When you don’t know where to start, ask!
Quest for questions
You’ve just realized that in a few weeks, you’ll no longer be a student! No more classes. Your routine will likely drastically change. You feel an intense pressure to enter the “real world,” but you still feel so unprepared. You may feel anxiety or panic begin to rise. If you’ve ever felt that sinking feeling about “what comes next,” after your school years are complete you’re not alone. I (and many I have talked with) have felt this way. How I have found simply asking questions to be an effective way to find the way forward.
Give yourself grace
Sometimes despite good intentions or simply because life is chaotic, we end up at the end of an allotted set of time to do something and we are completely unprepared for this period to end. This was me when it came to the end of my undergraduate study. Perhaps it’s a little hyperbolic to say that I was entirely unprepared but let me explain what I mean. When in my junior year I thought, “well I might go to graduate school for mathematics.” I made a critical mistake. I did not also ask my professors and find an advisor who could help me in this transition. This meant I was flying blind while figuring out which graduate schools to apply to and the best way to fill out graduate school applications. I should have simply contacted a mentor or frankly anyone in my department. I do not doubt at all that any one of them would have at least sent a brief response back with some of the important things to do to prepare. There are some standard things to prepare and think about. For example, they may have asked if I had studied for the GRE or if I had found a summer internship so that I could begin a research program.
I didn’t do any of these things so naturally I did not receive many positive responses to my applications. In a very real way, this situation was entirely my “fault.” But phrasing it this way seems overly harsh. In the years since, I have come to understand that it’s not always possible to rely on being perfectly prepared because as finite humans we simply don’t know everything. Hindsight is especially good at pointing out where we went wrong and yet retroactively punishing ourselves for our mistakes is rarely what is needed. Instead, when approaching this kind of situation we should do our best to accept the consequences and begin building our solution. It’s better to address what you can as the opportunities present themselves. If yesterday you didn’t know you should do something like apply to summer internships, don’t be mad at your yesterday self. Use the spark of energy to find out if any institutions are still taking applications.
Failure can open new directions
Although I received many “We regret to inform you…” style emails, I’m incredibly grateful that the university that I had attended for undergraduate studies did offer me a spot in their graduate school. For various cultural and historical reasons, it is not common for someone to pursue a PhD at the same institution where they obtained an undergraduate degree. I was also happy to still be in the same town as my then-girlfriend now wife who was pursuing a master’s degree at the time. By staying at the University we attended together our relationship didn’t experience the challenges of long distance. While grateful for the opportunity to continue my education, I was a bit bummed that I was not offered an assistantship to teach or do research. Not only are they good opportunities to begin gaining teaching and research experience, they also cover tuition and provide a stipend. But, fortunately I started to take things more seriously and after half a year a spot became available and I was able to teach undergraduate students.
By continuing to accept the opportunities we are given we can gain more opportunities to build experience toward what we want to achieve. Just because the first opportunity that you were really excited about falls through, doesn’t mean there won’t be other opportunities that you can be excited about. This is not to say that you’ll feel right as rain the whole time. As far as I know, it’s basically impossible not to feel some pain during episodes of failure. Often times a lot of pain! But I encourage you to keep going. It’s much easier to draw opportunities to yourself if you continue to seek them out.
This discussion on failure started with me describing a gap in my knowledge which I later felt responsible for. The way to move forward from this particular kind of situation was to get more information. But I either didn’t have the courage or didn’t know what to ask. This is where someone who has stood in a place similar to yourself can really help you. If you don’t already have a mentor or someone doing the thing you want to do in your sphere, there is no time like the present to go ahead and meet them and ask them questions. But often when breaking into a new area that we don’t have much experience with, even knowing what to ask is a challenge.
Ask questions about the specifics
Once you have identified a candidate person who may have knowledge that will help you may have trouble coming up with the right questions. Asking questions of others is a bit like fishing and your questions are the bait you chose. The quality of the prompt or question is related to the quality of answer. There are of course those out there who will offer great advice that is exactly what you need with minimal prompting or precise question asking. But don’t count on having this experience all time. In fact, good question asking is an excellent skill and will be beneficial in many areas of your life if master.
But returning to what to ask someone, to decide what to ask let’s rephrase our stated goal. We want to get into this or that life path but we don’t know how and we need specific direction in the immediate term to help us on our way. So think of specific things that someone can really dig into.
The problem with general questions is that you likely have lots of additional context floating around in your head which informs the statement of the question. But other people can’t see this context. This may materialize in you asking a question and then receiving an unsatisfactory answer. When you ask something like, “what’s it like to live your life?” You inherently have lots of ideas that are important to you. Maybe you’re interested in the details like what their hour by hour routine looks like. Maybe you are more interested in how many times they get to take a walk in the woods in a given week. Or maybe you are primarily wanting to know how much they get compensated or how drained at the end of the day they feel. We cannot expect the person answering the question to know the details of what we want to know unless we try to express it. At the same time a question should balance an overly long context with a statement of specifically what you are curious about. Although it would be great if we could prepare entire books for each other to make ourselves better known to each other, in reality people are generally very low on time and our requests need to be brief.
I think it is better to start with the specifics than to start questioning in generality. For example, “What is your favorite work related activity you perform regularly? In a given week, how much time do you get to spend doing that?” is likely more informative than, “how do you feel about your job?” It might indeed be really interesting to understand how someone feels about their job, but you are less likely to get an answer that will help you understand what having a certain profession means for you in that case. Use what you know about yourself to generate specific questions. Suppose you know that you meetings are a drain on your energy. Then you might like a situation where there is not a need for dozens of meetings each week. This is something we can directly ask, “how often do you sit in meetings and do you feel like it is important?” In this case you might even get the person to engage in their own self reflection on how their time is spent.
Strategies for asking questions
Don’t worry about trying to learn every detail about the profession, job, or environment. Just start with something concrete. This will be your first stepping stone not your only data you will ever collect. Also don’t fret too much about finding the perfect question. Any question that is on topic and specific will get the ball rolling. If after you receive your answer you still feel like you don’t know what to think (a common occurrence, don’t worry) then reflect on the answer you did get. Ask yourself, “what about this answer doesn’t really tell me what I want to know. Given this answer can I ask another question that feels like it is the thing I really want to know?” Use this feedback loop to fine-tune your exploration.
While refining your question asking skills, you may notice you have lots of questions about yourself. “Will I like this kind of job?” “Will I be able to handle this kind of stressful situation that comes up?” Unless the person you are asking your questions from is a close friend or family member you cannot hope they know you well enough to answer. But there is a strategy to asking questions that can help. If your primary question is about yourself, translate it in terms of your helper. Instead of “Will I be able to handle such and such stressful situation that people in this line of work face?” Ask, “I believe that working as a [insert your desired career or job or field] involves this specific situation. Do you find that stressful? If so, how do you deal with it? If not, do you ever have trouble dealing with other situations?” People generally like to talk about themselves and so will be more likely to give you a helpful answer in these kinds of situations.
Even if someone answers in a way that doesn’t feel particularly useful now the connection one makes is often worth more than the answer itself. You probably can’t expect to turn every request for help into a relationship that builds you community, but just asking people what they think about topics they find important is a surprisingly effective way to network. You can also ask them to suggest to you other people to talk with about the domain you are trying to break into.
Asking questions during a difficult time in your life requires some care. It’s important that you try not to encode your anxiety into your questions or overly bemoan your situation to those you are requesting help from. Think about it from their point of view. How would you respond to two emails asking basically the same thing where one is postured as a request from someone inches from destruction and the other in a more casual way. This is not to say your emotions are invalid or that you shouldn’t feel a heightened sense of importance to these requests. I offer this advice from a pragmatic point of view and do not suggest it is easy to not be very anxious about the future. I certainly was back then. In fact, there are many things I’m current anxious about right now! Thankfully, overall, my anxiety has decreased in part because I have improved at asking from help (I still need work).
Be kind to potential helpers
When asking for help from others, a reality that you need to prepare for is slight or moderate admonishment. Certain people have a compulsion to start their response to this kind of request like, “well you really should have started sooner”. They may even realize this isn’t quite helpful, and yet, they can’t help themselves. Sometimes even when we take responsibility for our mistakes in good faith, those who can help us will react with negativity or in a way we deem unhelpful. Let it be. If such a thing happens to you, take it as a sign that now is not the right time to get advice or assistance from that person. Certainly maintain politeness and thank them for their input but quickly put it out of your mind and focus on the other feedback and advice you are getting.
Also be understanding of those that you want help from. They are likely busy folks. Something that can happens to people who are generally perceived as nice is they end up with many requests since they are known as a person who helps out. This can sometimes mean they end up taking on too much work (or an amount of work they can’t realistically complete). And yet they really don’t like telling other people no, so they will say yes but they may not make progress on your request for a really long time. Be gentle with this kind of person, and in some cases just note to yourself that even though they agreed to do something for you, for whatever reason they cannot or will not have time. If that is the case you can start making plans to get what you need from another source. For me, I wouldn’t bring this to a direct confrontation unless it was a matter of life and death. If you really need that a reference letter and they haven’t gotten back to you and delayed twice, it might be better to find another option.
The kind of responses to a question depend on the format and style of the question asked. Read a bit about how to message someone to ask for help. It’s a real skill and needs to be nurtured. This is not a recommendation to spend days crafting each email, rather, consider doing two drafts at least and asking someone in your friend group or family for feedback. Ask them to critique the tone and emotional level setting before sending. If this is one of the first times you are communicating with this person, you want to set a good tone and make a good impression. Cast your net wide and don’t strive to only contact people who can be your perfect mentor. It’s okay if some do not respond at all and it’s okay if they don’t have perfect advice for you.
Do not also try to make yourself seem farther along than you are just because you are embarrassed by the late hour of your request. This one is really hard for me, because I feel a heavy blanket of shame when things are getting close to the end of their time and I have not yet completed what I need to. Again you must prepare for the possibility of someone on the other end of your communication being not understanding about the situation. Receiving such a response will likely be painful, however, making progress toward resolution always makes me feel a bit better regardless of how poor someone else takes the bad news.
Finally, don’t give yourself grand ultimatums in situations like this. It will only serve to give you anxiety and distract you from either making a concrete plan to get out of the predicament or to take action steps toward your goal. By ultimatum I mean, “If I don’t stay up all night filling out these applications then I have no hope.” Maybe an all-nighter will help but you are in a time crunch and cramming a bunch of stuff into one day is not sustainable over the course of a few months. Be sure to work at a relatively normal pace and track your progress.
Writing Prompts
For each of the prompts below consider writing for 15 minutes continuously to answer them. The next day, read and reflect on what you wrote. Ideas may stick out on your second reading as not worthwhile. Throw those out. Other ideas may need more refinement, consider writing about them instead. Other words you wrote may bring up questions. Call a friend and ask to talk about it.
Who are folks who can help you discover your way?
What would you like to ask an expert or high valued member of your perspective field?
What do you want them to help you with?