What You Don't Want to Do
What you don't want to do is just as important as what you do what to do.
Now is an important time of year to remember this. August coming on heralds a spike in humidity and the wrapup of summer internships. Thus, that thought is top of mind.
I try to speak with all the interns I work with before they leave. It's always good to hear about their internship in their own words. It's also a good opportunity to see who might not have enjoyed their internship so much.
I don't mind an intern telling me that they didn't enjoy their internship. I've had one or two come out and tell me: "I don't enjoy this kind of work at all." That conclusion is a big win for everyone - the intern especially! That's part of why I try to have these conversations. On the off chance that they hated it, this is a good opportunity to tell them:
"That's A-OK. Hating this work isn't a failure. Knowing what you don't want to do is an important data point for shaping your career."
With as much of the "follow your passion" twaddle that's bandied about these days, it's truly amazing how many people still choose to pursue a career that they actively despise.
What's surprised me is that people who tell me this seem shocked by the idea of changing something about their career trajectory. I'd guess it feels like a huge failure to make such a big change. That's another reason I like to have these conversations: I have firsthand experience figuring this out for myself. I took an optical physics internship before my junior year of college. It bored me senseless. I spent 40 hours a week in a windowless room, adjusting mirrors and lenses with an allen wrench. I was confident that was something I never wanted to do again.
On top of this: I know from experience that there's lots of wiggle room to change. My optics misadventure was technically an electrical engineering internship. EE is a massive field. Here's a few other things I've done, under the banner of "electrical engineering":
Designed and flown weather balloons,
Written firmware for audio processors,
Created spoofing tools for network hardware,
Built agricultural robots,
Plenty of other stuff that I've forgotten about at this point.
I'm still an electrical engineer today, and I still do interesting and varied stuff. (In fairness, you'd have to squint pretty hard to see the EE. I'm starting to look an awful lot more like a manager. But, that's a digression.)
My point is: the horizon is wide. There's an infinite number of directions you can run.
Don't waste time running down a path you don't find interesting.