How To Not Have a Plan

You don’t need a plan before you can make use of career services.

• Maybe you had a plan, but it fell apart.
• Maybe you have so many goals that you can’t decide which one to plan for.
• Maybe you like the here-and-now of being a student and don’t feel ready to plan for what happens next.
• Maybe you’d rather being doing than planning.
• Maybe the thought of the future is so overwhelming that you don’t know how to begin to plan.

You can move forward without a plan – and sometimes forward motion matters more than knowing the specific path you are on.

Here are some issues we encounter regularly in LAS Career Services:

• My major isn’t working for me, but I don’t know what careers might come with the major I want to change to.
• I had been planning on going to law school, but the more I learn about it, the less I think it’s for me – I’m just not sure what else I can do.
• All the things on my resume are from high school. There is so much I could do here, but I don’t know how to pick activities to focus on, and I’m not sure I’ll be able to find the time.
• I’m thinking about graduate school, but that’s mostly because I’m not sure what else I could do.
• The more experience I get doing X, the more I realize that I don’t want to do X – but I don’t have any other experience to draw on.
• I know what I’d love to do after I graduate, but I’m pretty sure it’s out of reach.
• Everyone tells me I’m in a bad major because I won’t be able to get a job.

LAS Career Services is here to help you find a way through such challenges so you can make progress towards your future. If any of these situations resonate with your experience, make an appointment on Handshake, come to our drop-in hours, or connect with the peer mentors in the LAS Lisnek Hub. We can help you reframe your obstacles in ways that lead to action.

For more ideas on navigating your future career path, visit our LAS Career Services Blog.