Where to next?

Recently an old friend emailed me, and shared with me his struggles about leaving college and finding that he lacks a sense of direction. I wanted to thank this friend for reaching out! It helps me in my writing and sharing to know that others have these same struggles. I also believe writing to be the most honest and cathartic form of communication.

It seems like it would be great to lose the chains of college, and just live for your own direction. Of course, this is only true until you really realize, “Oh shit. I have to determine my own direction.” That was a scary thought for me. Through college I got used to professors having expectations of me that I fought to fill. The praise and acceptance of both my peers and superiors was addicting. I just wanted other people to tell me I was doing a good job. People did, but it left me feeling hollow.

In my experience, one of the best feelings in the world is to feel like you are living for a purpose greater than yourself.

I felt like this when I spent a summer in Wyoming. I sacrificed my time and fun to run ninety mile weeks, week in and week out in the high and dry Wyoming air. Some days, it was more painful than others, and it inflicted a sort of mental anguish that was far greater than the physical toll of a solo 20 mile long run. Every morning I still beat the sun out of bed, and ran. I did this for my teammates. I placed my hopes in the dream that we would be running at nationals that fall.

I also felt like this during my junior year of college. That year was my hardest year academically. I woke up, ate breakfast, studied, went to class, studied, and went to sleep. Literally, if I was wake I was probably trying to cram in one more fact about RNA polymerase or rotational velocity. Was it necessarily the best thing for my life? That’s hard to say, but I know that without that year my dreams of going to med school would have vanished faster than my dreams of running at nationals.

In hindsight, I don’t know if either the goal of competing at cross country nationals, or going to med school were necessarily “good” goals. But I believe the bottom line stands. At those times of my life, I suffered, but I was also extremely satisfied because I knew that my life had purpose, and that there was something out there more important than my selfish needs.

I certainly lack that direction now. Being out of school, one of the things I miss most is the community of students. Sharing the suffering of cramming for a biochem midterm, or writing a senior exercise about the biological implications about the hydrogenase isoenzymes is one like no other. Having had that extrinsically instilled sense of direction drilled into me for the past four years, my life now feels aimless and lost.

But I think losing that guidance and being aimless for a while can be valuable. Eventually I hope to be back in school. However, when I return, it will probably be as a research student, where the guidance and framework is vague.

On a sidenote, I have heard from several of my friends that research is a highly intrinsically motivated field, you really need to be in it for yourself. In that sense, it’s a lot like running. You can’t bother comparing yourself to other runners, there are always stronger, faster, and more disciplined runners. You can only look at yourself, and measure yourself against your own internal GPS.

Anyways, back to the being lost point. I’m hoping that this aimlessness will force me to grow my own sense of meaning to life, a much more sustainable driving force than the praise of others. With graduation, the framework of school can disappear. With changing interests, the colleagues that motivated you can disappear. Eventually, maybe we all have to find something we love enough that we can intrinsically motivate ourselves to do it. It’s hard to say how that discovery process works. Maybe we just fuck around until we find something we like. Who knows.

from ken

Are you thinking about something? Write about it and post it here! Email me! ken.e.noguchi@gmail.com