The Appeal of the Clear Career Path
And why so many people fall into careers that aren’t right for them
I’m sometimes convinced that the reason a lot of people become lawyers, doctors, or other similar professional careers is that the path to these sorts of jobs is laid out pretty well. There’s a sort of blueprint you can follow — go to college, get good grades, do well on some standardized tests, and so forth.
When I look back at my own education and career, the fact that there was a clear blueprint I could follow is probably why I ended up going to law school and becoming a lawyer in the first place. Sure, I told myself that I had a desire to be a lawyer. But I’m not sure how true that really was.
In reality, became a lawyer because it was a recognizable job — one that was clearly defined and had step-by-step processes on how to get there. As a new grad looking for a good job in a bad economy, becoming a lawyer appealed to me because it gave me direction.
The world is a confusing place. And I think a lot of us are looking for direction when we’re trying to figure out what to do with our lives. When faced between a clear path versus charting our own path, the clear path often wins — even if it’s not necessarily the right path for us.
But before we go too far on our paths, I think it can benefit us to think about why we end up on the paths we choose.
The Clear Career Path
When you think about it, law and medicine — and indeed, many other professional careers — follow fairly structured paths. There’s a step-by-step process that almost anyone can follow. Much of it comes down to grades and the ability to take standardized tests (which themselves can be studied for and gamed).
Take the example of what you need to do if you want to become a lawyer at a big law firm. I can boil it down to these steps:
- Get good grades at a decent undergrad.
- Get a good LSAT score.
- Go to the best law school you can get into.
- Get good grades in law school and get on law review.
- Land a summer associate position at a big law firm.
- Do a prestigious clerkship.
- Get a job as an associate at a prestigious law firm.
Of course, this is a generalization. But the steps laid out above are pretty close to what you need to do to become a big shot attorney. I’m fairly certain that I could take any reasonably intelligent 18-year-old and guide them into this sort of career seven years into the future simply by having them follow these steps. The process is pretty similar for doctors too; I imagine — get good undergrad grades and a good MCAT score, do well in medical school, land a prestigious residency, and so on.
For those of us looking for direction, the step-by-step process of law or medicine can obviously be very appealing. I can tell you exactly what you need to do if you want to become a doctor or a lawyer. But I can’t really tell you how to become an entrepreneur or how to start a business or how to do some other non-obvious job where the path isn’t really defined at all.
It’s the appeal of this clear path that I think leads to so many doctors and lawyers finding themselves unhappy and looking to do other things. That’s not to say that people don’t genuinely want to become doctors or lawyers. But there’s also no denying that there are a lot of doctors and lawyers — myself included — who are interested in doing things unrelated to their regular jobs (for example, a Facebook group called Physician Side Gigs has over 70,000 members).
It makes me think people found their way into these careers, not necessarily because it was right for them, but because the path was well defined.
Choose the Path That’s Right for You
The purpose of this post isn’t to say that people going into law or medicine are doing it only because the path is laid out in front of them and they aren’t able to figure out other things they can do. I know that there are many people that were born to become lawyers and doctors. And I know many people in these careers who love what they do.
This post is really a reflection on my path and the paths of many others like me. Going to law school worked well for my skill set. I’m good at following processes and I knew exactly what I needed to do if I wanted to become a lawyer at a big firm. But whether it was the right career path for me is another thing. If I had thought about it more, maybe I could have used a bit of my creativity to think about other things that made more sense for me.
Two years ago — after three years of law school and five years of practicing law — I finally moved away from the clear career path. The clear career path is the path I started on. But as I started doing other things to earn income, I realized there are a lot of ways to make a living. The possibilities are endless.
The clear career path may be right for you — and there’s absolutely nothing wrong with it! I think the most important thing to ask ourselves is why we follow the paths that we’re on. Are they really the right paths for us? Or are we only following them because they’re clearly defined?
It’s up to you to figure that out.
A version of this article first appeared on www.financialpanther.com
