Myth of the Right Answer

The job search is tough.

LinkedIn is full of job searchers right now, including myself.

It’s full of “10 Mistakes You’re Making on Your Resume” or “My Course Gets You a 6-Figure Job”, with hundreds of comments detailing the month-long journey of job applications.

The uncertainty that job searching provokes is often incredibly stressful. It means navigating a structural life change that we don’t have complete control over. We can’t control interest rates, inflation, or layoffs.

We also can’t control the number of jobs on the market, the number of seekers, or how a hiring manager sifts through carefully crafted resumes and cover letters to potentially choose our own.

One big anxiety that is brought up is the Myth of the Right Answer.

I majored in Education Policy at Penn State University.

For some time, I thought my career path would take me to D.C. to support educational policy reforms, or into the non-profit realm to work on education programs. Graduating during COVID made these jobs difficult to come by. 

I was offered a teaching job in New York City and got excited about being ‘boots on the ground’ as a frontline worker in education. 

Starting teaching during the pandemic quickly changed how I viewed decision-making and policy in public education. It felt like a battle between stakeholders: teachers’ unions, local government, school administrators, parents, and families. There was no silver bullet and no way to compromise. 

Nevertheless, I persisted through the virtual school year and went on to teach for an additional 2.

Now, pivoting my career out of public education, I reflect on the decision to go into it in the first place. I knew it was a messy, tangled, and underappreciated career. I often find myself thinking, why did I choose this path? Why couldn’t I have majored in something more marketable, like business? Is this career transition going to work out?

With so many teachers feeling frustrated in the profession and social media algorithms flooding my feed with their stories, it feels like competition for the same jobs is high.

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The Myth of the Right Answer tells us that there is a right path toward being happy. 

That we just need to make the right decisions, starting in early high school. Get the right scores, participate in the right extracurriculars, attend the right college, study the right major, get the right job, and then be happy. 

The thing is, the list goes on forever. The right salary, the right apartment, the right significant other, the right outfit for that one event, the right dinner reservation… then we’ll have it all figured out.

The Myth of the Right Answer feeds on the uncertainty of the future. It pretends that we can control every single factor of our lives. 

If I didn’t get that one B in my math course in college, then I wouldn’t have gotten laid off.

If I didn’t take that one job, then I would be able to get another job more quickly.

It tells us that we aren’t doing our best, that we aren’t putting in 100% effort. 

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The Myth of the Right Answer forces us to grapple with what we can control, leveraging the decisions we’ve made.

So how do we know we’re doing our best? When the definition of success is not being handed down to us by a teacher or a boss, we have to define it for ourselves. Setting our own (reasonable) goals and measuring them each day.

Yes, the overall goal is to get a new job. But we can’t control that. We can control sending out high-quality applications to a good fit position. We can control intentionally networking with others so conversations are mutually beneficial. We can control taking breaks when overwhelmed, or exercising, doing what is needed to stay sane through this process. 

Our own goals might look like creating a target list of companies that week, sending out a certain number of applications, or learning more about a field of work. It might be leaning into a hobby because it’s an activity you love, or reading all those books that you’ve put off.

Setting our own definition of success means taking care of ourselves in times that are stressful.

The truth of it is that there is no right way. There is no right path, because we are on the path we’re on, and therefore, it has to be right. No one knows our own life better than we do. 

There’s not necessarily going to be a perfect job, a perfect life. There is only figuring out how to leverage the unique circumstances for our benefit, to find moments that make us happy.

So we lean into uncertainty, trusting that we are on the path where everything works out.

We can control our happiness because it won’t happen ‘when [xyz] happens’; happiness happens now. 

Recently for me, those activities have been writing on Substack and regular yoga practice. Prioritizing quality job applications and networking over mass quantity. Getting outside and exploring upstate New York.

Knowing that good things will happen and that I’m doing my best.

Photo by Katrina Wright on Unsplash