Form is temporary. Class is permanent.

The placements this year has been expectedly slow. While there are some signs of revival with a bunch of industries picking up, anticipation of the second strain of the virus is making organizations err on the side of caution. As a student, who is passing out of an institute, you would be trepid with the circumstances around you. There is low predictability around job opportunities and the wait for the situation to get to some state of normalcy can be excruciating.

What should you do when your backs are against the wall? I am offering a perspective here:

The glorious past

In times like these, it is quite possible that we forget our past achievements pretty quickly. If you have made it to an institute for Under Graduation or Post graduation, then you did that by having a sound academic background, clearing entrance processes, and beating competition. The current economic conditions might be hindering your ability to get a job role you desire. This does not reflect on your lack of ability. It is important to make that distinction and not lose faith in yourself. If you crossed a hurdle in the past, there is sufficient evidence you will do it in the future as well.

Status seeking vs Wealth seeking

A great many of you will have a lot on your mind. You might have taken a student loan for your course. You would have a target timeline for a car, house, and spouse. Money is the answer to these questions, directly or indirectly. You had a placed a huge bet on the job market to provide you the start to meet these goals. To borrow from a couple of best thinkers of our time Naval Ravikant and Kunal Shah, these are classic status seeking objectives. A car is not as important as your ability to move from one place to the other conveniently. A comfortable home is paramount for a comfortable life, but the apartment need not be owned by you. Some of these targets are passed on as legacy targets from the conditioning of our families. It is crucial to know that these targets enslave you for life. If you can free yourself from this conditioning, then what you need to sustain yourself is money. There are 100 ways to make money and grow your wealth legally and legitimately. If you drop the false adjective of status around work, you will be surprised to find out the number of channels that exist to make money with an investment of 0.

Uniqueness

We are all unique. We hence possess interests and talents that are peculiar to us. Identification of these talents could sometimes take a backseat because we are too absorbed in a conditioned path set for us. Small signals have always indicated the joy you get when you indulged in playing that instrument or putting colors on paper or making someone laugh. What we have currently is an ironic gift of time. This time here is the license to go find out what gives you joy and pursue it.

Investing in yourself

A normal timeline on a resume would look like this: school – graduation - post graduation - job 1 – job 2… and so on. This is so common that we have started to think of it as a way of life instead of just ONE template of life. What the current tricky circumstances have given you is the gift of time to invest in yourself. You can pick a course in pottery that you always wanted to do. Learn copywriting or technical writing. Learn to design killer magazine covers. Have you ever tried approaching a start-up founder or a friend or someone who owns a local business in your area and offered help as an Engineer or Management grad for free? Take a free internship and the learning from any of these avenues will make a foundational difference for the rest of your career. It is a great time to invest in yourself and the only one stopping you is you.

Financial Freedom

Many people at some point in their lives, struggle to balance life. There are several balls in the air that need deft juggling. There is family, relationships, career, boss, health, friends, bucket-list items etc. Since work becomes the engine that fuel your dreams, the dreams get compromised. There in lies the biggest paradox. In continuation to the point I made earlier, people have started to realize that the important goal is to have financial freedom. The freedom to get to a point in life where you can call the shots on how much you want to earn and hence decide to work accordingly. This point might be difficult for some of you to understand if you are only starting out now. But if you do get it, it is time to plan your work life in such a way that it offers financial freedom to you. Pick up Tim Ferris‘s 4-hour work week for more dough on this.

Remember your achievements. Know that you are unique. Learn from others’ mistakes of seeking status. Keep adding to yourself and as Steve Jobs said, one day you can look back and connect the dots. Identify your talent and interests and work with such passion that life doesn’t feel like a compromise. Keep learning and investing in yourself. That will build your class. Hence, form is temporary while class is permanent.

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