Turning career dreams into reality

Eve Tahmincioglu • Profile • E-mail

Elizabeth Nill, 61, had a dream of becoming a president of a community college when she went to Harvard Business School in the late 1970s. But even though colleagues told her she didn’t have the temperament for such a job, she spent years pursuing her dream.

She worked as an assistant dean at Harvard but then realized “I didn’t have the stamina or patience to be a college president.”

She later became a chief operating officer of a philanthropic organization and then tried her hand as a managing director for a consulting firm. But last year she ditched it all to launch a clothing company, Shibui Design, based in Cape Cod.

Jonathan Sherman, 24, of Columbus, Ohio, pictured himself making movies from an early age and went to film school to study his dream craft even though some people, including family members, advised him not to.

Turns out, the naysayers were right. At the end of college, he realized the film industry was not for him, and he now has his sights set on marketing as a career, something he discovered while doing a brand marketing internship at Lego. “As much as I loved film, this new career turned a whole other light on for me,” said Sherman.

It’s hard to say whether Nill was meant to be a fashion maven or whether marketing will turn out to be Sherman’s career destiny.

Clearly, they’re both passionate about their newfound paths. But is passion enough to fuel your career dreams?

Blinded by passion
It may not be, according to Patrick Carroll, an assistant professor of psychology at Ohio State University at Lima and co-author of a recent study on career dreams published in the journal Social Cognition. Too often, he said, we’re so blinded by our passion that we might not listen to common sense, even if we may be doomed to never reach lifelong career aspirations.

“It’s not enough to tell people they fall short and it’s not enough to tell them they won’t achieve what they envision,” he said about his research. “People aren’t good at calculating the potential consequences of failure.”

Carroll’s research, which included business and psychology students at Ohio State, found that just telling students they didn’t have the grade point average or the aptitude or skills to make it in a particular program or career wasn’t enough to derail their aspirations. The students had to be hit over the head with graphic descriptions of failure and the prospect of no employment possibilities before they considered giving up on a goal.

Carroll stressed that his research isn’t about finding a way “to kill a dream or make a dream die.” It’s about offering a reality check that can be helpful for students and professionals assessing their career prospects. Even though it may bring short-term disappointment, he said, it can potentially “maximize long-term mental health.”

Dealing in career reality, he added, is even more important in this tight job market. “As the economy becomes more uncertain, more people with higher qualifications are competing for fewer job opportunities,” he said.

Now, more than ever, you have to have the right experience, background, and skills and desire to make it in your chosen profession or job.

But how do you go about getting an honest take on whether you’re really cut out for it?

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