Course Purpose
If you are reading this, you may be a college student. Maybe you are the parent of a college student. Maybe all of your children are gone and you haven’t been in college for many, many years, Regardless of what point you are at in your life, we have all been asked what we wanted to do with our lives.
For me, that was always so stressful. I never had a good answer. I felt like I needed to have an answer that would illlustrate that I knew the thing that I was passionate about and that I would want to do for 40 years until I retired. But nothing seemed to stick out. I tried lots of things and I couldn’t find that one magic thing that I wanted to do. And the longer I was in college, the more I realized that the majority of people were like me. Most people didn’t know what they wanted to do and nothing jumped out at them.
So as I went through school, I started to put in a ton of work to figure out what I wanted to do. I got coaches and I networked and researched. I asked lots of questions. I tried a lot of different classes and jobs and got a lot of experience. I learned a lot.
Towards the end of my experience in college, I started to realize that not everyone has that one magic thing they want to do forever. Some of us are so lucky but it seems like most are not. There are so many other ways to go about building a fulfilling career and life. I also realized that what I had learned put me in a great place to help others. A lot of people could really benefit from what I had learned. That is the purpose of this course. It is a chance for me to take what I learned and give it to others in order to help them more effectively figure out what it is that they want to do, how to ask better questions of themselves, and how to make it happen. It was also a chance for me to push myself and do something that I had never done and that I had been thinking about doing for a long time.
Samples of the Course
The following is just a sample of the course. It is not the full product
In my experience, they create undue pressure to have everything figured out all at once. They also seem to create this generally false notion that there is one career out there that if you find it, will keep you fulfilled and excited for the next 45 years until you retire. For some, that actually is the case. But for most, that does not seem to be how it works. It sure wasn’t for me.
As I got into college, everyone talked about finding their career. I had some friends that KNEW they wanted to be a nurse or a teacher or an engineer and were going straight for that. I would talk to family or friends and they wanted to know what I wanted to do for my job. It gave me the expectation that I would take a class one semester, and it would hit me like a sack of bricks that whatever I was studying in that class was what I wanted to do for the rest of my life. I have since learned though that is not how it was going to work for me. As I mentioned earlier, I don’t think that that is how it works for most people. Most of us slowly build the career that we want, going from opportunity to opportunity.
This idea of not being able to see the entire picture will be a big part of this course going forward. You are never going to be able to plan everything years and years into the future. Even if you could, circumstances, interests, and passions will inevitably change. Letting go of the need to have everything figured out right now before you can take any steps forward will relieve you of a lot of stress.
When you let go of the need to have it all figured out right now, you can better focus on the opportunities that are around you. You can be more grateful for the things that you do know and that are going well, rather than what you don’t have figured out. You can focus better on the next steps that you can take.
If you are still stressed about the need to have your future figured out, if you don’t see how letting go will not just make things worse, I understand that. After all, the future will come and we want to be prepared for it. The idea of letting go and not having everything figured out stressed me out too. You might take solace in the fact that that is not the only thing that goes into figuring out your career. You can’t just stop worrying about having a plan and expect everything to happen. Over the rest of this course, we will learn about better questions to ask ourselves and different skills that we can learn to help build the kind of future that we want. Just remember for now that it is okay to not have it all figured out and that you might not have it all figured out like it seems others do. As you keep taking steps forward, you will be able to get to where you want to go.
Challenges
There were two big challenges that I faced. The first big challenge that I faced was time. The second challenge that I faced was a lack of structure. I will explain them in a little more detail below.
Time
Over the past few months, I had a lot of things going on that had hard deadlines or immediate restraints on my time. Some of those things include a new job, a new girlfriend, various volunteer responsibilities, and school work, among other things. Because those were more immediately pressing on my time, it was very easy to let this course fall to the side. I would sit down and write and not have the energy that I would like or I would push working on it off to the next day. Sometimes, to get the work done I wanted to, I would block off a few hours and work on it all at once, which causes me to do less effective work. As I have been working on this course, it has felt like I have been battling time to make time to work on it and so that has been a challenge.
Lack of Structure
When I started working on this course, I figured that I would just be able to Google how to build a course and there would be a nice tutorial that said “If you want this type of course, do a,b,c and if you want this type of course then do x,y,z.” I learned that that was not the case, however.
There are so many different ways to build a course. You can build it on a site like Udemy. You can add lots of questions. you can add lots of exercises. You can add lots of videos and pictures. You can add none of that and go for just a big block of text. I’m sure there are more options than that too that I don’t even know about.
With so many options, it made it hard to know what to do. The first week or so was spent just reading about different options and what might be best. In the end, I just chose to type it all out in Microsoft Word. If I keep working on this, I will likely add a lot of the elements that I just mentioned but I found that it was best for me to just get all of the words out that I wanted to include. After that, it felt more effective to go and add all the bells and whistles.
Process
Outside of what I mentioned above, the process was very simple. There were three distinct steps.
The first step was to just dump out everything in my mind related to the topic. I wrote down any questions that I’d asked, any struggles I’d had, any experience I’d had, any advice I’d been given, or anything else that I could think of. Doing so helped me to sort all of that info out and notice trends and what steps were built on others and things like that. Once I had done that, I moved on to the second step.
For the second step, I conducted extra research. I talked to friends and professors about the topic. I asked them what advice they would give to someone in a similar situation and what had helped them. I read articles and things too to see if there was anything that I was missing.
Lastly, after I had done all of that, I started writing out the course. I made a Table of Contents that went in an order I thought I’d like to follow. Then I started to type it all out. As the order of items needed to be tweaked, I tweaked them. I also would show what I had to friends from time to time and got their input and feedback and made changes accordingly.
Experience Overview
Overall, this was an amazing experience. I learned a lot about myself. I learned that I really love to write and I feel like I am pretty good at it. My thoughts come out a lot more clearly and a lot more organized. I also learned that I knew a lot more about this topic than I originally thought I did. There were things that I had forgotten that as I got working, I remembered. Creating, specifically through writing, is something that I want to do more of in the future. It helps me to remember things more, it helps me to think more clearly, and it just makes me excited.
I also learned that providing instruction is something that I really enjoy. It helps me to feel fulfilled. As I focus on giving instruction, it also helps me to think about what career opportunities I want to take next.
As far as writing the course went, the experience was very smooth. I had a lot of support from people I asked to help and there were no real complications typing it all out since it was just whatever I wanted put into a Word document. I would be interested to see if there was any trouble as I tried to format what I had into an online course platform like Udemy.
Insights and Takeaways
Some of the takeaways I talked about in my experience section. There is one other big takeaway that I have though. Helping others is the best way to become an expert in something. Previously, I read a book by Russell Brunson, an entrepreneur. In it, he shares his experience becoming a state champ in wrestling. He says that it was not until he had to teach others to wrestle that he became an expert though. It forced him to think through everything he did and explain it in very simple terms. I experienced the same thing. I knew how to do a lot of things that help me plan for my future. Sitting down and explaining it to someone else helped me master the skills much better though. If we want to be experts, we need to help others.
Summary Video
Thank you for reading!