Life 1 That Thing That You Do
Consider:听Why did you study international affairs? What job came to mind?
How to Choose a Career Direction
A Life Design Approach听
Not sure what you want to do for a career in international affairs?
That鈥檚 totally natural! It鈥檚 great to have a lot of interests. This is a vast field and there are various ways each of us can build a fulfilling career in it.
Also, life surprises us and certain things we think we want now may simply not be in the cards for a range of reasons. So, it鈥檚 always good to have options.
Using life design, our goal is to help you investigate the areas you鈥檙e most curious about in international affairs while you鈥檙e a student. Rather than mapping out a strict 10-year career plan, we recommend you ask yourself: What am I curious about today?
When you experiment with these areas through informational interviews, job shadows, and internships, it helps you 鈥渢ry on鈥 these possible careers and build skills in them and build a network.
If you do this while you're a student, when you start applying to longer term jobs, you understand the realities of those jobs better. And for those you like, you鈥檙e better connected to actually land these positions, and thrive in them.
NOTE: This life design approach is based on strategies from the .
Start with self-awareness
When we better understand who we are and what we want out of life and work, it鈥檚 easier to decide what we want to do. The exercises below from Designing Your Life by Bill Burnett and Dave Evans are designed to help us do just that.
Complete this (30-45 min). This will help give you a solid compass by which to evaluate career and life options you鈥檙e considering.
Sketch out 3 possible lives for the next 5 years
Now you have a solid compass to evaluate life and career options by, consider 3 professional areas you are curious about right now and complete this (also known as Odyssey Plans) (45 鈥 60 min)
Why 3 lives?
3 plans give you real choices. If it鈥檚 hard for you to come up with 3 possible careers that interest you, here鈥檚 a quick way to get there
Life 2 The Thing You'd Do If Thing 1 Was Suddenly Gone
For example, what if the world didn鈥檛 need the job from Life 1 anymore? What else would you want to pursue?
Life 3 That Thing You Would Do If Money Were No Object
Consider, what would you want to do with your career if money or image were no object? What comes to mind?
For each of the 3 alternatives of the next 5 years of your life, include:
- A visual/graphical timeline鈥攚ith both personal and noncareer events. Because we can鈥檛 separate work from life!
- A title for each option
- 2-3 questions that this alternative is asking.
- A dashboard where you can gauge:
- Resources
- Do you have the objective resources鈥攖ime, money, skill, contacts鈥攜ou need to pull off your plan?
- Likability
- Are you hot or cold or warm about your plan?
- Confidence
- Are you feeling full of confidence, or pretty uncertain about pulling this off?
- Coherence
- Does this plan make sense for you? Is it consistent with you, your Workview and Lifeview?
- Resources
Connect with people in your fields of interest
Imagine your possible career paths
Take the possible lives that you鈥檙e curious about from the activity above, and connect with professionals actually in these careers.
Reach听out to your network
Learn more about the process of networking with our resources page on building your professional network.