Passion

I really admire how passionate people are about things they like. Some of my classmates are passionate about the healthcare industry. Some are passionate about the Women in Leadership conference and are sending us personalized emails telling us to go.

It's funny because, as I was thinking about how I wish I had some passion, I suddenly remembered a time in high school when I played tennis. I was totally obsessed and passionate about getting into Varsity. I had a ball machine and would go practice after dinner every day.

One time, these 2 women were in the court next to me, just casually playing and chatting. And they started talking about me. One of them said to the other: I wish my children were that passionate about something.

I guess I used to be one of those passionate people that others admired.

But you know what. Passion fades. I mean, passion comes from somewhere. Maybe it's an experience you've had. Or another special reason or motivation for why you are passionate about something. For tennis, I just wanted to be someone. I wanted to be glorious and win matches that actually mattered. I wanted to be better than other people. Because that feels good.

And now I feel like I'm past that. Except not really. Career is the new tennis.

What are you passionate about? I can't say that I'm just passionate about being valued. It has to actually be a subject, like healthcare, or supply chain management, or technology or operations. It has to be a story that makes sense to recruiters. But really, at the end of the day, I know what I really want. I want to be expert at something. Why? Because that means I'm creating value, and that I'm valuable.

Recruiting for a completely new industry is stressing me out. I feel like I transplanted myself back to Senior year of college when all the jobless people got together just to talk about how they wished they did computer science-- a time when I felt like I had nothing valuable to offer to recruiters because of my low GPA. Except this time, it's not my GPA, but my introversion and non-outgoing-ness. Around engineers and other introverted people, it was easy to be able to small talk, but now I'm surrounded by super outgoing people, so it's harder.