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Lose Track Of Time To Find Your Career

Graduate school consists of a series of races – from place to place, hour to hour. Today, I was a student, counselor, teacher, and technical assistant. Every day requires a series of hats, as I run from activity to activity. Sometimes my mind feels like it’s in a million different places at once. It’s hard to slow down.

Thankfully, I’m nearing the end of my tenure as a doctoral student, and ready to think about next steps. I’ve segued to future-oriented questions. The most important one has been: How can I make the greatest contribution to society, while continuing to be excited to work each day? This question propelled me in the first place to study counseling psychology and acquire a Ph.D. But next steps beget a reevaluation of how I can best make a difference. I can’t stay in graduate school forever!

As a counseling psychology student, I have the privilege of multiple career paths. Some go directly into private practice (seeing clients), hospitals, teaching at universities, researching psychological concerns, and/or informing public policy. Alone, any one would be nightmarish; I’d get itchy, looking for diversity in my daily routine. Doing a sole activity all the time scares me. I don’t want to become an automaton. Frankly, I’ve envisioned being most happy with a blend of research, teaching, and counseling.

Questions abound: Would I like to be a university professor? How about a counseling psychologist at a VA? Will I work at a community college or research institution? How much of the job will include teaching, practice, or research? Where will I find a new home – East, West, Central, another country?

Answers are nearly impossible to find, as the job market is constantly in flux and increasingly competitive. I won’t magically be handed a career because of my advanced degree. Surprising as it may be, having a Ph.D. only gets you into an interview – not in the door.

Future career prospects are also tempered by concerns of stress and overwork. In this field, I’d venture to say many academics put in 60 to 80-hour weeks. There are numerous employers that work people mercilessly. Too many treat their employees as replaceable “human capital.” These practices leave individuals prone to burnout and contribute to this country’s greatest killer: heart disease.

Where does that leave a soon-to-be Ph.D.? Like much in life, I’m seeking a balance between my wants and needs. The 30-hour workweek for an academic probably doesn’t exist unless you’re near the end of your career. But 80 hours per week for years frightens me to the core.

The secret for me is pursuing passions, which can often result in “flow.” This psychological concept centers on how “just-manageable challenges” tend to make employees feel purposeful and needed — in between anxiety and boredom. When this state occurs, people become hyper-focused, productive, and generally happy. It’s a mutually beneficial state for employers and their underlings, but not often made possible due to overscheduled weeks or monotonous responsibilities.

Researchers have presented six symptoms of flow:

“Intense and focused concentration on what one is doing in the present moment.”
“Merging of action and awareness.”
“Loss of reflective self-consciousness”
“A sense that one can control one’s actions…”
“Distortion of temporal experience.”
“Experience of the activity as intrinsically rewarding…”

Essentially, people are focused, active, forget their struggles, feel autonomous, lose track of time, and are internally motivated. From artists to scholars to writers to mathematicians, flow is an incredible place for creativity and excellence.

The greatest moments of my life have been here, when I lose track of time and become engrossed in an activity. For instance, when I started an endowment, Frugaling.org, and wrote my dissertation proposal, each were madly written, advocated for, and created. Despite the time to establish each, the pleasure of feeling purposeful made the hours fly by. They didn’t feel like work. I lost “reflective self-consciousness” and became the activity at hand.

While constrained by a society that values money over health (again, look at our health costs associated with being overworked and underpaid), I have the opportunity and privilege to pursue my own route. As I envision my “perfect” career, I imagine a series of part-time style gigs. I want a sprinkle of supervising counselors’ work, seeing clients, conducting research, and teaching future generations. The hours might become irrelevant when I’m tested, pushed, and encouraged to focus on helping others.

Two Novembers from now, applications will be due. I have time to find the right home, but I’m eager to fulfill the values gained over 26 years of my life. Right now, it feels like a professorship, but I’m open to change. I need to find my flow; without it, any job would be unbearable long term. Additionally, I need to be able to shape ideas, work, and daily activities in a manner that helps others directly.

How will you find your flow? What activities make you lose track of time? When do you feel purposeful, action-oriented, and passionate? Could these activities ever become a part of your work?

I Deleted All The Ads. Now I Regret It.

By Frugaling 41 Comments

The last two months have been tough. While crafting my dissertation proposal and beginning to finish my Ph.D., I’ve tried to maintain Frugaling and prepare for career plans. Balancing everything has been difficult; thankfully, writing on this site has been a wonderful respite from my normal obligations.

Frugaling has always been for fun. See, I established this site as a creative outlet, break from academic writing, and source of additional revenue. It was never a charitable writing endeavor; albeit, I wanted it to be for good. In the process of writing about my journey to zero debt, I did pretty well for myself. I hustled and was rewarded for it. I paid off five figures of debt in no time.

Eventually, as the site aged and my debt waned, I started to question my values and decision to advertise. With the release of my new book in August, I thought it might be an opportunity to censor the ads. I took a gamble and deleted them.

In the place of ad revenue, I decided to rely on donations and book sales. It never made up for lost ad revenue, but it made a difference. Without those pesky intrusions, I felt free to talk without shame, fear, or question. Heck, I even wrote some scathing critiques of advertising since then!

Cleaning up my site from advertising made me feel good. I felt like I was honoring a value to reduce the urge for consumption. Unfortunately, revenue soon petered out. Despite growing traffic to the site, the revenue continued to plummet. What used to be a stable side hustle, which helped me save and earn despite a tiny graduate student income, was now non-existent.

Over October and November, I paid careful attention to the earnings, and now felt pigeonholed. I had railed against ads, and yet the business might be unstable and unsustainable without some extra revenue from visitors. Perhaps I had gone from one extreme to the other too rapidly?

This week, I reached out to other bloggers and friends to talk about this revenue problem. Most all of them recognized the need and importance to earn something for all the writing and extra work. Simultaneously, they seem to empathize with the wonderful ideal of going ad free. I admire people like Joshua Becker, who go without ads and potential revenue. But I entered an unstable level of revenue for Frugaling. Deleting these felt freeing and exhilarating in a new way, but the revenue loss didn’t allow me to save and earn.

Recently, I talked with a blogging friend of mine about this conundrum. I finally expressed the crux of the matter: I have two values, which are precariously unbalanced right now. One states that I should go ad free and resist anything that potentially encourages consumption. The other focuses on the very real need to earn some revenue from what I do here. Despite trying, donation buttons and book sales haven’t filled the gap.

One value is fulfilled while the other wanes. What’s the solution for this imbalance? This puzzle has led to a surprising number of doubts, questions, and nerves. I’ve felt guilty thinking about backtracking and placing the ads back on the site. I’ve felt nasty about engaging in affiliate marketing. And I don’t have time to create a class, campaign, or course that could potentially bring in additional revenue. School must take priority, but Frugaling shall be an integral, secondary part of my life.

For now, I’ve decided to bring back the ads. They’ll be basic Google ads, which won’t distort my voice or manipulate what I decide to promote. These ads aren’t my favorite, but in an effort to strike a balance between making money and reducing consumption, I’m taking the middle path.

Because of this backtrack, I’ve refunded and repaid everyone’s donations, too. Although their support was deeply appreciated over the last two months, I would feel slimy keeping them. As readers of Frugaling, I’d love to know what you think about this decision. Your support and readership is what keeps my site going. Thanks for listening.

Your friend,
Sam

Income Power Parity Rules Everything Around Me

By Frugaling 6 Comments

How does your dollar in Colorado equal another in South Carolina? Will your dollar always be a dollar? What does a dollar equal in Russia? What will that dollar afford you in one place, but not another?

These questions are at the center of something called “purchasing power parity” or PPP. This theory allows economists to compare different currencies, along with changing relative costs. Your dollar tends to go further in more economically disenfranchised countries, and shorter in the higher economic zones. To put it simply, prepare for a tiny dollar in Europe, and a hefty one in sub-Saharan Africa.

With this statistic, we can actually understand purchasing power. Whenever we change locations, our power changes. Our relative expenditures fluctuate in tow. Sometimes it’s in our favor – other times we aren’t so lucky.

Purchasing power emphasizes the potential of a dollar spent, but what about a dollar earned?

Let me explain.

In 2015, the average American college student will graduate with more than $35,000 in loans. A horrific 71% of students will graduate with loans, too. These statistics are just the beginning for many hopeful grads.

Bankers and shockingly, the federal government, line up their coffers and wait for that beautiful “cha-ching” sound. Those students will pay for years; heck, likely decades. The interest-bearing loans will build more and more debt over time. And if they pursue a higher education – say a masters, Ph.D., M.D., or J.D. – it’ll mean thousands more.

Here’s an example: pretend “Benny” goes to undergrad for four years, and graduates with $35,000 in debt. He was a good student – some even called him great. His grades were strong, and he decided to apply to counseling psychology Ph.D. programs. Benny researched all the ins and outs about psychology. He decided that it was right for him. Benny would be able to study topics that interest him, practice counseling, and develop a teaching ability. It seemed like a win-win-win.

Years go by, and Benny has been going further into debt. By now, four years into his Ph.D. program, he has about $150,000 in student loans. But Benny has also settled on what he wants to do: practice counseling psychology as a clinician.

This much in the hole, the world appears rather bleak. But for Benny, he self-soothes by calmly reciting, “This is an investment in my future.” At least, that’s what everyone keeps telling him.

Then, he graduates and steps out into the bustling world of career opportunities! Solid five-figure salaries shine, and he gets ready to start a new future, pay off his debt, and maybe buy a new car. He finds a starting counselor position at $55,000 a year and gets the job. Now, he thinks, the good life can begin.

Remember how I started talking about PPP? Well, there’s a parallel version for income, too. I’ve never read it anywhere, though. I’ll call it “income power parity” or IPP.

IPP would represent the relative value of a salary, when you account for student debt, car loans, and other regular financial obligations. For Benny, his $55,000 salary hardly equals $55,000. Between paying the tax man, loans (car and student debt), and potentially starting a new family, buying a house, etc., his money dwindles.

It will take years to pay off these atmospheric amounts of debt. And every day that goes by, the interest ticks on. More money will be owed and/or paid off over time.

Here’s where income parity comes into play. Benny is a counselor, getting paid an average starting salary for someone with his education. If he had gone a different route and become a social worker, he would’ve graduated faster; thus, lowering his amount of possible debt. While the average salary for a social worker is less than a counseling psychologist, would it have been worth it for Benny to choose this route instead?

Effectively, social workers and counseling psychologists (clinicians) do the same work. One gets paid less than the other. But if one has to collect more debt than the other in the educational process, who actually gets paid more? Who can save, invest, and collect more than the other in the long run?

These questions get at the heart of income parity concerns. With more than a trillion dollars in total debt, students are burdened with one of the toughest economic questions ever. They need to stare at salaries and ask, like no generation before them, “Yeah but, how much am I really going to make?”

What I Learn Outside The Classroom

By Frugaling 10 Comments

“It occurred to me that there were two sets of virtues, the résumé virtues and the eulogy virtues. The résumé virtues are the skills you bring to the marketplace. The eulogy virtues are the ones that are talked about at your funeral — whether you were kind, brave, honest or faithful.”
—David Brooks

Earlier this week I chatted with an old friend about my dissertation. I mentioned that I’m having trouble isolating variables, staying interested, and writing the countless pages required of me. But her advice and guidance helped keep me on track, motivated, and psyched.

At some point during the conversation she asked me about my plan. More specifically, what was my plan with Frugaling. I pondered that question and frankly didn’t understand what she meant at first. “My plan?” I inquired. She responded, “Yeah, your plan. You’ve been working on Frugaling for a long time now. Do you ever think it’ll influence or turn into a career?”

I couldn’t help but laugh aloud. Frugaling has never felt like a primary goal or endpoint. Rather, working on this site has been a break from the normal routine — an opportunity to write freely and talk about personal finance in a forum that didn’t exist for me.

Interestingly, I’ve always lived this way: pursuing one avenue while holding countless activities in the background. In high school, I gambled and watched the stock market in every off block or break. I played at lunch with friends and raced home to sign online for hours of entertainment. Poker and stocks superseded high school. As a consequence, my grades suffered and relationships were strained. Nobody liked the person I had become, including me. The lessons of high school paled in comparison to the power of isolation, overwhelming greed, and selfishness. I learned early on that I never wanted to go back to that place.

Despite the lessons, it was the start of a long pattern of side work/play. In college, I was a resident assistant, op-ed columnist for the school newspaper, research assistant, instructor, and served on various committees for suicide prevention and community service. By the end of my tenure I raised over $30,000 for suicide prevention. Here, I learned the importance of selflessness, friendship, and love. None of which were learned in the classroom.

I’ve been in graduate school for… Well, I’m working on my fifth year now because I spent a year at my alma mater in another Ph.D. program. Then, I transferred to my current one for counseling psychology. But in my one year, I became more immersed in the world of suicide prevention via board memberships and invited talks.

My passion for mental health and community engagement grew, but it stood in conflict with academic demands. When I left the program and moved to another, the professors called me it out and basically said, “You’re a great person to have in the classroom, but you’re distracted and your grades have suffered. There are times in life where you must cut back on certain activities to excel in others.”

That was the first time in my life where I wholeheartedly disagreed with feedback about how I conducted myself. My “distractions” were epic side projects, which got me through graduate school, gave me diverse experiences, and exposed me to entire world of learning that occurs out there — in the world.

See, I can’t help but think that these mentalities are something of an “old guard.” In generations of yore, people would become educated, train for a particular career, and then work until they either dropped dead or retired. They did that one thing — over and over again. If all went well, you retired with a hefty pension and retirement package. You could drift off into blissful security, knowing you’d worked hard and earned the riches to live comfortably.

This mentality of education, training, and career has shifted though. People change jobs more than ever — laterally, vertically, and entirely. Now, a job is a temporary weigh station versus a home away from home. Employers tend to treat employees as expendable moneymakers — easily replaced with another head. And the incentives for staying with one company have largely evaporated. Even when pensions are offered, they’re sometimes cut or stopped altogether.

Frankly, I have an utter insecurity for pigeonholing myself to one esoteric career path and never looking back, sideways, or ahead. It’s utterly frightening to imagine doing one thing for the rest of my life, and I’m not sure that any one employer will empower me to do so.

I’ve been in school for about 21 years. The majority has been spent “distracted” and preoccupied with other loves, passions, and motivations. And I can’t help but think about Neil deGrasse Tyson’s belief that discoveries don’t occur in classrooms — they happen in minds, labs, and connections outside. Heck, Einstein didn’t have his eureka moments in a classroom. But largely, most seem caught up in the rat race of education and prestige.

As I reflect on the future of Frugaling, it’s easy to see how it fits into my life. It will likely never be my number one “career,” but there’ll always be a place for this wonderful distraction in my life. These adventures in time and effort have never failed me. In breaking away from the shackles of needing A’s in all my courses or feeling guilty for not working harder, I’m comforted by the fact that work comes in many forms.

Today we live in a world of great change and diversity, to assume or predict what’s necessary for tomorrow would be foolish. Instead, I embrace the unknown by mixing up my life and embracing my wacky, weird, and awesome interests.

How do you approach your career in the 21st century?
What careers are you training for?
Do you ever work outside work or “distract” yourself? How so or why not?

Lose Track Of Time To Find Your Career

I Deleted All The Ads. Now I Regret It.

What I Learn Outside The Classroom

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