Don't ask me: "What are you doing after uni?"​...ask me who I want to be.

Hindsight and why you shouldn’t ask me what I want to be when I grow up... 

Hindsight is possibly the most intriguing tool of the mind. To look back with confirmation bias and think to oneself, “it was always going to happen like that” can be a really enjoyable feeling- especially when associated with achievement or in an ‘I told you so’ argument. But when I reflect on my study of and passion for business, in hindsight, the signs were there but it wasn’t always going to be this way. I nearly studied English. But despite that fact, when I’m telling people, I look back and say it was always going to be this way. I look at signs like running the most successful stall at our charity day in year 9 and running charity week in 6th Form. As well as my approach to fundraising for expeditions abroad to Costa Rica and Nepal in 2015- meticulous in my approach, I had multiple income streams to maximise funds raised over short term and (18 month long term).

So I wasn’t always headed here. Or maybe I was. But for this reason, I don’t like it when people ask me what job I’m doing after graduating uni in 2020 or ‘what I want to be’.

My answer is always that I don’t know and that I’ll find my way as I go, that I’m not worried and have lots of options. It comes across ‘matter-of-fact’ but it’s true.

I find the same people that judge me for not knowing or think I’m lazy for not knowing are the same people who will tell the story of the 4 jobs they had before they fell into the 5th that they love by happenstance and they’re still in that job today.

I find people overlook their own journeys to getting to where they are when talking to graduates and younger people. Especially pre-uni, the emphasis and pressure to say what uni you’re going to, why, what course you’re doing and why, and where you want that to take you, is immense. Not to mention unhealthy. 

We all too easily forget our own history and look back in hindsight to tell ourselves that wherever we are was meant to be. Because there is no alternative. We convince ourselves that our stories were always meant to be and negate the role of luck, happenstance or opportunities that arise out of simply working hard with no end game idea.

So next time you ask someone why they’re doing what they’re doing, where they’re going or what they want to be...consider yourself...have a more meaningful conversation and instead ask what drives the person, what their values are, and WHO they want to be.