The Planning Paradox

From the moment we could communicate, we have been receiving conflicting messages. In one ear we hear "act like an adult," "consider you future," and "you better start planning now;" while in the other ear we hear things like "enjoy your childhood" and "live in the moment." This is the paradox of growing up: enjoying the moment in which we reside while, at the same time, planning continuously for our future. I have always been a fan of living in the moment, and Ms. Hansen's low profile lecture to our class made me feel a lot better about that viewpoint.

Ms. Hansen is not the first of our speakers to admit that her job came to her by chance, but she is one of the few who advocates wide-ranging experimentation over narrow planning for a college game plan. Many of our previous speakers have advocated narrow and tedious planning for the future, yet they themselves found their own careers out of the blue. I felt that Ms. Hansen's approach was more realistic for many different reasons: first, the majority of the jobs we will be applying for do not even exist yet, and second, the liberal arts approach to education, though useful for jobs, does not necessarily help you to know what you are passionate about.

Now, I must acknowledge that Ms. Hansen was speaking outside her area of expertise (which she only tangentially touched on), but in her case you can argue that she has not been blinded by the forced ideologies of the machine and is simply talking about her experience. We have seen that her experience of find a career by chance is by no means unique, so therefore we should regard her words as equally valid to those of a speaker from an education research program, career center, or what have you.