You are driving along your well-planned career track en route
to the next success. You are being considerate of others,
following the Rules of the Road, when suddenly an unexpected
career road block forces you to detour. Career road blocks are
like that – they spoil your career plan, the highway that you
had designed to connect your Cal Geoengineering degree to
your Successful Career. Once detoured, you are perhaps lost in
a countryside you never knew existed and had no intention of
ever visiting. You try hard to get back on track. You worry that
you shall miss your next scheduled achievement. And you fret
that your career is now ruined.
Sound familiar? Probably not - many younger engineers have
yet to suffer major career road blocks. What is major? Well,
being fired, for one. (If you want, substitute a weaker
euphemism for being fired such as: laid off, terminated, sacked,
made redundant, discharged, released, bounced out, canned, axed,
let go, or downsized. All basically mean: “Goodbye, Job!”)
You have not been fired yet? Well, there is a similar career road
block waiting just for you. Silt happens (http://www.
geoengineer.org/berkeley/newsletter/3/MotleyView.html) and
mucky road blocks will eventually happen to you. Not to worry -
you can’t miss them! They come in different shapes and sizes.
How about these: you lose the position you knew was yours
for the asking, you are overlooked for a much desired
promotion, you flunk an exam; or you are suddenly transferred
to a horrible two year assignment in Moose’s Armpit, Alaska.
Get the idea? Career road blocks are unexpected, are
apparently undeserved and always feel like failures or
rejections. Still don’t know the feeling? Then substitute your
first teenage romantic break-up, your divorce, a death or other
unpleasant Life Surprise. (If you have not had any of those yet,
count yourself lucky: you are overdue for a shakeup.)
I know of what I write. I have been fired (laid off/let go/etc.), I
have failed exams, I have endured horrible assignments, I have
been overlooked for promotions; and I have been detoured by
several unpleasant Life Surprises. Indeed, I can plot the nearly
50 years of my working journey as a random tour composed of
relatively pleasant scenic drives punctuated by dramatic lurches
every 10 years with more frequent but less disruptive
intervening detours.
And so to the Motley View on why you should welcome career
road blocks and their eventual rewards:
You will benefit from career road blocks. I believe that we
are ultimately rewarded when we suffer through career road
blocks. I am not saying that negotiating road blocks is easy or
pleasurable but they do eventually result in learning, humility
and often, other opportunities. Indeed, you may one day lull
yourself with the thought: “The last time I had to detour, my
career changed for the better. In the fullness of time, this
current unpleasantness will also lead to a great opportunity.”
After the last time I was fired/let go/axed etc., I felt ignorant
and at age 42, I entered Berkeley to refresh my geotechnical
engineering with an MS. That intended brief detour ultimately
led to the much more rugged traverse of PhD research of the
unexplored terrain of melanges and bimrocks, a year of
teaching and research in the UK and, finally a wonderful job at
a great firm that would likely not have hired me five years
earlier.
Being detoured is not the end of the world. It feels like that
the first time you suffer a road block but after a while you learn
to cope. The innovative, clever you will figure out the
opportunities, find the short cuts, perhaps seek an adventure
or two. It will be your chance to exercise your network of
contacts. You do have one, don’t you? (See http://www.
geoengineer.org/berkeley/newsletter/2/montley.html). Indeed:
you may never get back to your nicely planned career but
instead shift over to some other route altogether and, like one
of my close friends, a Berkeley PhD geoengineer, develop a
courageous zig-zag career by following your bliss and
exploring fields very different from geoengineering.
Others have it much worse than you. After you swerve to
avoid (or else smash into) a career road block, it sometimes
helps to put your own pain in perspective by seeing how other
folk live their lives. Go spend a few months as a hospice
volunteer or throw yourself into an Engineers Without Borders
assignment in Bangladesh.
Take the opportunity to enjoy a break. In my 30’s I had a
magnificent “mid-life crisis”, detoured by a spectacular
conjunction of career and life road blocks. Lost, I went to Asia
for a few weeks of vacation. I came home two years later after
travelling around the world. I had some stirring adventures,
including a geotechnical engineering assignment in Iran, a
place where few wanted to work at that time. I returned broke
but enriched with a different view on what was important in my
life and career.
As an extra reward: you shall one day tell some great
stories. A great benefit of negotiating career road blocks is the
stories you get to tell in your dotage. I have more than a few
tales which I enjoy telling, even if I did not relish living them at
the time. Remind me to tell you the one of when I was a
prospector and was fired for telling the truth to an arrogant,
ignorant boss who did not care for neither my French nor my
concern for my crew...
Please let us know of how you survived your road blocks: we
would love to read the stories of your once upon a time
failures and your eventual successes!!
Regards
Ed Medley
Notes: Why is this column called the Motley View? See: http:
//www.geoengineer.org/berkeley/newsletter/1/TheMotleyView.
pdf
Dr. Ed Medley is a Senior Consultant in the Oakland, California
office of Geosyntec Consultants, Inc. The opinions he expresses
above are not those of Geosyntec Consultants and its staff.
Ed Medley has more than 30 years experience as a geological
engineer. He specializes in the investigation of geo-failures and the
geotechnical and geological characterization of bimrocks (block-in-
matrix rocks) such as fault rocks, weathered rocks and melanges
(http://bimrocks.geoengineer.org).
Contact him at emedley@geosyntec.com
to the next success. You are being considerate of others,
following the Rules of the Road, when suddenly an unexpected
career road block forces you to detour. Career road blocks are
like that – they spoil your career plan, the highway that you
had designed to connect your Cal Geoengineering degree to
your Successful Career. Once detoured, you are perhaps lost in
a countryside you never knew existed and had no intention of
ever visiting. You try hard to get back on track. You worry that
you shall miss your next scheduled achievement. And you fret
that your career is now ruined.
Sound familiar? Probably not - many younger engineers have
yet to suffer major career road blocks. What is major? Well,
being fired, for one. (If you want, substitute a weaker
euphemism for being fired such as: laid off, terminated, sacked,
made redundant, discharged, released, bounced out, canned, axed,
let go, or downsized. All basically mean: “Goodbye, Job!”)
You have not been fired yet? Well, there is a similar career road
block waiting just for you. Silt happens (http://www.
geoengineer.org/berkeley/newsletter/3/MotleyView.html) and
mucky road blocks will eventually happen to you. Not to worry -
you can’t miss them! They come in different shapes and sizes.
How about these: you lose the position you knew was yours
for the asking, you are overlooked for a much desired
promotion, you flunk an exam; or you are suddenly transferred
to a horrible two year assignment in Moose’s Armpit, Alaska.
Get the idea? Career road blocks are unexpected, are
apparently undeserved and always feel like failures or
rejections. Still don’t know the feeling? Then substitute your
first teenage romantic break-up, your divorce, a death or other
unpleasant Life Surprise. (If you have not had any of those yet,
count yourself lucky: you are overdue for a shakeup.)
I know of what I write. I have been fired (laid off/let go/etc.), I
have failed exams, I have endured horrible assignments, I have
been overlooked for promotions; and I have been detoured by
several unpleasant Life Surprises. Indeed, I can plot the nearly
50 years of my working journey as a random tour composed of
relatively pleasant scenic drives punctuated by dramatic lurches
every 10 years with more frequent but less disruptive
intervening detours.
And so to the Motley View on why you should welcome career
road blocks and their eventual rewards:
You will benefit from career road blocks. I believe that we
are ultimately rewarded when we suffer through career road
blocks. I am not saying that negotiating road blocks is easy or
pleasurable but they do eventually result in learning, humility
and often, other opportunities. Indeed, you may one day lull
yourself with the thought: “The last time I had to detour, my
career changed for the better. In the fullness of time, this
current unpleasantness will also lead to a great opportunity.”
After the last time I was fired/let go/axed etc., I felt ignorant
and at age 42, I entered Berkeley to refresh my geotechnical
engineering with an MS. That intended brief detour ultimately
led to the much more rugged traverse of PhD research of the
unexplored terrain of melanges and bimrocks, a year of
teaching and research in the UK and, finally a wonderful job at
a great firm that would likely not have hired me five years
earlier.
Being detoured is not the end of the world. It feels like that
the first time you suffer a road block but after a while you learn
to cope. The innovative, clever you will figure out the
opportunities, find the short cuts, perhaps seek an adventure
or two. It will be your chance to exercise your network of
contacts. You do have one, don’t you? (See http://www.
geoengineer.org/berkeley/newsletter/2/montley.html). Indeed:
you may never get back to your nicely planned career but
instead shift over to some other route altogether and, like one
of my close friends, a Berkeley PhD geoengineer, develop a
courageous zig-zag career by following your bliss and
exploring fields very different from geoengineering.
Others have it much worse than you. After you swerve to
avoid (or else smash into) a career road block, it sometimes
helps to put your own pain in perspective by seeing how other
folk live their lives. Go spend a few months as a hospice
volunteer or throw yourself into an Engineers Without Borders
assignment in Bangladesh.
Take the opportunity to enjoy a break. In my 30’s I had a
magnificent “mid-life crisis”, detoured by a spectacular
conjunction of career and life road blocks. Lost, I went to Asia
for a few weeks of vacation. I came home two years later after
travelling around the world. I had some stirring adventures,
including a geotechnical engineering assignment in Iran, a
place where few wanted to work at that time. I returned broke
but enriched with a different view on what was important in my
life and career.
As an extra reward: you shall one day tell some great
stories. A great benefit of negotiating career road blocks is the
stories you get to tell in your dotage. I have more than a few
tales which I enjoy telling, even if I did not relish living them at
the time. Remind me to tell you the one of when I was a
prospector and was fired for telling the truth to an arrogant,
ignorant boss who did not care for neither my French nor my
concern for my crew...
Please let us know of how you survived your road blocks: we
would love to read the stories of your once upon a time
failures and your eventual successes!!
Regards
Ed Medley
Notes: Why is this column called the Motley View? See: http:
//www.geoengineer.org/berkeley/newsletter/1/TheMotleyView.
Dr. Ed Medley is a Senior Consultant in the Oakland, California
office of Geosyntec Consultants, Inc. The opinions he expresses
above are not those of Geosyntec Consultants and its staff.
Ed Medley has more than 30 years experience as a geological
engineer. He specializes in the investigation of geo-failures and the
geotechnical and geological characterization of bimrocks (block-in-
matrix rocks) such as fault rocks, weathered rocks and melanges
(http://bimrocks.geoengineer.org).
Contact him at emedley@geosyntec.com
The Motley View: On the Rewards of Being Fired and Other
Career Road Blocks
by Dr. Edmund Medley, PE, CEG (MS 1991, PhD, 1994)
Career Road Blocks
by Dr. Edmund Medley, PE, CEG (MS 1991, PhD, 1994)
The Motley View: On the Rewards of Being
Fired and Other Career Road Blocks
Fired and Other Career Road Blocks
| Some road blocks will stall your career for a while…. (Fresh lava flow at Kipahulu, Hawaii, 1987; photo by E. Medley) |