Week Eight: Resource Reflection
Readings:
Understanding Decent Work and Meaningful Work (Blustein, Lysova & Duffy)
Quote: “Meaningful work is aspirational, reflecting significance at work.“
Reflection: This is a dimension of work which has become increasingly important to me the deeper into my career I’ve gotten, especially when I transitioned to working in news media and began working for intensely mission-oriented organizations like The New York Times and NBC News. Their journalistic mission is felt very powerfully as soon as you begin working there, and I remember being in orientation at The Times and the Chief Financial Officer telling us ‘remember, The New York Times does not exist to make money. It exists as a public service'. But I don’t think meaningful work is aspirational, I think it’s a result of what you put into it. you can find meaning in the most trivial of places and still feel the benefits of it. Perhaps it’s not what you’re tasked with but the meaningful relationships you make. Perhaps it’s the meaningful life that work enables outside of work. The point here is that meaning, if one chooses to focus on defining it for oneself, and like opportunity, is everywhere.
The Happenstance Learning Theory (Krumboltz)
Quote: “The career destiny of each individual cannot be predicted in advance but is a function of countless planned and unplanned learning experiences.“
Reflection: This sentiment neatly captures what happened during my career, which has consisted mainly of discreet, distinct evolutions rather than large-scale revolutionary pivots. The path I’ve taken has been iterative and cumulative, one block building upon another. I began as a designer in London, but always dreamed of one day living in America. I found an opportunity to move to Philadelphia and became a Creative Director. I moved to New York and became a digital marketer before finding my way into news media. At the moment I am balancing being the dad of a teenage daughter and the husband in a busy household with getting a degree from Penn and serving as a principal in the NBC Newsroom. College and entry-level student often ask me how it happened. The truth is almost none of it was planned, but through hard work, and building strong relationships, I was able to craft enough opportunity for myself to be able to go after the things I wanted.
Videos:
Interview with Ade Shemsu
Quote: “It’s the idea of it all being about your story, and this is such a unique story.“
Reflection: I really enjoyed Ade’s reflections, and feel a lot of empathy with his journey and the way he tells his ‘learn out loud’ story. In particular, I’ve also come to learn how to tell my Penn story, which began as a very uncertain, but deeply curious application to Penn during the pandemic, and is ending with a significant number of future opportunities and an immeasurable sequence of experiences. Along the way I’ve learned to adapt my story from one which explains that I went to Penn simply for the love of learning, but over time came to unlock new passions, especially for creative writing, positive psychology and antiquity, all of which I plan to carry forward. As Ade describes, being able to savor just what has happened over the past four years, alongside managing a career and a busy family life is no small achievement. I feel this class is already asking me to look around and take it all in, but suspect the real impact won’t hit me for some time after graduation. Whatever the future holds, like Ade, I feel prepared to take on the world, and my experiences as a quaker could not have prepared me more for the incredible opportunities ahead.
