[Wreck]

My reply to another post made me think about this, so I thought I'd share.

Ten years ago, I graduated from college. A year before graduation, we had an assignment to come up with our one, five, and ten year goals. Although the idea was to better prepare us for graduating and going out into the real world to start our professional careers, we were to include all areas of our lives with as much detail as possible. I don't remember the specifics of what I wrote, but I do remember that the instructor told me I needed to be a little more "realistic" about my five year goals with respect to my career. Apparently he thought they were a little too ambitious.

I must have had naivety on my side, because it didn't even phase me. I had already started college, dropped out, then started back several years later. It eventually took me six years to get a bachelor's degree because I kept changing my major. But by that point in that class, I was fairly confident in my direction. I didn't know the specifics, but I had a general idea of what I wanted, and was heading that direction come hell or high water. I held on to what I had developed of my ideal future.

The very next semester I was chosen by another instructor to be one of three people selected to do an experimental class. I absolutely loved it, and excelled at it. The experience gave me more focus; my ideal career was gaining clarity.

Talking with a friend about this experimental class, what I was doing, and how much I loved it, he mentioned that there was a position being created where he worked and it sounded very much like something right up my alley. I pursued it. It turned out that the job was already being advertised, and that this position was being advertised as needing a degree and several year's experience. I should mention that this was a state job and so had many rules and regulations on the process of hiring someone. The position not only required a degree, but there were rules about the person matching the ad. Since they advertised the job needing a degree and having experience, it seemed I was out of luck as I had neither. Even if they did end up wanting to hire me, it didn't seem they would be able to. I forged ahead.

That night I wrote my resume and cover letter and hand delivered it the next day to the director himself. He nodded his head towards an in-box on the edge of his desk and said that those were the resumes right there, but that I was too late as the deadline for resumes had closed the day before and could not except anymore - another rule. I leaned forward, smiled, and dropped my resume on the top of his stack. He smiled back, so I thanked him for his time, shook his hand and left.

I got a call for an interview, interviewed (which is a small story in itself), and found out that not only was this job every thing I could have dreamed up, but it was more. The only thing was that I found out that whoever they decided to hire would be starting January first. This meant I would still have one semester of college before I graduated and would be technically partially eligible for the position.

I found out through my friend that the position was between me and one other person, and that since he had the qualifications and met the requirements of the ad that he would likely get the job. The thing was, they really liked this guy, and he had a lot of other experience that could be used elsewhere. They ended up creating a second position that was a slightly better one with a little more money and offered it to him. If he took it, that meant I was next up for my dream job. Of course he took it, so they offered me my dream job. The director ended up calling in all sorts of favors, so I ended up hired with a contingency in my contract that upon June first I would be terminated if I did not have my degree - which I got.

A few years later, office politics started getting the better of me so I started looking to move on. I'd done a little part time work for someone, so contacted them and convinced them there was enough work for me to do full time, and that they should hire me. Hire me they did. They weren't really sure what I was going to do, but did agree that they needed someone like me. That gave me to opportunity to make the job what I wanted it to be.

Over the next year and a half, I was doing such a good job, they kept hiring me people to produce more and more of the same results for them. I ended up with twelve full time and nearly one hundred part time people under me.

Here I was, three years out from college and I'd achieved my five year goal. In three years I'd accomplished what I was told was too ambitious to accomplish in five.