Don't think outside the box. Live outside of it.
Imagine this next sentence in the thickest, most quintessential Boston accent you can: "Last stop, Harvard Square. Harvard Square is the last stop." Those were the words the conductor said as my subway car pulled into Harvard terminal on my recent trip to Boston, signifying the end of my train ride, but the beginning of an awesome night.
I had just gotten off a plane from Atlanta and was headed to a day-long interview with an insurance company the following day - I had purposefully schedule my flight to get in early so I could check out the city. It was 6 o'clock on a Sunday evening and the first day after day light savings time. In other words, it was dark. But that didn't stop me as I walked around Harvard Square, checking out the New England boutiques, packed coffee shops, hole-in-the-wall burger joints and the overwhelming amount of Harvard paraphernalia.
Harvard wasn't the only town I checked out that night. I took the train over to Chestnut Hill to check out Boston College where hundreds of students packed the commons, studying, eating, and hanging out before another week of class. I even got a chance walk around downtown Boston and stumbled on a pastry shop equivalent of a Savannah candy store, with more types of cup cakes, cannolis, and caramel apple fritters than you could even imagine.
Eight hours, a starched shirt, and a half Windsor knot later and I was out the hotel headed to a five hour interview with what I assumed to be my competition for a $50,000 salary. But let me let you in on a little secret. I was wrong, dead wrong. Not because they weren't qualified, prepared, or educated - in fact, they were probably ahead of me in all of those aspects. No, I was wrong because they weren't my competition, because after spending an hour in a cubicle filled basement with no windows, I decided I was not going to compete to be stuck in a square for the next five, ten, fifteen years of my life, and I hope that you don't do the same.
In fact, I'll be personally offended, borderline peeved, if I find out anyone would leave a city like Athens to go to a city like Boston and spend all of your time answering phone calls about payroll, filling out TPS reports and waiting for the clock to hit 5:00. This city and your life has too much to offer for you to be throwing your personality and your creativity down in the basement. I don't know if you've checked the research, but human beings don't belong in boxes. We put products into boxes and we ship them, and your future, your ideas, and your humanity is not a product that deserves to be closed up and shipped off. So why try? Why push all of your personality, your quirkiness, your sense of humor and your passion into a square hole? It won't fit, I'm telling you. It won't fit because there's no You-shaped container to fit yourself into, they don't exist. Which is a huge bummer. So, what do you do about it?
Well, I guess you can keep trying to fit into that box, or you can start living outside of it.