I'm a "Millenial". Another categorization to be made and stored into the files of society shuffling people from college, to a job, to a house with a family and moving towards the track towards retirement. I'm at a disadvantage in life supposedly because of the statistical data predicting my ways of communicating, texting, and tracking of my step count, based on my food consumption, tv watching, and video game playing.
And so there is this feeling that I have always felt my life has been designed by someone else. That I was just another component in a business plan to make money if I were to just "get" these certain things in life to supposedly "get" the most out of life.
That after I studied hard to get good grades, found a secure and stable position at a company, and got married, I was well on my way along the beaten path towards my peak potential of retirement. A ripe old age of around sixty-five.
Philosophical Engineering
But what I have found is that these aren’t necessarily bad things to get in life. What I really discovered after earning an undergraduate degree, landing a high paying job, and falling in love, was what I really wanted to “get” out of them. That I was beginning to see how they really fit into my life.
Initially pursuing a Master’s degree in Material Science Engineering, it was the voice of my peers that were telling me to get the degree, not me. This time around, I have found what has truly resonated with me. That even though technical intelligence is important, it’s mastery of working with people that has proved to me to be even more important.
That this notion of the need to get ahead in life, is to really accelerate my personal understanding of a person’s makeup and to work with it in a harmonious way with that of my own. It isn’t merely throwing your degree or report onto the table and saying, “Ok, here it is. Am I now qualified?” But rather it’s a skill that needs to be trained where I understand my own personal values and speak in the language of the people I am working with, to help them achieve their values.
What a Master’s Degree in psychology would do for me is to continue this education in a formalized and allowable manner to improve my necessary skill to become a leader in working with people effectively. To understand more of how they see the world and how I can see the world differently. It would also allow me to study to become a master at the art of working with people by learning the necessary theory.
The voice of an advisor I had in college continually echoes today, as he told me that success was a matter of good skill, not good luck. A Master’s degree in Psychology will be a good skill to learn and adopt in continually designing a life worth living.
(Essay for scholarship to North Central University July 2016)
