So I’m lying here in bed thinking about why I’m going back to school. Wondering what I’ll do with my expensive, new knowledge…so I decided to try to put into words what I hope to accomplish in life.

My goal is to find a job where I can do something noble and honorable with my time and talents.

I want to use my unique skills to improve situations that others complain about. I suppose this is why engineering made sense to me. But I found that solving oil-field facility-related problems wasn’t motivating enough for me. I am drawn to wanting to improve the situations of PEOPLE (which was actually a small part of improving oil-field facilities…making the operators happy is what made me happy).

But am I best equipped to improve people’s lives one-on-one, say with massage, psychology, or social work, or am I better equipped to do this on a large scale – say with politics, diplomacy, or writing?

What are my talents? What are my skills?

1. Relating to People Different from Me: I learned by traveling to Pakistan and by befriending foreign exchange students in high school and college that I have a high capacity to relate to people across cultural boundaries. I am genuinely interested in people.
2. Interest in Learning
3. Drive to Solve Problems
4. Able to Bring people together to find Solutions
5. Drive to Teach & Share Knowledge
6. Writing – This skill has gone downhill since college, but I think I still have the knack for organizing words somewhere in my brain

Through all of this analysis, I hope to come closer to realizing what it is I’m fit to do. And it may be that I never achieve more than being an example to a few others of a decent human being trying to live an honorable, noble, yet, normal, householder life. And that would be fine with me. But I feel burdened that I may actually have skills and talents to improve millions of lives, and I’m not using them, and that makes me sad and anxious. It seems self-important and naive just to see that written on the screen, but I actually feel that way in my 27-year-old brain.

So I’ll go back to school, hoping to take some small step on the path of self-realization and service to others, and continue trying to reach out the only way I currently know how: on a one-by-one basis.