“I’m lost,” Sarah wrote. She had quit her job as a newspaper editor to study Cognitive Science at a higher education institution (a school that offers a higher education than a university, but a higher education than a college).
When she finished college, she thought about going to college, but she didn’t have the skills to do so. Now that she’s more confident, she’s decided to major in Artificial Intelligence. She says that if she had chosen the same major as her when she was younger, she would have been scared. Now, she’s decided to quit her job and continue her education until she gets her PhD.
And that’s where the problem starts. She says that she’s not settled into her student life, and she feels lost.
“I have so many interests, I don’t know which direction to go. Should I go for theoretical work, applied work, or just change to something else? It’s hard to decide. What’s worse, almost all of my classmates are geniuses. I can’t catch up with them. What would you do if I were you? You’re lost.”
As I thought about Sarah, I saw Jane in my mind. Jane was the college dropout who wanted to open a business that I introduced in RULE#3. You might remember her as a girl who was full of ideas and had no financial backing to do what she wanted to do. Jane’s main problem was that she didn’t finish college, couldn’t find a job, and was lost. Now, Sarah, who wants to work and has a degree, is not as lost as Jane.
Both Jane and Sarah understand the importance of “purpose in life.” But what they both don’t understand is that they don’t know how to align their goals with their lives. The life Sarah wants is the kind of life that we saw in the last chapter, like the one in Pardis. But because of their thoughts and ideas, they can’t move forward or back. On the other hand, they want a life where they can do whatever they want, but they don’t know how to live.
What we can learn from their story is that goals are complicated. They are not as simple as they think. Both Sarah and Jane want to align their lives with their goals. But they don’t know where to start. They can’t just think about it and do it.
After returning from Harvard, I tried to understand these things better. I compared the lives of Sarah, Jane, and Pardis from three perspectives, and identified their strengths and weaknesses. I analyzed them. I criticized them. Finally, I realized the unexpected - the depth of the goal.
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