In my first year at university, I had set a clear goal for myself. To get into the co-op program, get 20 months of work experience, graduate, enter the workforce, and land the highest paying job possible.
(Yes, that post was actually three years ago!)
From that, I set benchmarks. I met with graduating co-ops and politely asked what their starting salaries were. I heard numbers around 50k, then 55k, and even 62k. The last number was the target I set to surpass.
That number served as a goal because I’m the type of guy who always needs some type of goal to give myself a sense of direction. Sometimes for better, sometimes for worse.
I was fixated on this high-salary goal… until last week when my career counselor Juliana shared a piece of wisdom.
“Your goal for graduation should be clarity. Clarity in knowing exactly where you want to work and what you want to do in your career.”
That changed my thinking. She’s right. In a lifetime, some people don’t discover what they really like to do in their careers until their mid-thirties. The earlier you start experimenting with various career paths, the better it is, because it means you’re spending less time working in jobs you don’t like.
So, I’ll treat the next couple work terms as experiments. And when I graduate, I should have a pretty good hypothesis as to what my dream job should be.