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Thursday, November 6, 2008

Making lists and having plans

All my life I have been very much a list-maker. In the margins of pretty much every spare scrap of paper on which I have ever taken notes is scrawled a to do list.
"Go running
send thank you card
finish reading assignment
return phone messages..."

On the wall of my college apartment hung a masterful 6 page articulation of qualities my roommates and I thought to be essential in "The Perfect Male."
"Intelligent
Funny
Ambitious
Can change a tire faster than you without breaking any
screws, but won't laugh at you for trying..."

I once had a teacher ask me to make a list of five things I wanted to accomplish in my life.
"Graduate college
Serve a mission
Go to law school
Get married
Have kids"

And this is probably why I have always had a five year plan. I'm a Type-A control freak in love with list-making. This week I found out that I scored an interview for a job with the DOJ after graduation, and hoping to be as well prepared for this interview as possible, I sought out a little advice from one of our current attorneys on what types of questions to expect. She told me the one question that will almost certainly be asked of me is where I see myself in ten years. That gave me pause. Because I honestly have no idea. I have found that my ability to plan ahead is severely hampered by the fact that I will no longer have school on my to do list. I was able to say as a high school senior where I wanted to be in 10 years because 7 of those years would be spent in school. Now that I'm almost past all that, the options are much more uncertain. Where do I want to be in ten years? I want to have my student loans paid off. I want to have a career that is meaningful and exciting, preferably something that lets me help other people while still allowing me to enjoy some semblance of free time. I want to live abroad. I want to read for fun. And I might even want to finally scratch the straggler #5 off the list. Maybe. Are these acceptable answers for a job interview? Probably not. I guess it's time to give serious thought to an updated long term plan.

1 comments:

Meradeth Houston said...

Gawk--okay, I haven't even thought about this. Granted, I just pray that I'm done with school in a decade. People keep asking Ryan and I now where we want to end up, now that we're ABD, and quite frankly we have no way of knowing. Somewhere that will pay us to work? I'm afraid that if I think about this more it might make my head explode. Good luck with the plans!