3-11 Week 3 Wrap Up

This week we’ve talked about how careers get launched and how your own career can develop and change through your life. Your own internal feelings about what you want to do, of course, can play a critical role in your long term happiness. But society and culture can also have a dramatic affect on your career choices and decisions. As can your parents, family, and friends. Given all this, and also given the nature of the real world, it’s often valuable to carefully assess whether the learning you’re doing with relation to your career might be putting you into a passion trap. That is whether you may be pursuing an interest you like, that teachers, professors, friends tell you is great, but which in reality may put you in debt while providing little opportunity for growth or comfort in the long term. Second skilling yourself using a pi rather than a T shaped way of cultivating knowledge related to your career, is a great approach. Sometimes, simply being okay at several or even a lot of things can be better than being a superstar at only one thing. For example, you can be one of the most brilliant coders in the world, but if you don’t know how to read people enough to negotiate a good salary, you can’t really benefit appropriately from your great skill. Sometimes people you know can be opposed to new learning that you may wish to do, or changes regarding your career. There are three ways to handle this opposition. Dabbling, leading a double life or being a contrarian. All three approaches have their advantages and disadvantages. We learned that sometimes selective ignorance can be better than general competence. After all, you don’t want to be caught up fulfilling other peoples’ desires while neglecting your own. In fact, sometimes your worst traits can be your best traits. Being disagreeable, a contrarian, a worrier or a dreamer can have positive sides that can be beneficial in the long run. If you use these traits wisely, feeling like an impostor isn’t necessarily a bad thing at all. It leaves you more open and flexible, and helps you to avoid the over confidence that can sometimes lead to disaster. We also stepped back to look at the neuroscience of how we interact with others. The three neuromodulatory systems, based on serotonin, noradrenaline, and dopamine, help form the emotional systems of the brain. These systems, in turn, help us to form social bonds, evaluate dangerous situations, and learn new skills. One more thing. Don’t forget the golden rule of career catastrophes. It’s never as bad as you think it is at the time and there’s always a silver lining. See you next week for the exciting course wrap up.