Wednesday, September 17, 2008

Reinvention

It's resume-polishing time at Darden and the hours I've spent trying to craft interesting and engaging bullet points have made me a bit self-aware. Add to that a particularly salient Leading Organizations discussion on identity, and I've become downright introspective.
For the past three years, I've worked as a reporter in a relatively small town -- a town small enough that I'd see my sources everywhere from the cereal aisle at the grocery store, to the stairmaster at the gym and the barstool at the local watering hole. Everywhere I went, I was conscious of representing my newspaper and my work. I was a journalist, and everyone, it seemed, knew it.
So what happens now that I'm not; now that I have the opportunity to redefine who I am and what I do?
To be honest, I've struggled. Stepping away from a job as public and as 24-hour as mine, has really forced me to think about what I want out of life and the kind of impact I want to make. And that's a scary thing. For the first time since I graduated from college, I'm asking myself life's "big questions."
Admittedly, I'm not the only one. A large number of my current classmates are also career switchers and they too are being asked (through a particularly aggressive schedule of briefings and recruiting events) to reinvent themselves as prospective consultants, bankers and managers.
But I always thought of myself as the girl with the plan. The girl who knew what she wanted and had only to figure out a way to get it. So maybe I really face two identity issues now: who am I now that I'm not a reporter? And who am I now that I have no idea where I'll be in two years?

1 comment:

Jackie said...

So many people share this sentiment...trust that you are not alone in it!