The other weekend, I went to visit my grandparents who live on a lake in Michigan. Their neighbors are a family that I grew up with, and every time I would visit them in the weekends over the summer, we would spend the days swimming and making memories. That time has quickly come and gone, and now I rarely see them. Even in the summer, we have all grown busy with jobs and summer classes and barely have the luxury of time to spend on the lake. Now, when I see them, on instances so far and few between, we spend all of our time catching up, seeing what has been going on in each others' lives. This last weekend was just like that. I only saw them for ten minutes before they left, and I can't stop thinking about the conversation we had in that short time.

They had some sort of family reunion that weekend, and all of their relatives were camping out in their cottage. I briefly met one of their cousins, who was exceedingly experienced and well seasoned in his field, which is also mine.

Any time I have a conversation with a professional doing what I intend to do someday, I make a point to sound like I know what I'm doing much more than I do in reality. That is what you are trained to do in my field of study.

He said he was a sales rep for some company I had never even heard of, and he lived in Chicago for ten or so years before moving to Austin, Tx. just recently.

Perhaps he was just being polite, and asked me what I was going into, to which I replied that I was currently a double major in Finance and Professional Sales. There was a slight lull in conversation for a second, almost as if he was waiting for me to say something else. He told me that he too was a sales guy, and proceeded to ask me an array of questions. He asked me right away if I had any experience or knowledge of CRM's. I had no idea what he was talking about. FYI, it means "Customer Relationship Management." Yeah, I had to look into it, but that's not what I had told him. I said that I was just getting into the higher level courses and had to learn so much more before I got into that. In hindsight, that was probably obvious that I hadn't the slightest idea what he was asking, but what else could I say?

Later in the conversation, the kids I grew up with along with their dad and some other relative of theirs were all sitting in, listening to see what we were talking about. I asked him if he enjoyed it and how he got into it. He said that he knew right from the get go that this is what he wanted to do, and he had a plan to do so... All I could think was, "Wow, if only I had that much confidence in my plan for the next fifteen years of my life."

Then he said something that really resonated with me for the next few days. He said, "You don't get an MBA to discover yourself."

This is so undeniably true.

So many people, including myself, enter the field of business without a single thought as to what they want to do, either with it or with their life in general. For me, my dad owns his own business and has been for about 20 years. I thought, "Hey, that'd be cool. I don't have the stomach for anything medical, and I can't do the math to be an engineer, so why not try this?" That is the exact mindset I had when I chose my major going into college, and have aimlessly stuck with it, trying things out along the way, hoping to figure out what I'm going to do. I mean, I have taken steps to set myself up or at least try to be a bass in a lake full of bluegill, but in the end, I'm still not sure about what I'm doing, nor am I sure of how I'm going to get there.

Countless promising individuals and role models of mine have said, "No worries, I still don't know what I'm doing." The people that have told me this are among the top of their class, so they must have some idea.

After our conversation, my friend pulled me aside, telling me about his summer job, and how he repeatedly falls asleep at his desk after completing a series of monotonous and mind-numbing work. Granted, it is only a part time job, and he is not sure yet as to what he wants either. If it were up to him, he'd rather spend every day cruising out on the water. He says he doesn't really enjoy it, but it is what it is. One thing to pull away from this is that I now have solidified what I don't want to do.

I think this guy I talked to on the lake had some sort of insightful wisdom, whether he thought so or not. Maybe it wasn't insightful at all, but rather, it was just what I had to hear. I don't know. I guess time will tell, and we'll all come around the bend in the end and whatnot. For me though, it's back to the drawing board.