How I Purposely Defined My Career

I must admit, when I went off to college I really did not know what I wanted to become. I originally wanted to take anthropology. I've just always been fond of learning about the past and how it has shaped who we are today. And that curiosity has stayed with me until today. The first thing I did when the pandemic was announced was to do some research on how they survived and got back up from the Spanish flu. I super love watching documentaries and history feature films. 

My plan though got derailed and I ended up taking two degrees that were supposed to help me prepare to become a lawyer. I only realized what I really wanted to do when I was in my junior year in college. Too late to shift. I decided to finish my studies and started planning how to steer my career towards what I really wanted. I started taking my masters degree a year after I graduated. 

I firmed up how I wanted to steer my career when we had marketing classes. I super loved the idea of becoming a product manager. I slowly began to understand what skills I needed to develop to become one. Midway through my studies I joined my Mom's company and helped her to export her product. I learned a lot during that time since you need to learn everything when you're a business owner (I was the business owner's only staff outside of our workers). 

Unfortunately exporting our product became unfeasible and Mom decided to close her company. I was without a job and I started selling baked goods to sustain my studies (and Miggy's). I realized it was time to put into action my plan. Armed with experience I applied for two jobs. One was to become a marketing manager for a furniture company and the other was to be a product manager for an exporters directory. 

I failed miserably when I interviewed for the furniture company because I got super nervous when they immediately put me in front of the company president. I went home really sad, but was determined to nail my next interview. My Kuya counselled me to over-prepare so that's what I did. I got the job. 

And the skills list that I made I started to check it off. I never said no to a project, no matter how hard it would be I would just do it and treat it as a learning experience. And that's how I picked up the skills I needed to keep moving forward. I basically treated my career as a huge learning experience while doing something I enjoy. I went through ten jobs until I found one where I continue to learn everyday.

I realized now it was not so much about identifying a "title" you'd want to have on your business card. It's really more about gaining more skills as you go along. My director told me that if I wanted to move to my job I could be a GM already. It's not what I want though since I still enjoy what I do. I think as much as I didn't earn the original degree I wanted, I'm living it and more. And you'll be at the right place when you let God lead the way for you. 

I thought I'd post this tidbit since one of my anaks recently asked me advise about moving forward with his career. And he pointed out that I gave him a good idea to ponder on. I guess my perspective has been this way because my Ate and Kuya told me when I growing up that if you end up working on something you love doing, you'd never work a day in your life. 

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