Evaluating Career-Related Emotions
Apr. 4th, 2007 08:09 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
livingdebWhile I was at the conference, I noticed my emotions going on a roller coaster ride between thoughts like "wow, this is so inspiring" and "rats, this field sucks." As time went on, I noticed I was spending more time at the disillusioned bottom. I decided I didn't want to leave the conference with a vague notion that I don't want to do this after all. So each time something grabbed me emotionally, I wrote down something specific about why I was feeling the way I was. Then I could evaluate each of these points soberly after I got home.
I'm not sharing my list because it's too stupid. Emotions are often stupid, but they're still real and still need to be addressed.
The funny thing was that a single emotion at work yesterday made all my negative feelings about working in distance learning seem very small. And the detail behind that emotion was, "I am not and never will be an expert in degree audit." I feel this way even though I am now the world expert in my institution's system. Because I am always discovering yet another thing that I didn't know.
And now that I'm looking over my list of depressing realizations, I can see that many of them are true of my current job anyway to at least some extent, so I shouldn't let any of these kinds of fear affect my next actions.
I have a few ideas for actions to take next, which will be much more fun to tell you if I actually accomplish any of them.
Journal entry of the day - Violent Acre's Improving Your Credit Score for Dummies. This is a very personal but informative entry about credit records. "If you're anything like me, you'll read your report and think to yourself, 'I didn't know that would get reported to the credit bureau!' I was literally floored when I realized that the CD club I joined years ago and forgot about counted as a negative against me." Those two links at the top of her entry are even more interesting.
I'm not sharing my list because it's too stupid. Emotions are often stupid, but they're still real and still need to be addressed.
The funny thing was that a single emotion at work yesterday made all my negative feelings about working in distance learning seem very small. And the detail behind that emotion was, "I am not and never will be an expert in degree audit." I feel this way even though I am now the world expert in my institution's system. Because I am always discovering yet another thing that I didn't know.
And now that I'm looking over my list of depressing realizations, I can see that many of them are true of my current job anyway to at least some extent, so I shouldn't let any of these kinds of fear affect my next actions.
I have a few ideas for actions to take next, which will be much more fun to tell you if I actually accomplish any of them.
Journal entry of the day - Violent Acre's Improving Your Credit Score for Dummies. This is a very personal but informative entry about credit records. "If you're anything like me, you'll read your report and think to yourself, 'I didn't know that would get reported to the credit bureau!' I was literally floored when I realized that the CD club I joined years ago and forgot about counted as a negative against me." Those two links at the top of her entry are even more interesting.