In times as economically screwed up as our own, it’s oddly comforting for Columbia students to remember that their man should be setting the nation’s monetary policy right now. Well maybe not that comforting–things are goin’ to shit, fellas, and they would be regardless of who’s heading up the Fed. Oh well. A funny glimpse at what might have been:

[Miles Lennon, GS '08, started TextWorks, LLC last year. Read him every Thursday, and find out what he's learned along the way.]

If you have not already experienced it, the final two years of your stay at Columbia will include what I like to call the “Columbia Career Crisis.” Just after you feel as though you’ve finally hit your stride—you’ve declared your major, your friends are for the most part in place, and you feel more or less at home—you are forced to think about your life after school ends. Unfortunately, the job search is highly competitive, requires an enormous amount of resume-packing preparatory work, demands a lot of time, increases stress tremendously and leaves you unsatisfied until you have obtained your target position. However, these aspects are all common knowledge and are, frankly, just part of the process. They are almost always unavoidable and I would not amount them to a crisis. 

The reason I call it a crisis is because I fear many Columbia students see the job search process with immense, often peer-influenced tunnel vision. Admittedly, I state this without any statistical  or empirical evidence; I am speaking purely from my own experiences and from my observation of others around me.  

I, too, once saw the process with tunnel vision, knowing exactly what I wanted to do: finance. I laid the ground work with various internships, spent hours fine-tuning my resume and cover letters and conducted mock interviews religiously. I managed to secure a summer internship, which resulted in a full-time job offer. But when it came time to accepting or rejecting my offer, I had a change of heart and decided to start my own business.

I realize that sounds very extreme—it is. But that is an entirely different story. The point is that in doing so, I have met and continue to meet business professionals from a broad spectrum of industries, some of which I didn’t even know existed. I have become a student of the developments and trends in emerging fields that are fascinating, but not well known or publicized. As a result, when I reflect on the way I went about my job search, I see just how many avenues I simply never cared to explore.  

The purpose of this article is not to evangelize student entrepreneurship or suggest that the finance trajectory is not a respectable one. Rather, I want to acknowledge that many Columbia students may be viewing the job process through the eyes of their community, and subsequently missing out on opportunities that are more exciting or better fitting to their personalities.

When asked the dreaded question, “What do you plan to do after school?” I often hear the response, “I guess Law School,” or “finance because there really isn’t much else out there.” I believe that these responses are much more problematic than we choose to think. It’s a crisis because all students should have the opportunity to experience how good it feels to be doing or pursuing something that they truly want. 

In order to solve this problem, I encourage students to willingly exercise patience and foster curiosity–to meet new people and explore new opportunities. Recognize that external influences may force you to view your career with tunnel-vision, and counteract it. Set up meetings with professors, family friends or parents of friends. Find out what these people do, explore it for yourself and see if it’s up your alley. Simultaneously, I ask that the community balance the impact of the finance-law school-med school-grad school hammer that often beats us over the head with influence from a diverse group of industries.  

-MILES LENNON