School was never easy for me. I have 18 years of education under my belt and I wouldn’t say any of them wasn’t difficult. I studied the heck out of every class, every subject I took, and worked for my class discussions, group projects, my papers, my exams, my grades.
And yet, once I started working, right out of college, it felt a lot harder. Somehow motivating myself to put in as many hours into doing a job was so much more difficult than going to class and pouring my heart and soul into reading textbooks and writing papers. For a long time I thought I wasn’t built to work for a company, or to work at all. And then one day I read an article that blew my mind. What’s different between school and work is in who pays the money. In school, you pay the money and the school serves you. In work, your employer or your client pays the money and you serve them.
And then I recalled how it’d been at Colgate. At Colgate I was given everything I needed without paying for it. My professors were always available to help me understand concepts taught in class. There were (student) writing consultants to help me translate my strokes of genius into non-confusing language. The dining hall served me food. The gym, the swimming pool, the martial arts classes, were easily accessible. I got to live in Italy. I got to play music….
Contrast this with my job. When I had questions I had to pick a convenient time to ask my colleagues because I was at risk of interrupting their work and of appearing stupid. Sometimes I got helpful guidance, and other times I was asked how my questions were related to the task assigned. I could not just ask questions out of curiosity. I was expected to use Excel worksheets, the structure of which I did not understand, following a step-by-step process typed out on 2 pages. Producing output was prioritized over learning. And I had to study for certification exams, the content of which had little to no relevance to my job. Because I was being paid to produce deliverables and to pass exams. Those were long days, both literally and figuratively.
The saving grace of my first job out of college was that whenever I got to create a new tool for my team, it felt satisfying. My most enjoyable moment was when I finished building an Excel-Access template that would manipulate and reformat data from clients and fit the data into the experience study workbook. The template consisted of SQL queries and VBA codes; building it took some trials and errors, and finally it worked. I knew this was a useful tool that would be utilized over and over again by colleagues, saving them a lot of time and effort. Knowing this gave me the motivation to put in the hours and the sweat to make it happen.
At some point I switched to a different profession. I gave back to society more. I helped high school students develop their STEM skills. I helped build an organization. I loved doing all this. And I brought this new-found hobby of helping others to business school. But it was something I learned from my summer internship that nailed it for me. One VP at Visa with whom I chatted taught me 2 lessons for success. The second lesson is that you have to serve others. I let this enlightening brew for the next year.
When I started working again after business school, I got into the serving mode automatically. And I never had difficulty motivating myself to go to work everyday. When I’m at work, I’m serving my colleagues and my clients. I’m serving the field of marketing analytics. I’m making things better. And I enjoy doing these everyday. Thinking back to my first job out of college, one that I still cherish dearly despite difficult times, I am convinced the reason I struggled so much was that I did not orient myself the right way. I wasn’t in the mindset of serving others. I was an entitled kid coming out of an elite private school who was used to having things given to him.
So glad I’ve grown up.
Richard Anderson 