beginning with the end in mind
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It’s hard to count the ways in which one choice impacts others, sometimes many others. The selection of one’s early work is a definitive choice. Reach out to Career Services by email at eshlemanb@carolinau.edu for help in thinking through the ways God might use this point of decision to impact the person you become.

“We are free to choose our response in any situation,” charges Stephen Covey in his landmark Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, “but in  doing so, we choose the attendant consequence. ‘When we pick up one  end of the stick, we pick up the other.’”

In his book Moneyball, Michael Lewis pauses to consider a pitcher underperforming in practice because he believes he can turn his skills and effort on when they matter. The coach laments the fact that the pitcher is too young to realize we become what we pretend to be. If the work you pick doesn’t stretch your capabilities, what habits are you settling into?

A.J. Jacobs in his book The Know-It-All notes how his job choice changed him after college. It narrowed what he cared about, unconsciously trading general intellectual thirst for, in his case, a need to focus on the celebrity gossip he wrote about for a living. Is what you are considering studying or working at worth trading a large portion of your waking life for?

“If you are not willing to risk your place in the palace for your neighbor, the palace owns you.”  – Tim Keller in Every Good Endeavor on the way work shapes our other relationships.  Being sure of who you are, and are not, is part of career preparation.

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