Just Do It

I have been quiet the past few months and even on FB, because I didn't really know what to say. I have been rather conflicted about who I have become and who I want to be, and whether these vague projections of the future that I'm chasing is really me or if I'm chasing someone else's dream.

But it's a funny thing, school has started again for most of my classmates, and I will be heading off to someplace really different, and really be by myself, in a few days. I suddenly feel motivated to just go ahead and do things again (which happen to include blogging, obviously).

I am reminded of something Mr Hsieh Tsun-Yan (a director at McKinsey & Co, and a Singapore President's Scholar in the same year that LSL got the scholarship) said in a talk I attended last semester. He talked about how he once mentored a brilliant new hire, an Ivy League grad, who spent a lot of time trying to 'find herself'. He said that she was too intellectual about it, and that a key ingredient to actually finding oneself is to put yourself out there and live. Glad that I actually had the foresight to record the talk, I listened to it again and reproduced the relevant parts here:

"The sculptor doesn't spend 5 days looking at the stone. He has an image, and he starts chiseling. And it is the chiseling that finally gives him the details of what the image will be. In other words, it is not sequential, that you do the freaking out and panicking and some linear equations and at the end of it, you go 'Ah-ha! That's me!'. It doesn't work that way. You have to get out there, and experience life. You have to get out there, notwithstanding your fears. You have to get out there, and put yourself at risk. 

... You have to goddamn live, basically."

And also, regarding expectations:

"The important thing is, at some stage of your growing up, you gotta make up your mind to be courageous enough to step outside of what other people want you to be."

There.

I made up my mind. I'm going to apply for an internship in the banking industry. Not because other people expect me to, but because I owe it to myself to try it out before making judgements about the industry. Either way, in the course of researching the industry, it turns out that I know shamefully little about it, or finance in general. I may be majoring in the big picture side of things, but the details, the nuts and bolts of how money flows and how credit helps businesses, are rather alien but very fascinating to me.

I am humbled, in short. And I now groan at my previous arrogant attitude about it all.

I don't know if it is the 'right' choice, whatever 'right' means that this stage of my life. I just know that I really, really want a job. I want to work at a good company, learn how a business, the industry and the economy really works. I don't want to spend more time in classrooms and have people tell me 'You don't know how things really work in the real world'. And I want to have an income, to buy nice things every once in a while (like a new box of crayons and a sketchbook; or buy my parents a meal; or to give some money to charity that is actually mine to give, for once). If I can get good pay, that's a nice bonus.

Why worry so much about being wrong? I wouldn't be the first one to be wrong, and it won't cost me much beyond a few years of my life. I realize that life is precious and we should never waste even a second of it, but if I spend even more of my life worrying about living in a wrong or less optimal way, I may not live at all.

And about giving back to society, saving the world? I'll volunteer. I'll separate my trash and recycle. I'll keep myself updated on the latest developments and arguments and policies. And when one day, when I actually know how things work and have the contacts, when I can do something beyond petitioning politicians and make a real contribution, I'll do it.

But for now, I'm just gonna give my best and try my hand at something that is truly fascinating to me.

I'm gonna just do it, 'kay?

*

P.S. In a related topic, this article about the worst career advice made me think about a job in a different way. Especially this part:

If you are lost, and lonely, and wondering how you’ll ever find your way in this world, take a job. Any job. Because structure, and regular contact with regular people, and a method of contributing to a larger group are all things that help us recalibrate ourselves.