“When I grow up…”

For a long time (read: my entire life up until college graduation) it was assumed that I would be attending law school eventually. Eventually meaning that my parents would have preferred right away and I preferred to wait it out. That’s because, although I had always intended on studying law, earning my J.D., and becoming a practicing lawyer, at some point down the road law school lost its luster.

Maybe it was overkill. I had just spent four years sitting in classrooms listening to all of my pretentious classmates compare LSAT scores and letters of recommendation. Maybe it was the fact that I had conveniently fallen ill twice before my own LSAT exam. Or maybe it was because as I matured, I realized I wasn’t ready to acquire backbreaking student loans for a profession I wasn’t 100 percent positive about.

Upon entering my last semester of college I scored an amazing internship with a former Florida legislator and current all around do-gooder. Somewhere down the road my boss, well recognized within the community for his philanthropic work, became my mentor and with that I began to exam fields outside of law.

Writing professionally was never something I planned or considered doing. Somehow during my transition from college student to real person I stumbled upon the opportunity and ran with it.

It is important to remember that while you are scouring the job boards and classifieds to keep your options open. Just for today search for professions that you never thought about before. If you’re the guy who watches the Super Bowl strictly for the commercials why not try your hand at advertising? If you knit Christmas presents every years why don’t you do some research on textile and design companies in your area?

Sometimes our professional lives don’t play out exactly as we have imagined and we don’t become what we thought we would be when we “grew up”. We may not become professional baseball players, astronauts, or high profile attorneys. But by stepping outside of ourselves and looking in unusual places, we may find the career that has been waiting for us.