By Kirti Krishan, Co-founder and CMO, Precisely
You’re a student, suited up and ready for the world beyond your school, and then COVID happens. Undergraduate Admissions are pushed back, graduations are delayed.
It’s chaos. Even for universities. It is evident by the recent splurge in online courses.
Scott Galloway, professor of marketing at the New York University Stern School of Business has said, “if not thousands but hundreds of brick-and-mortar universities will go out of business”. The scrambling of the schools and universities to figure out a process if the students do not go to campuses is adding more to the nebula.
So, what should you do?
COVID has been around for quite some time, and it has been a prime concern for many. But yet again, there’s always a silver lining if you just look hard enough
What are you made of?
Take out some time to reflect on yourself. What do you like? This is the perfect time to work on your Ikigai. The concept of ikigai is made to enable you to systematically define your needs, wants, and skills and come to a conclusion. Start with a simple checklist, and build upon it.
Here’s a framework for you –
Nobody knows you better than yourself. Draw a persona of who you are right now, and how you want to be. Get as much information as you can from people who are experienced in what you want to be, read blogs, articles, watch videos, and absorb as much as you can. Your goal is to make a plan that shows who you are right now and covers the steps to who you want to be. You’re a student, unaware of career planning. I don’t blame you. Interests are like sparks, it’s hard to find what you genuinely like without investing enough time into it. Look through your personality, and come up with five things you like, and have a genuine interest in.
Those are your five keywords. Go on Google Trends, look around what is the world doing with those five words. That’s how you do your research, you now have an idea as to what is going on with the words you’re interested in.The next thing you do is find the trending blogs to read, videos to watch, and people to follow to get an in-depth review of what your interest is all about. Your in-depth reviews should now lead you to the subject matter experts of the said interest.
Remember, exposure is the key. Once you know all that, you’re ready to make a decision. Now, think in terms of feasibility. Do you have the resources, time, and money to pursue a certain interest? If not, move onto the next. That’s how I did it.
I’m going to summarize it in 3 steps.
- Find out who you are.
- Figure out your five interests.
- Perform an in-depth analysis of your interests, and narrow down on choices.
Apply this framework, work out a set of courses you want to do, treat it like a gap year, where your sabbatical is more for skill enhancement and personal growth than regular academics. Set aside the anxiety of missing out on personal timelines. Consider all the different variables of life which would help you accept that there’s no set timeline. The only truth is that the more you do now, the better you would reap when the new normal is pushed back to the old normal.
