Who are You?

Featured Guest Blogger: William Merunka
Follow me on my journey to become a great engineer.
Let’s connect on LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/williammerunka

Over the past few weeks I have been looking deeper into who I am and where I want my future to go.  One of the things that I have noticed is that my mind set has changed drastically.  I am no longer just going with the flow, but instead working to advance my career and become a better person.  While my career is important to me, I have also been looking into my personal life and improving it.  I’ve been trying harder to hang out with my friends, and to get out there and be social.  The past 6 months have been a little harder due to the change in my commute and the fact that I am now taking public transportation and rely on other people as opposed to driving my own car and being able to go where I want, when I want, without having to worry about other people.  While I only get home about 8pm, my energy seems to dissipate along the bus ride and I feel too exhausted to go out.  It is important to not forget about ourselves and our family.  These are some of our most valuable assets; we cannot push them off to the side and forget about them.  Our job should not become the reason of our existence.

While I have not been going out much, I have been using this time effectively, focusing on career development and finding my true self.  There are a lot of books, blogs, and articles out there about career development.  While I agree with the principles described in most of them, there is one area that 99% of them miss, and that is determining who YOU are.  Before you can decide where you truly want to go in life, you need to know who you are, and what your interests and purpose is.

As kids, we are pretty much given a roadmap to life.  We are told where to go and what classes to take in school.  For most of our younger years our only responsibility is to have fun and be a kid.  This roadmap usually ends sometime during your high school experience.  During high school, you are introduced to the concept of college and are sent tons of brochures from colleges wanting you to enroll.  This is your time to start creating an identity for yourself, a way for the world to know you by besides your formal name.  For some people, their families have their career path planned out for them, and instill in their mind that it is what that individual wants to do with their life, others know where they want to go, and some people are told that they aren’t good enough for college and choose not to even attempt it.  The last kind of person is the type who does things because it is the right thing to do.

For me, the latter description is how I describe my life.  I never really had a direction of where I wanted to go in regards to my education and career.  I always did what I thought was the right thing to do, and what my counselors told me I should do.  This mentality controlled my college application process and even the classes that I took.  While I decided that I wanted to pursue Civil Engineering during college, I still sort of just followed the flow.  I took the classes I was required to take, and just did what I needed to do to pass the classes.  It’s hard to admit it, but I never did put my full potential into my work.  I had a lot of potential that I failed to utilize and sometimes I wish I had the opportunity to redo it.

To this day, I still think about how things could have been different for me if I had given myself an identity earlier.  Would I have landed that job in Las Vegas, would I have stayed in Baltimore, or would I be sitting for my PE license this October as opposed to trying to pass my FE exam 4 years after college graduation?

One thing I know for sure is that I have a bigger self awareness and know what I want to do with my life.  I am no longer a walking puppet.  I am William Merunka, a young engineering graduate who is looking to get his foot in the door in the Civil Engineering world.  I want to work with clients and find creative solutions for their problems while incorporating sustainability design to help the environment as well.  I want to make an impact on the Civil Engineering industry, and be somebody that young engineers can look up to and strive to be like.  With this new found understanding of my identity, I can get a stronger grasp on my career development process.

One of the first steps most people connect to career development is to set goals that you have for yourself.  However, if you don’t know who you are, then this step will never truly be accomplished.  You will just be working to achieve what somebody told you to do with your career.  You will only be working to give your puppet master greater satisfaction and won’t be working on your personal goals.

Who are you?  Are you an engineer because you truly want to be, or are you doing it just because somebody told you to?  Do you perform community service because it looks good on your resume, or is it because you appreciate life and want to help out those who are less fortunate than yourself?  If you do things because someone told you to, you will never be truly happy in your career.  You will continually second guess yourself and be looking for change.

My homework assignment for you is to take some time and think about who you are.  Are you doing what you want to do, or are you just a puppet?  How do you want to be known, do you want to be another employee within your organization or the person clients request to work on their project because of the reputation you have earned?

I recently caught the end of Serendipity on television and heard a statement that I found to be very intriguing.

“You know the Greeks didn’t write obituaries. They only asked one question after a man died: ‘Did he have passion?’” – Dean in Serendipity

Do you have passion?  If you were to die today, how would your family, friends and co-workers answer this question?  Would they be able to answer quickly, or would they have to sit and write an obituary in order to describe  who you are and what you did?