Throughout my past few years of school, I've had many mentors in my life. Some were only OK while others have really shaped the way that I look at my future career. Regardless of how good I thought a mentor was or how well we got along, I have learned very important lessons from each and everyone of them.
1. I have no idea what I'm doing.
The real world is so much different from the classroom. In class, they can explain to you what it's like to work in the real world, but until you actually experience it for yourself, you won't know how to do it. There is so much that I learned by doing that I wouldn't know how to do if I didn't have my summer internship or my required shadowing experiences.
2. I am not perfect.
In this "everyone gets a gold star" kind of world, I've found myself going into internship experiences thinking I was going to do great just because I showed up. I quickly learned that I was absolutely wrong. I still get corrected on things that I could do better or differently. I used to get very frustrated and think that it doesn't really matter that much and I am actually doing fine. That was when I realized that I wasn't being corrected because they were jerks, they were teaching me how to do my job right and I wasn't listening. In the future, I was going to be the one that made sure everything was right and I needed to start doing it now.
3. This really is what I want to do.
Most importantly, real life experiences have taught me that I have chosen the right major and this really is what I want to do with my life. Without these experiences, I could have potentially have gotten a degree and not known if I actually enjoyed my job.
4. This is what I don't want to do.
It is just as important to know what you like as it is to know what you don't like. There have been parts of my shadowing experiences that I have hated. These parts made me realize that I may not prefer a particular field of my career. The good part about this, though, is it narrows down my career spectrum and the places I want to look for a job. If I really don't like a part of one type of job, I can make the decision of overlooking it, or I can not choose that specific field for my career. Either way, I get the honest view of what my career field looks like and I can pursue whatever direction I want based on my experiences.
While I still have an entire year of rotations left to decide what direction I want to go with my career, I'm very thankful for the opportunities I've had so far and the people that have really pushed me to do better in my future career.
