​For those of you who have been following this blog since the beginning, or who know me IRL, you will know that I am a Hamilton nut. I previously wrote about Hamilton here, and have basically been looking for another opportunity to shoehorn this musical into my blog.
 
Two weeks ago, the planets aligned and I finally had the chance to see Hamilton myself. After three years of devotedly listening to the soundtrack, it somehow managed to live up to all the hype and was just as revolutionary (pun intended) as I had hoped it would be. And this time, I was struck by a different element of Hamilton’s and Burr’s experiences.
 
The historic moment that these men occupied was extraordinary, and the decisions that they got to participate in have consequences that still reverberate within our society today. But I was continually impressed by how these men demonstrated exactly the kind of professional flexibility that I encourage in this series.
 
Hamilton trained as a lawyer, but jumped at the opportunity to be a junior delegate to the Constitutional Convention where he advocated for a strong central government. He later accepted the chance to become the first Secretary of the Treasury and fought to implement the financial framework that we still use today.
 
Burr, likewise, studied law and entered politics when he was appointed New York State Attorney General. He leveraged his experience as Attorney General into a successful run for Senate where he served for six years. He also ran for president twice, and served as Vice President to Thomas Jefferson for four years.
 
These men were living in a time of upheaval, which enabled them to have an enormous impact on their country and on the course of history. In some ways, we are living in a similar moment of transformation with the advent of new technology that changes our lives on an almost yearly basis. I’ve talked a lot about how many of the people I’ve interviewed are doing jobs that didn’t exist five years ago, how the rapid evolution of work and industries means that we are constantly developing new professional skills. And this evolution requires flexibility and a strong tolerance for ambiguity.
 
I try to hold this in my mind as well, that this work that I love may not be around for me to do for another four decades. Initially, that makes me sad and a little scared, but I also feel exhilarated, because that means I’ll get the chance to do something else, something I can’t even imagine right now. And like Alexander Hamilton, Aaron Burr, and the other men and women who lived during that revolutionary moment and left their mark, I want to be open to and excited for it. 

I mentioned last week that this is the time of year when my high school seniors are starting to make their decisions about where to go to college next year. For some of them, the answer is cut and dried: there’s one school that makes the most sense personally, academically, and financially. But for many of my students, the decision is murkier.
 
I encourage my students to build some variation into their college lists: big and small schools, local and out-of-state colleges, marine biology and journalism programs. Shockingly, teenagers are not robots and they often have evolving interests, goals, and ideas of themselves. So we kick the can down the road and leave that as a decision for the future. But today is that future, and now is the time they have to choose one of those paths, which can feel impossible. It’s not impossible because there are no good choices; it’s impossible precisely because there are many good choices, and we love, more than anything, to imagine what our lives could be like.
 
In 2017, Martin E.P. Seligman wrote in The New York Times, “We call ourselves Homo sapiens, the “wise man,” but that’s more of a boast than a description. […] What best distinguishes our species is an ability that scientists are just beginning to appreciate: We contemplate the future. […] A more apt name for our species would be Homo prospectus, because we thrive by considering our prospects.” Seligman is a professor of psychology at University of Pennsylvania and an expert on Positive Psychology, and optimism and pessimism, and he argues that it is our ability to plan and to imagine the future that sets us apart from other species.
 
Getting to choose one of several colleges is a wonderful problem to have. It allows you to envision yourself in different environments, with different friends, as different versions of yourself. Maybe you’re at a college by the ocean and you become an avid surfer, starting every day with the waves and a breakfast burrito. Or maybe you’re studying computer science, spending your weekends networking at hackathons. Or maybe you’re living in a big city, having debates about your philosophy homework at a hipster coffee shop.
 
Channel your inner Homo prospectus and envision yourself as different people in different places, and then choose the one you feel the most excited about. And know that there is no wrong answer; you can be happy in lots of different environments. And this is by no means the last big decision you’ll get to make that shapes your life. So imagine all your different futures, choose wisely, and then start daydreaming about what comes next.

​I was flying home from visiting friends and colleges in Austin this week, casually flipping through the in-flight magazine, when I saw a blurb about untranslatable words, those words in other languages (usually German) that somehow convey an entire paragraph in English. Words like saudade, which in Brazilian Portuguese means, “a feeling of longing, melancholy, or nostalgia for a happiness that you merely hoped for.” Or kalsarikännit, which in Finnish means, “drinking at home in your underwear with no intention of going out.” Or my favorite, wabi-sabi, which is a Japanese word that translates to, “a worldview centered on an appreciation for the complexity of real life.”
 
I’ve been thinking about this idea a lot for the past few weeks, the complexity and ambiguity of real life. Some of you are aware that April is when high school seniors hear back from the colleges they have applied to and start making their decision about where to go next fall. One story that has consistently come up in the last few years is how colleges are putting increasing numbers of students on their waitlists. There are lots of reasons for this, like students applying to more colleges, making it harder to predict how many students will accept an offer of admission. But the result of this expansion of the waitlist is that students find themselves in college decision limbo, neither admitted nor denied, just staring at a question mark.
 
Hearing “no” from a college you really care about is disappointing, for sure. But after the initial sting, my students are able to turn their focus to the schools that have accepted them, that have given them scholarships, that have thrown them a virtual parade to welcome them to their community. They choose a school, buy a sweatshirt, and move forward. But for my students that get put on the waitlist, they have a hard time taking that next step. Knowing that there is a fraction of a chance that they might get in makes them hold on to hope. And in this way, they keep one foot in and one foot out, choosing a school but not fully committing to it for a few more months.
 
The challenge of the waitlist is that, instead of a yes or a no, this is a maybe. But the waitlist is also a unique opportunity to practice wabi-sabi. As life goes on, there is less and less of a script to follow, and so there is more and more ambiguity. You can get married and have babies, or not. You can become a lawyer or a doctor, or make up your own job. You can live in the same place you grew up, or move to a new city every two years. And with all of those choices comes uncertainty and doubt. So instead of letting the waitlist get you down, think of it as a chance to hone your wabi-sabi, to appreciate the complexity, to enjoy not knowing what comes next. 

Exactly a year ago, I posted about the first anniversary of the When I Was 17 series and shared all the things I had taken away from the almost 50 interviews I’d done. I ended the post with a glance toward the future, with ideas about maybe turning this project into a podcast or a book or who knows. Reading that now, another year later, I’m laughing because I still don’t know what happens next in this project, the same way my interviewees and I laugh at our younger selves who envisioned this clear-cut path from childhood to adulthood.
 
After two years of doing this project, I believe even more strongly in the hypothesis I started out with: that it’s totally okay not to have a set career path before you graduate from high school. And in the last year, I’ve had the chance to explore some educational and professional alternatives for young adults who don’t feel like a four-year college is the next step for them. Like taking a gap year between high school and college, which I got to learn about from students who were about to move abroad for a year with Global Citizen Year. Or going to a community college, which I learned about in my interview with Kathy Rentsch, assistant vice president of Quinsigamond Community College. Or participating in a vocational program, like a coding bootcamp, which a few of my interviewees have done.
 
I have also become more aware of the reality that a 45-year career is long, and there’s room for multiple pivots in that timespan. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that, on average, people hold 11.7 jobs between the ages of 18 and 48. And each of those jobs represents an opportunity to gain new skills, take on different responsibilities, and maybe even change careers. Like my interviewee, Cecilia Mason whose somewhat random job with Georgia’s Family and Children Services inspired her love for the law, which led her to start her own business as a fiduciary. Sometimes those jobs even overlap, like my interviewee, Lynda Deschambault, who served as her town mayor while working at the EPA. And sometimes, like for many of my interviewees, each job guides you closer and closer to the work you care about the most.
 
While I didn’t start this project with a long-term plan in mind, now that it’s been two years, I can’t imagine stopping. Every time I meet someone new, I can’t keep myself from asking them what they do for work and how they found their way to that profession and what they thought they wanted to do when they were young. And the answer is totally different every time, and right away, I get sucked into their story, asking them again and again, “What happened next?” And even though I still don’t know exactly what this series will look like a year from now, I can’t wait to see what happens next.