Growing up, I always had a faint idea of what I wanted to do. My parents were both business people, my dad was an entrepreneur, and my mom was a banker. Both were successful in their own way and I wanted to be just like them.
At 14 years old, I had already planned my life out: go to one of the best schools in the country, work for 2 years, then go to grad school abroad. I had not planned it after grad school because I thought I would have my own life figured out at that point, why the need to plan it at 14? After all, the grown up who would be at grad school must be smarter than 14 year old me.
4 years later at 18 years old, I only applied to the top 3 colleges for business in the Philippines, and got into all of them. I decided on Ateneo de Manila and graduated another 4 years later with a degree in Management Economics. My life was right on track at this point.
After 5 months of traveling around the world, I finally started dedicating all my time applying to jobs aimlessly. I had applied to only the firms I knew and to any role because I never really thought about what I wanted to do in a company. I didn’t know people specialized in things. All I knew is I had to work… somewhere doing… something.
After 3 months of searching and gathering different offers, I decided to work in a Business Development role at a 1-month old startup. To be honest, there was really no thought process behind this decision other than it was what offered the most money. I stayed at this job for about 20 months. I have to admit, I learned a lot and enjoyed it at the very beginning. But I knew there was something wrong and that I was not going to be happy doing that forever, even if they paid me more money. I found no meaning in selling finance products to companies, and if I had to quantify the impact my role had on society, I could certainly say that it would be equal to zero or less.
At this point, I was 24 years old, confused, and didn’t know what to do. This was when I decided I was going to change something and start thinking about grad school. Without telling anyone, I had already researched and chosen a school I wanted to go to.
I saw myself 4 months later moving to Madrid alone. I joined a program at IE Business School where most of the students were younger, came straight from undergrad and had no real experience. We were all on the same boat: young and trusting that the whole process of grad school will lead us where we wanted to be. Where did we even want to be? We all didn’t know.
Only 2 months into the program, many had already decided they wanted to go into consulting or banking, the usual route business students go. For a brief period of time, I thought that it was what I wanted as well. I tried my hand at it by dedicating my time doing all the finance and strategy projects at school. I had applied to dozens of Investment Banks and Consulting Firms to my disappointment. Maybe I just wasn’t cut out for that world.
7 months rolled by and it was 2 months before graduation. I still had no idea what I was going to do next. Many of my peers knew where they were going and what they were doing at this point. After many anxious breakdowns and almost no real contemplation, I decided to apply for grad school again. This time, I knew I was doing to buy myself more time.
Yale University was something I only saw in the movies. I never aspired to attend the school simply because I didn’t know that I could. But by some miracle, I got in with a huge scholarship and started only 3 months after I applied.
Now, I was very sure I was going to figure out what I wanted at Yale. It was Yale, after all. But still, nothing. I graduated with a diploma, $35k in student debt, and an empty “Objectives” section on my resume.
I write this 8 months after graduating from Yale and I could say that I’m still not entirely sure what I want to do. I went into business school knowing that I wanted to be in business and figured out along the way that I was good at design, strategy and working with any type of person. This post isn’t to say it was all worthless. Heck, those 2 years were the most formative years of my life. What I learned more than anything else is to go through it day by day and not expect one a-ha, lightbulb moment to be that defining moment in my life. It takes years and years for people to finally figure out what they want, many people never do.
I find that these 2 years of procrastination have taught me what real adult life is. It’s nothing but a life full of figuring things out as they go and not worrying about not knowing the answers because they will come as you go.