I went to university straight out of school, signing up to study a BA and then an LLB. The BA was in English, but also Law, so that I could get my LLB as fast as possible, and then get my articles and then get admitted as an attorney and then become a lawyer in a nice firm and stay there forever becoming increasingly awesome as my pay checks and offices and suits got increasingly better.
I thought this was a top plan. As one often does when one hasn’t really thought something through.
Why law? Because it was a profession that seemed to suit smartarses, and I knew I had that down. The only problem? The bits of me that made me suitable for a career in law are not the bits of me I like. And, when I finally passed my board exams and started practicing, I realised I don’t really care about money and offices. And I definitely don’t care about clothes. And I get bored easily. So…not law then. Oops.
So I quit, went home and reconstructed my career-thinking completely over the next 15 years. And this is what 42-year-old me would tell 18-year-old me, if I got to take her for a drink.
1. Don’t coast the English degree before you get to the ‘real’ law stuff. Law is book learning. Literature is life learning.
2. Do the law degree too. It’s hugely useful in really weird ways like: making you good at deadlines and billing and public speaking and contracts.
3. Google is coming. Your ability to memorise a lever arch file of notes? Eye-wateringly useless.
4. Stop thinking profession, start thinking skills. Don’t ask: ‘What do I want to be?’ Ask: ‘What am I good at?’ Chances are good that the job you’re going to do has not been invented yet. Stressing about job titles and career ladders is outdated.
5. Learn all the time. Be it from universities or online courses or podcasts or conferences or gap years overseas or odd jobs or internships. The only way to find your own talent is to look for it in as many interesting places as possible.
6. Be playful. When you find a skill you enjoy flexing, find others that pair with it well. Rather than thinking of yourself as a drone in a corporate machine, think of yourself as Lego, looking for other pieces to hinge into. If you are Lego, and you find others that fit well with you… you can build anything you can imagine. And take it apart. And build something else. Again and again.
7. Aim to work hard and get things right, rather than aiming to ‘be the best’, a notion that tends to be pretty narrowly focused. That way, you have some leeway to stop beating yourself up while you gain confidence, experience and common sense. And you’ll probably turn out better than your blinkered best would have been.
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