Part 1: What Career Direction Really Means
Career direction is not about picking one job title and holding onto it forever.
It is about answering three deep questions:
- Who am I becoming?
- What problems do I enjoy solving?
- Where can I add value consistently?
Many students are moving fast, but they are moving blindly.
It reminds me of a principle from the book Alice in Wonderland. There’s a scene where Alice asks:
“Which road should I take?”
And the response she gets is:
“If you don’t know where you are going, any road will take you there.”
That is the reality for many students today.
They are moving, but not necessarily progressing.
I once worked with a student at UNILAG. He studied Microbiology because his parents wanted him to become a medical professional.
But in his free time, he was always designing flyers for friends, editing videos, and helping people with social media.
He thought it was just “something he liked.”
After NYSC, he struggled to get a job in his field. That was when he finally paid attention to what he had been doing naturally for years.
Today, he runs a digital media agency.
The lesson is simple:
Sometimes your direction is already showing up in your life, but you are ignoring it because it does not look “serious” enough.