As the blissful days of summer fade into our memories, and our minds readjust to the toil of schoolwork, I tried to reflect on this summer to see how I’ve grown and what, if anything, I’ve learned.

For an upcoming junior, I think I’ve actually uncovered a few nice nuggets of wisdom that might just be useful to young people about to enter the rat race that is the workforce of the early 21st century.

But first, a few mandatory Mainely updates; Dakota the husky has not been euthanized! (For those of you who don’t know, I wrote a story about a bad [read; dog murdering] canine who was being sentenced to death by a judge but was saved by a legally contested pardon from the state governor.

I live in Maine, so this kind of weird news circulates fast. Anyways, long story short, a deal was struck between the involved legal parties and the dog will live-albeit  muzzled- and be confined near a veterinary clinic, never to enter his hometown again. The legality of Governor LePage’s pardon, since the dog case won’t be heard before Maine’s Supreme Court, will be forever in dispute.

Other interesting Maine summer facts include the Gulf of Maine’s summer temperatures being reached months longer than normal (apparently it’s now the second fastest warming part of the ocean in the world).

Also, the Maine government shut down for a few days over a budget dispute in education funding, and an Alna (Pop. 700) man finally launched his two-masted schooner, the Sycamore, into open waters after 16 years of construction. I’m from Alna, so this is a big deal.  

Besides spending some time in enchanting old Quebec city, as well as catching up with House of Cards, the bulk of my summer was dedicated to stabbing legions of kebabs in a supermarket butcher shop.

Whilst making puns to highly experienced butchers (they were very cutting edge) and patiently giving (improvised) cooking advice to befuddled customers (oh what a mis-steak that was), I learned something important about the world of work.

What made the butcher shop the best work experience I have ever had wasn’t getting to spray expensive machinery with a high-powered hose, nor was it sharing belly-rolling laughs whilst chopping up raw chickens.

It was being able to work with a peace of mind and a soundness of the soul. In short, it was being able to do honest work while still being able to be myself.

Today it’s too easy to get sucked into looking for the job that pays the highest tab at the end of the day, without evaluating whether that job is right for you.

Even in the advice of those with good intentions, it often feels like there is a subtle push for students to enter the job market, regardless of the relevancy of that job to the degree they earned.

For the modern workforce, new laborers are presented a dichotomy; take the Wall Street-esque job (where working the “banker’s 9-5”, that being 9 a.m. to 5 a.m. is normal for junior workers) or stick with the low-earning (but intrinsically satisfying) job of your dreams.

Unfortunately, I have seen these informal set of choices be presented in internship fairs, alumni panel meetings, and in general discussions about career options at Saint Anselm College.

Of course, obtaining a job after college is important, yet what is of greater importance is finding work that not only helps others but satisfies you. Yet often times the necessary task of finding work is infiltrated with a pervasive need to obtain the right entry job to get into the right career immediately, or else all hope is lost.

We’re often told, from the likes of industry leaders like Bill Gates to young innovators like Elon Musk, that things like income inequality, automation/AI, and the increasing costs of education will make having a secure career in the workforce much harder with each passing decade.

Being young, it’s easy to get lost in all of this noise and get very apprehensive about your personal future; it happens to me all the time. What does help lessen that apprehension is what I took away from the butcher shop in a small town.

I learned that life’s paths aren’t straight for everyone; the butchers I worked with had had previous careers in everything from professional chefs to army tank drivers before becoming skilled meat cutters.

I also learned that occupying the top job  of your career doesn’t always mean it’s the right job for you.  Many of the butchers I worked with had been former managers at various other butcher shops, some independent, some within a supermarket. All of them, while excelling in their managerial role, found the “top job” in their career wasn’t for them.  

So as internship fairs, career meetings, and the general push for undergraduates to find jobs comes about, I encourage my fellow students at Saint Anselm to take a breather and try to aim for the job that satisfies you.

Getting to your final destination doesn’t need to happen immediately after graduation; in many cases, it often doesn’t for quite some time. After all, it’s a imperfect but satisfying road to becoming a cut above the best.