College is the time when we’re supposed to find our talents, discover our passions, and prepare for a career in a field that we love. It can be incredibly difficult to narrow the whole wide world of jobs to the work that you want to do.
Recently, I had a meeting with a professional in the editing and publishing business, a field in which I am extremely interested. As she patiently answered my questions about the industry, she brought up a career-thinking process that truly shone a light on my thinking about my future.
The general gist of the advice was this: you need to prioritize your passion, your preferred location, and your preferred position. My industry contact explained that she has a true passion for children’s literature, preferred working in the San Francisco Bay area, and didn’t really have a preference for her position. She would have been just as happy working in marketing as she is currently working as an editor, so long as she was working specifically on children’s books.
She went on to explain that she has a colleague who worked as a copy editor and prioritized her position over her location and passion. This colleague simply loved the job of copy editing, and didn’t care whether it was for children’s literature, opinion newspaper articles, or economics textbooks. She’s happy in her position because she knew her top priority was copy editing and she weighed the position more heavily than the location or content of the work she would be editing.
This advice has been rattling around in my head ever since that meeting. It has helped me to categorize my interests and to think about what I really want for my future. I’ll still need some time to help narrow down my interests in all three sections, but her advice gives me a great way to think categorically and systematically about what I want in my career.
If you feel that you’re struggling to find your career, try thinking about these three things: your passion, the location of your work, and the position that you want to attain. It’s a great method to think about your future in a more manageable way, and it will help you to see which areas could use a narrower focus. It will help you to identify what you should learn more about, and it’s really just three simple questions that you can answer in your own time.