Pollak - Getting from college to career: 90 things to do before you join the real world

Its not easy to figure out what to be when you grow up.

In college I was pretty sure I was going to be a lawyer. Before that I wanted to be a high school teacher or a college professor. When I was five I wanted to be a toll collector.

So, how did I end up being a writer and career expert? Ill give you the short version, because otherwise my story, like most peoples career tales, could take up this entire book.

Around my sophomore year of college I started to realize that I would eventually graduate and have to find something else to do with my life besides being a student. Law school seemed like the best option for an American Studies major with a concentration in literature and no experience in anythingand thats what a lot of people said I should do, so I signed up for a free practice LSAT exam and bought a study guide. But all of the legal stuff in the guide bored me so much that I gave up and just took the test cold. Im smart, I rationalized. Everyone thinks I should go to law school. Maybe Im a natural. How hard could this be?

Ha!

I never told anyone that I took that practice test. I thought the questions seemed impossible. Every answer seemed plausible. I guessed on half the choices and couldnt finish in the time allotted. I never picked up my scores because I was too scared of having the lowest practice LSAT score in history.

If the fact that I wasnt even interested enough in law to get through the study guide hadnt been enough of a sign, the LSAT experience was. Being a lawyer was out.

After that, I turned to my parents for help, and my mom introduced me to a nonprofit womens business organization where she had trained to start and manage her small business. She thought it would be a good place for me to meet a lot of different businesspeople from a lot of different industries. It turned out the organization was looking for an intern, so I offered myself for the (unpaid) job and got my first dose of work experience that summer. It was fun. I did research, filed stuff, got the three other staff people salads with dressing on the side for lunch, and enjoyed one major perk: the staff often went to business networking events in the community, and they brought me along with them.

One day, one of the staffers brought me to a local Rotary Club meeting, where a kind older gentleman sat next to me and chatted with me for a while. So, what are you going to do after college, Lindsey? he asked eventually, as people always do.

I have no idea, I said. Ive thought about law school, but Im not sure.

Have you ever thought about going abroad? Rotary offers international graduate school scholarships and I think youd be a good candidate.

In Tip #68, Follow Every Rainbow, youll see that I recommend exploring a wide variety of options to find the right career path, because you never know which one will lead to your pot of gold. That man, that moment at the Rotary Club meeting, turned out to be mine.

Once I learned about the Rotary Ambassadorial Scholarship program, through which you can attend graduate school in the country of your choice, I applied immediately. For two weeks straight all I did was write essays, gather transcripts, request reference letters, and think about spending a few years as a glamorous expat. I decided I wanted to continue learning more about women in business, so I applied to womens studies masters degree programs. And I wanted to live someplace fun and warmer than the East Coast of the United States, where I had spent my whole life, so I chose Australia.

Somehow, and I really cant explain it, something just clicked deep in my gut that going abroad was the exact thing I wanted to do after college. Just a day earlier, I had absolutely no idea what I wanted. But when I heard about this opportunity, I knew it was right. And a year and a half later, when I found myself in Melbourne, Australia, interviewing women business owners, journaling every morning, volunteering as a reading series coordinator, and writing my masters thesis day and night, I was on my way to a career as a professional writer and career expert.

Was it fate that I met that man and he changed my life? Perhaps. But if I had been sick that morning and hadnt attended the Rotary meeting, I believe it would have happened some other way. The point is that I didnt know my right career path until I saw it, heard it, touched it. This is why throughout the book youll notice my obsession with taking action, trying new things, meeting new people, and having a wide variety of experiences. You have to get out there and see what exists. Whats possible. Whats calling your name. I dont believe you can plan your career by sitting in your dorm room or bedroom and just thinking really hard.

I know that the sitting-in-your-room-and-thinking strategy doesnt work because, unfortunately, I tried it when I returned home from two and a half amazing years in Australia. Even though I had fallen in love with interviewing people and writing, and even though I had just enjoyed a unique international adventure, and even though I had earned a masters degree, I couldnt decide what kind of jobs to pursue back home in the United States. After all, I still hadnt had a Real Job yet. I was sad that my overseas adventure had ended, I felt like my friends back home were light-years ahead of me in the job market, and I felt overwhelmed by deciding what city to live in, what positions to apply for, and what direction to take. So I did the only natural thing: I froze.

For about four months I lived at home with my parents and spent hours on the computer typing phrases like writer and international experience into a jobs website and hoping my dream career would pop up on the screen. Im sorry to report that didnt happen, and it never does. Jobs just dont come to you. Career plans dont grow on trees. And well-meaning parents and friends can only do so much to help.

In a nutshell, my scientific diagnosis of my post-Australia situation is that it totally sucked. There were some days when I wanted to move right back to Melbourne and find some additional graduate degree to pursue. There were some bad days when I sent one semiproductive e-mail in the morning and then watched TV all day and ate nothing but frozen yogurt. And there were some very bad days when I felt I was a miserable failure with my best years behind me, and I spent the entire day under the covers.

Eventually, at some point, perhaps from sheer boredom or a need to go out and buy more frozen yogurt, I began to leave the house, pick up the phone, and take little bits of action. I called a few people Id worked with at the nonprofit organization where I had my summer internship in college. I called some people I had met through that local Rotary Club and asked to attend a meeting. I signed up for a few sessions with a career coach. I started to make lists of my interests and my contacts and my life goals. My mom took me to buy a suit. Every few days I did a little something more, and slowly, painfully slowly, momentum started to build.

Action always yields rewards.

My reward came in the form of a fax. One day I received a fax from Fran, my former boss at the nonprofit womens business organization. She sent me a one-page article from BusinessWeek magazine about the launch of a new website for businesswomen, started by the founders of Working Woman magazine. The headline of the article was circled, and Fran had written, Call them!

And so I did.

I called New York City information and asked for the main number of Working Woman magazine. I dialed the number immediately and asked to speak to someone in human resources. The receptionist put me through and when the woman answered, I told her that I had seen the recent article in BusinessWeek, and I had just received a masters degree in womens studies, and my thesis was about businesswomen, and I would love to know if they were hiring. She asked me to fax my rsum, and the next day invited me in for an interview. A few weeks later, they offered me a job working at the new website.