Figure Out Your Life Compass
In my opinion, the most important thing to know before graduating college is your life goal(s). This isn’t “what you want to be when you grow up.” This is what you want your life to be like, and possibly more importantly, what you don’t want to do. You need to have a guiding idea, or two, or three, to shape the choices you make with your career. That’s how you avoid being pressured into decisions you aren’t sure about. Knowing that you want to live in a big city and own three dogs will lead you to avoiding long contracts in smaller regional orchestras over gigging in the city you like. It will also lead you to living near the dog park, or in a place with a yard instead of a smaller studio just because the studio cheaper. It’s a compass - you may not know where you’re going to end up, but you at least know which direction you’re headed.
Before we get started: for this exercise, pretend you don’t have a significant other. Pretend you have the entire world open to you. No obligations! You can do whatever you want! If you do have obligations to people, familial or otherwise, you can factor those into your life once you’ve figured out your personal goals. Outside of acting as primary caretaker to a chronically ill or permanently disabled child, there is no external obligation that will forever prevent you from doing the things you truly want to do.
What do you need to survive? Obviously, food and shelter are important. Do you need particular insurance to cover medication? Do you need to live in an urban area to be close to a hospital? Do you need to live in a country or area of the country that is accepting of your identity? Take personal health issues into account before anything else!
What do you need to be happy? Do you need a short commute? Do you need to live alone, or have a great nightlife? Do you need to perform To be happy, I personally need to get regular in-person interaction with a couple specific people, which means travel is hard for me. You probably have similar things that you could physically survive without, but whose absence will make it nearly impossible to be really happy with your life. Those get first priority, just below things that literally mean life or death.
What expectations do you have? Really examine what you feel expected to do. Some expectations might be relatively obvious - many people feel like it’s expected that they graduate from school, get some kind of job, probably have some kind of family. Other expectations may be more more subtle. If you feel stuck doing something in life, that’s an expectation. If you feel trapped in your home town or state, or obligated to get married by a certain age, or like you’re a failure if you don’t get a job in a top 30 orchestra, those are all expectations. The thing to examine is whether these are your expectations, or society’s? Are they your parents’? If you feel like you have to do something, but are unenthused or actively dreading it, consider just. Not doing it. You don’t have to get married! You don’t have to get an orchestra job, or go to grad school, or stick with a certain instrument because it’s more in-demand!
What do you consider your ideal life at 30? 40? 50? Retirement? If you could do anything, what would you do? What is your lifestyle in those daydreams you have sometimes? Examine these daydreams and ideal lives for their appeal. What is satisfying about these ideas? Do you feel accepted because you have a certain job, or admired because you’ve lived up to a social standard? Those impulses are completely understandable. Just keep in mind that chasing external approval is never going to result in deep contentment. There will be another person you want to impress, or a social ideal you can’t live up to. Consider focusing on the things you love for their own sake, as opposed to for external validation.
Basically, this is a really long way of saying “do what you want, not what other people or social constructs tell you to do.” If I did the typical career path for someone with a master’s in vocal performance, I would either get a doctorate somewhere I don’t want to live, or audition for things all over the country with the goal of getting gigs that would likely have me away from home for anywhere from a month to a year. However, I like routine, stability, and my fiance an awful lot, so I’m going to be piecing together my own, unique career in my hometown area. I know my goals, and I’m going to work with those to figure out a life that I like. You can too.
You got this!
