why aren’t you look out there?” Drunk: “Cuz the light’s better ova here!”).
Sometimes we struggle to identify our niche because we have limited ourselves in some unnecessary way. Perhaps your mind would fall in love with math or physics or linguistics, but you avoid it because it seems to technical, too foreign, too inaccessible. Maybe you’re a born teacher or journalist, but avoid it because you’re afraid of public speaking. Now you’re fruitlessly hunting around the lamppost, even though there’s nothing over there to find. Notice when you find yourself saying, “Man it would be cool to learn ______, but…” Try to muster the courage to muscle past that conditional: you don’t know what you don’t try.
2) If a billion other people can do it, chances are you can, too. How can it be that literally millions of people can learn to program, speak a foreign language, code in C++, and any other of countless things, but you can’t? Not everyone can be Mozart or Michael Jordan – but everyone can learn to play good enough for church or a wedding, and everyone can manage to hold their own in the after-work league. All over the world, seventeen-year-old kids of average intelligence are completing calculus, speaking bilingually, writing short stories, building websites, and so on. If they can do it, what’s stopping you?
3) Play with things. Goals have their place, but sometimes just goofing around does, too. A lot of us having things we want, but more often we have things we want to want. Put another way: too often we want the outcome, not the process; we want the destination, but not the journey; we want the achievement, but not the intervening work. I think it would be sexy to hear people address me as “Dr. Goff,” and to sign all my stock with “Marcus Goff, MD,” – it’s a pretty glamorous outcome. But I am revolted by bodies and dissection and anatomy, I find chemistry boring, and don’t particularly want to add eight more years of school/training to my resume. Meanwhile, I do math and coding for fun. My idea of a good vacation is having from sun-up to sundown completely free so I can sit by the pool and design images accurately visualizing multi-dimensional vectors. I’m a long way from best-in-the-world, but I’ll likely end my life being pretty good at math – not because I have to be, not because I think it’ll lead to a great career (though that may very well be a side-effect, but because I am intrinsically motivated.
4) Nobody “gives” you a job—you sell them your labor.
5) Don’t think in terms of “How much money do I get paid”—think in terms of “How much value do I produce?” “Pay” is an abstraction – the point is to add value. If you’re unhappy with your “pay” then try to make yourself more valuable to your employer.
Secondly, with respect to education and careers:
1) The ultimate goal is to be able to do something. Stripping away the social conventions within which we operate, the economy works in terms of you receiving something valuable from someone else, in exchange for doing something valuable for them. To that extent, an associate’s degree from Small-Town Community College in welding is likely more valuable than a PhD in art appreciation from Oxford. Think in terms of the Old West and Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. Approaching a farmer and requesting to trade his vegetables for your exposition on the Imperial Symbolism in 18th-Century Rococo is likely going to be laughed off. Meanwhile, if you can fix his tractor or fence, you’ve got yourself a meal.
2) The goal is to really be able to do it, not to have a piece of paper saying you can. The college diploma is more like a rite-of-passage, it seems to me, than it is a legitimate credential. Boot camps, apprenticeships, community colleges, online MOOCs, and even the local library can teach you how to do something, just as well as any professor or graduate student at MIT. (Heck, a lot of times the relevant resources are written by exactly those folks!) There’s no doubt that there are some signaling effects and some networking benefits that follow from college, but if I need a website built and you can do it better with your self-taught coding skills than the Other Guy Who Went to Harvard, I’m going to choose you. Despite dropping out of college, getting suspended, and a flippant disposition towards coursework, Mark Zuckerberg has done just fine in life—because of what he can do. I’m not advocating for quitting college (necessarily), but I am saying that there’s a lot of perfunctory time-wasting involved, and if (here’s the kicker) you’re quitting college to free up time do develop a skill or business or product, then it might not be a bad idea.
3) Diplomas aren’t the only form of signal. There’s no doubt that advanced degrees get your foot in doors you might otherwise have slammed in your face. But there are increasingly greater options for signaling your qualifications. Many professional organizations offer formal tests that indicate proficiency in things ranging from coding to speaking French. A high-stakes test like the GRE subject tests are likely better forms of proof than are GPAs, as grades can be inflated, modified with extra credit, and so on. A well-crafted blog with a lot of viewers, a startup that you ran, or an impressive GitHub contribution can be every bit (probably more) indicative of your ability to do something than a college degree is. Some of the folks over at LessWrong even speculate that the future of education and signaling will reduce to that: degrees won’t get you in, only your performance on exams demonstrating proficiency will. In a way, it makes a lot more sense. I don’t care nearly as much about how well you do in academic contexts as I do about how well you perform at practical tasks. Many academic programs, in a way, are simply formalized training programs for the relevant tests: Bar Exams, Boards, educational certifications, CFPs and CFAs, and so on.
4) Some careers require the diploma. Doctors, lawyers, nurses, pharmacists, teachers, and other professions do not permit you to participate in these fields unless you have a degree from an accredited academic program. Good idea or not, them’s the ropes, so if you are confident that you want to go that route, the degree is not optional. If you’re aspiring to be an artist, programmer, researcher, journalist, farmer, mechanic, chef, entrepreneur, or engineer (or a million other things), then consider whether all the hours spent writing five-paragraph-essays-on-the-ethics-of-euthanasia wouldn’t be better spent practicing and refining the skill you want to do.
So that’s what I have so far. I’m sure I’ll learn more as life proceeds and experience accrues. In the meantime, I hope this helps clarify your thinking about how to move forward in your education and career. But the key idea is this: you have to do something, ideally something readily valued by a wide array of other people. Make that the target, figure out how to get there, and Git ‘R Done!
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