Maybe it's Not Meant to Be: On Becoming Dr. Nielson
There is a story we tell that goes like this: a person has a dream. They have always known what career they want to pursue. They work hard. They have some successes and failures, at some points they aren’t sure if it will work out, there are bends in the road they didn’t foresee. But in the end they achieve their dream. There is another story we tell: a person doesn’t know what to do with their life. They go to college with no idea what to major in, but then they take a class that they like or do an internship they find meaningful, and so they find a major that fits. They still don’t know what career they want, but they feel drawn towards a certain direction, so they head in it. And eventually they sit on a career panel telling students that they didn’t always know what they wanted to do, but life has turned out better than they could have imagined. These stories may seem like opposites, but they share a common thread: for both people, there is a sense of rightness to their chosen pa