The Career Clinic Blog

You’re good in math, but you have no interest in becoming an actuary. You’re okay in science, too--but you have even less interest in becoming a researcher or a professor. You want to make really good money when you graduate, and you thought Dagny Taggart in Atlas Shrugged was one cool chick.

Engineering it is! Or…was.

The reasons I just gave for choosing civil engineering as my major in college weren’t altogether irresponsible for a high school kid. Except there’s more to it.

I wanted to be special, and a woman in engineering was special at the time.

Pathetic, I know.

I sailed through my freshman year on what I’d learned in my advanced math classes in high school. Sophomore year was a different story. I knew within a week I was in deep, deep trouble. I was getting into more of the core engineering classes--and if I stuck with them I was in for…hell.

The problem was, I didn’t know what I’d rather be doing. The things I loved to do, the things I was really good at, were fun. And fun was something I thought you had in the evenings or on weekends or after you retired. Not at work.

Now what?

I took the advice of a favorite professor, who knew that many of us wanted to bail. “Make sure you’re running to something,” he suggested, “and not away from it.”

It made sense. When you don’t know where you’re going, as I’ve come to believe, you may as well hang out where you are.

Not only that, but it would’ve really bothered me to quit. You don’t quit something just because it’s difficult. I knew I’d prove something--if only to myself--if I got that degree.

I graduated with a 3.0 average, I passed the Engineer-in-Training exam, and I never went near a real engineering job after I graduated. Smart moves. Every one!

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My drafting teacher in high school made a good case for majoring in civil engineering when I got to college. I had a crush on him, so civil engineering it was!

I may have been silly, but I wasn’t smug. I spent summers in college as an engineering intern. I wanted to get a feel for the work. I got a feel, all right. I knew by the time I graduated I wanted nothing to do with engineering.

My first assignment on the construction crew, for example, was at a yard where they made asphalt. My job was to shovel the powder that fell out of the machine that mixed the lime and sand with the tar. One of the guys keeping an eye on me, so to speak, wanted to know if I was married. My heart sunk at the thought of him hitting on me, but I needn’t have worried. “It’s a good thing,” he said when I answered. “Because if your husband ever saw you like that he’d divorce you.”

Glamorous it ain’t.

One of my next assignments was on a crew repairing part of the interstate. We weren’t laying down a new strip of highway. We were patching. The patches left holes in the shoulder, too, so I carried a bucket of tack--like tar, only oilier--and painted it in the holes with a broom to help the new asphalt bond better. That’s what they told me, anyway!

The guys I worked with enjoyed the spectacle. I was covered in tar from the top of my hardhat to the bottom of my steel-toed boots. It soaked through my jeans and onto my skin, and I had to use diesel fuel in place of shower gel to clean it off.

When it rained and the rest of the crew retired to their trucks, they made me wait outside.

Forget any image you have of easy labor, getting some sun while you flag traffic. When I worked construction, I worked. And I had three whole months to think about whether this was the kind of life I ever wanted to go near again.

You know what’s funny? I almost miss the feeling of being clueless about a career that would enchant. Clueless equals young. And while I feel like I’m only now getting started in so many ways, back then I was just getting started.

I wore Ciara cologne in high school. One whiff at Target and I’m right back in the drafting room, Howard Roark visions dancing in my head. The aroma of creosote (yep, aroma) when I pass a railroad yard whisks me back to the construction crew--and one guy in particular…who used to stand outside with me in the rain.

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Some people don’t know when to quit.

I’m one of them.

I hope you are, too. Because while there’s no shame in changing your mind, there’s no reward for giving up on something that matters.

A favorite professor, who knew that many of us wanted to bail on our engineering majors, had this suggestion: “Make sure you’re running to something and not away from it.”

Me? I couldn’t decide. So I stayed put. I got my degree. I didn’t know what the heck I’d do with it, but I learned something. When you don’t know where you’re going you may as well hang out where you are.

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“You have a civil engineering degree. What are you doing mopping floors and stocking bar glasses?”

I never got asked that question when I was a cocktail waitress. People seemed more interested in their drink orders--imagine that!--than whether this was my dream job.

Waitressing paid the rent and left days open to look for my dream job. More importantly, it was healing. I spent four nights a week in a busy restaurant surrounded by people I loved working with, barely keeping up with the bedlam of early evening and late-night happy hours. They were happy, all right. The expectations were clear, the atmosphere fun and classy, the job easy to leave behind and not worry about when I wasn’t working.

If you’re going through a rough patch, waiting tables might be just what a doctor--at this career clinic anyway--would order.

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The first week of my sophomore year in college depressed me. I knew by then I hated engineering, and I had at least three years left. I didn't know what to do. The thought of quitting turned my stomach. I don't quit things. But I couldn't imagine surviving in a major that, as it turned out, I had so little interest in or aptitude for. Now what?

I thought back to the spring semester, and a talk a favorite professor gave about exactly this. I trusted him, and listened intently to his advice. "It's about now," he said, "when a lot of you will want to quit." No kidding. Engineering students, as a friend put it, were dropping like flies. There was no shame in quitting, I knew at some level, and I was allowed to change my mind. "Before you do," the professor suggested, "make sure you're running to something and not away from it."

Bingo. I got my degree. I didn't know what the heck I'd do with it, but when you don't know where you're going you may as well hang out where you are.

Whether it's a job or a course of study, sometimes the right thing to do--even if you hate it--is to stay put until you find something to say "yes" to.

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