catapult magazine

I’m wondering how many people out there have actual, specific, long-term career goals. My professors in graduate school are constantly hounding us to have long-term career goals, and I find myself somewhat resistant. Not because I want to avoid thinking about the future, but it seems like when you make these long-term career goals you are shutting out the possibility of…how to say it…God’s leading? Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think it’s a bad idea to have a plan, it just seems so restrictive.

For instance, one of the first activities in one of my classes was to write a vision for where we will be professionally in 20 years—exactly where in terms of location, what we will be doing, who we will be teaching, at what level, etc. And then we were asked to break it down into manageable steps that we could start right now.

I don’t think I can do that. In fact, I don’t think I want to, and professors seem to think that I lack direction. Has anyone else had this experience?

I agree with you, Bridget. I had to do something similar in undergrad for a journalism instructor. I really had a difficult time making a professional strategic plan when – for me – family was equally as important and I knew I’d stop working to raise my children. With or without children, however, my career path usually stopped at a certain point – I preferred to remain a small fry in many respects. Are these professional plans supposed to aim high? Or are they supposed to be realistic?

My instructor found this to be quite anti-intellectual, I think. And, like you pointed out, God may very well have a different plan in mind than what you put down on paper.

It’s interesting to see how my views of “career” have changed over the past years. As early as kindergarten, teachers are asking kids what they want to be when they grow up. As a kid, and then as an adolescent, I tried to figure out what it was that I wanted to be at that far-off future date of grown-upness. And now that I’ve graduated from college, I find that my earlier views were quite simplistic. I’ve stopped asking, “What do I want to be when I grow up?” and started asking, “What do I want to do next year?” I’m realizing more and more that life happens in stages, and that I don’t have to know what I’m going to be doing in ten or twenty years. In fact, I don’t really want to know.

Is there something wrong with that? I don’t feel as if I’m completely lacking in direction. I have many interests, many things that I want to do, and several possibilities for the near future. On the other hand, I don’t think it hurts us to have goals, and I don’t think that people who DO know what they want to be doing in 20 years are to be pitied. But I’ve always liked to take life as it comes; what fun is it to plan every detail? I agree with you, bridget, it seems very restrictive. Life’s more exciting when I can’t see where I’m going to be this time next year. A year ago I had no idea that I’d be living on the south side of Chicago in 2003.

Sometimes I’ve been frustrated that I don’t have my life planned out, especially when some of my friends seem to see so clearly what they want to do. But I think that this not knowing leaves more room for God to work—or at least it forces me to depend on God to direct me. I was amazed at how I ended up in Chicago: a bunch of little nudges and coincidences here and there, and here I am! Now that I’ve seen the process unfold once, I have more faith that it will happen again. And soon, I hope. :)

i completely agree, bridget. i just had a conversation with an older gentleman from church a few weeks ago in which he asked what my plans for the future were (“where do you see yourself in 10 years, blah, blah, blah”). at the time, i didn’t even know where i was going to be living in june, let alone where life would take me in ten years.

i don’t think it’s bad to have a plan, per se, but i also think you need to be open to God’s leading. kirstin and i were in a position for a while where we were completely ready to do anything and go anywhere at a moments notice if we could recognize it as God’s guidance. it was (and still is) terrifying and exhilarating at the same time. that’s kind of how we ended up in michigan.

being in that position, though, requires flexibility with plans. it also doesn’t make it easy to see very far into the future.

what am i saying? i don’t know yet . . .

Of COURSE you ended up in Michigan at God’s direction! Don’t you know Dutch is the official language of Heaven … and Michigan therefore heaven on earth?

You know how Calvin (of Calvin and Hobbes) looks when he’s ack-hack-ack-acking up something? That’s how I feel about 5-10-20 year career plans!
And by the way, if that is true about heaven where does that leave us German Lutherans? You do know about Frankenmuth, MI..no?
I feel like so many of you about this…and was so happy to read your thoughts!! Yea! I’m not alone!
My experience has been to kind of go with the flow, walk through open doors and yes, bang my head against closed ones for a while until I see the open window! God has led and provided work, education, new experiences, and many jobs, including motherhood at home when my kids were young. I feel the richer and the more adventuresome for living this way. I would hate to miss something new and exciting or even challenging/scary by being locked into some ‘plan’. Besides…my brain just doesn’t work that way!
Currently the path at hand is leading me to grad school to earn my masters in library and information science but I still want to be a chaplain, a speaker, a pastor, a storyteller, a sailor, and maybe a desert monk. So, no 20 year career plan for me thank you very much!

two things that i’m thinking as i read this thread.

first of all, the way in which success becomes a god in the absence of the one true God in higher education. i experienced this even in a Christian college—at the mandatory senior career seminar, they brought in a successful banker alumni to talk to us about career choices. i left having to console my friend who was practically in tears about not having any “direction” in her life, even though she is an amazing, spontaneous, spirit-filled person who isn’t gifted in a 9-5 way.

second, this notion seems to support an idea i think is kind of odd and damaging and that’s the idea that work is done at a certain point in our lives. if we achieve our goals and provide everything our families could ever want, we are supposedly entitled to an end-of-life vacation. it defies a sense of vision, which, as Mr. Rogers has shown us, can give us important work to do until our dying day.

I told Kirsten the other day that i sometimes feel like a “lurking parent” on this web site. I know some of you and you are my children’s friends but you might be surprised at how many of the life issues that you face keep coming back to people who you assume should have their acts together – parents!
I love my job and don’t regret the choices that came my way. But you do sometimes wonder, “What if….” I took time off to be with my kids and found intersting jobs to do part time when they were young too. Career goals may work for some people but they don’t seem to work for me. AS much as we plan and hope, God has a way of leading us where we should go even if it is NOT the place we imagined ourselves in the first place. I just came through a pretty major life crisis and had to question many of the givens in my life. In the end I was reaffirmed in my teaching career but along the way it was exciting to see where God would take me. I really didn’t think it would be back in the classroom but it is and now I feel excited and eager to be there.
My kids are also struggling with their careers. It is odd because we have two drifters and one super focused with quasi set plans. And it is right for all of them. We are such diverse creations and God has so many great things out in the world to do that the paths we are lead along aren’t similar either. The hardest part is knowing which path to take and how long to stay on it. No big advise from someone who is older except to pray!

Reading all these replies is so refreshing and reassuring! I sort of knew that it had to be okay not to have set goals, and ya’ll have really affirmed that. Thanks!

I’ve definitely felt the god of success that I think Kirsten mentioned, and I just really have grown to hate it. Lots of people at my school end up in really high-profile jobs with the state department, or the UN, and so everyone seems really bent on success. I have a professor who publishes a book about every month it seems, but I have to wonder how balanced her life can be.

I just got home from spending the weekend in the National Redwood Forest (and Ashland, OR!) which was great, and really gave me some time to think about what I’m doing in grad. school and in life in the future. I went with a friend who is an MBA student, and is really freaking out about finding a job, and I just found myself telling her to calm down, that it would all work out. And I think it will.

I guess what I’m trying to say (and I’m tired so it’s taking a long time to come out) is that I don’t think career goals are all that great or helpful in the conventional sense. I definitely have goals about what I want to do through my job—I want to teach English to people for whom it really makes a difference in their lives, but where and how…I don’t really care!