Grounding Deep Change

John A. Vasquez is a Ph.D. candidate in Educational Administration at Michigan State University where he also works as a career consultant for graduate students and postdocs.  You can find him on Twitter @maximsofjuan or at LinkedIn.

It’s May in my adoptive home state of Michigan and I am ready for some outdoor adventures! Typically, the average high in May is 70 in Michigan compared to 87 in my native Texas, which means it’s great camping weather. My favorite spot is around Petoskey which is on the shores of Little Traverse Bay of Lake Michigan, in the northern lower peninsula of Michigan. It’s mostly a resort community, but there are a lot of rustic camping sites that let you camp right down along the water where it is so clear, you can see the bottom 20-30 feet below. For this reason, it feels right to start my last post in this series about working identities with an image of Lake Michigan.

I’ve done my best thinking and contemplation of life’s questions while floating on a kayak in Lake Michigan and when I got to the section in Ibarra’s book on Deep Change, it made me wish I was there again. I’ve written in previous posts about the latest book I’ve been reading by Dr. Hermina Ibarra, Working Identity: Unconventional Strategies for Reinventing Your Career and how I’ve used it as the basis for rethinking my own career as I finish writing my doctoral dissertation. Specifically, the section that speaks to me starts with the following paragraph:

“In the reinventing process, we make two kinds of changes: small adjustments in course and deep shifts in perspective. Often the first changes we make are superficial. We try moving into a new job, interacting with different people, picking up some new skills. Even when the need for a more profound change is apparent, its meaning can remain elusive.”

Folks, I’m going to be real honest: my “profound change” is DEFINITELY elusive right now! If you are like me and read lots of books on introspection and personal development, you might be familiar with the feeling of doing everything the author recommends, but nothing seems to happen. I still feel unchanged. Or, more specifically, my trajectory doesn’t seem to be changing – I think my next move still involves staying in academia. Yet, if I’m being totally honest with you, there’s a big reason why and it’s related to what Ibarra calls “dropping the rocks.”

In her book, Ibarra shares a parable about a woman swimming across a lake with a rock in her hand. As she nears the center of the lake she begins to sink from the weight of the stone. People watching from the shore urge her to drop the rock, but she keeps swimming, saying “I can’t, it’s mine” and sinks more and more. Ibarra uses this to illustrate how we hold ourselves back from making changes. She goes on further to explain what we all know: many people who want to make a career move have long-held dreams about their desired careers but for one reason or another (e.g. finances, family, or social pressure) they don’t. These are what she calls “rocks.”

My rock is finances. Don’t judge me, but  I owe A LOT in student loans! Every career decision I have made in the past, and every decision I have made for the future, has been in the context of “how will this affect my ability to pay my loans back.” Money is the rock I am holding while trying to swim across this lake I call my Ph.D. Not a day goes by that I don’t think, “Gee, if I were working full-time instead of working on my dissertation or waiting for feedback from my advisor, I could be paying off my student loans.” I can honestly say my anxiety, bitterness, and all the negative experiences I have had with graduate school stem from this rock I’ve been holding the entire time. And you know what? I’m tired.

I’ve spent the past couple of weeks thinking about what “profound change” actually means and what it looks like. I’ve had a very hard time defining it with something other than, “I’m not going to let this rock labeled student loans hold me down.” And what I’ve slowly come to realize is that the times during my graduate experience that I actually followed Ibarra’s advice about letting go of the rocks and trying new things, I’ve had amazing experiences! Two summers ago I turned down a paying gig to go to Cuba, which did stress me out because I needed the money. However, it was an AMAZING experience and, as it turns out, particularly timely given that the current administration has put a stop to travel there again. Last summer I received a small but competitive fellowship that I had to turn down in order to accept an internship in Washington, D.C. That experience cost me money, though it generated so many opportunities and connections that, in the long run, it has already benefited me more than a small dissertation fellowship ever would! I put down my rock for a couple of months twice during my Ph.D. experience and it worked out better than I ever expected. I can only imagine what my life would be like if I let it go completely.

Lake Michigan is the largest lake (by surface area) entirely within one country (the U.S.), and the fifth largest lake in the world. It’s not the deepest (average depth is 270 feet), but it’s still very deep - as much as 923 feet at some parts. But, to me, its most impressive attribute is how clear and blue its water is and how you can see straight down to the bottom. This means the lake can be deceiving when you’re on it because you can never be sure how deep the water is around you. Luckily, I know how to swim. I’m not the strongest swimmer but, if and when my kayak flips over, I’m pretty good at knowing how to jump back in. Especially when I remember to make sure my hands are free and not holding onto something that would drag me down to the bottom.

So, my question to all of you is: aren’t your arms tired? Maybe try putting down one of those rocks. The water is fine!

[Image by Pixabay user tekila918 and used under a Creative Commons License.]