From office work to health care management work
By Molly Mann UA’23 and Jim Stellar
In our last blog almost a year ago, after you finished college a semester early, you talked about how “a little voice inside of my head” was “guiding you to different job options.” You first worked part-time at a We-Work type site as a crew member. Now, you have just moved to a full-time job at Iroquois Healthcare under a sub-company that encourages people to go into nursing and related fields under a State of New York allocation. That kind of job movement is natural in the working world, and it can be educational. But it is also a bit of a shift from college. What is your thinking now about these changes and how was it different from what you expected after you finished college given that little voice in your head?
Even though I previously worked at an office WeWork space throughout college and a little bit after graduation, there was still an adjustment going from college and a part-time job to just a full-time job. Transitioning from an environment where all my peers were my age—or sometimes even younger—to an office where my coworkers are the age of my parents was one of the biggest adjustments.
I’ve officially been working for six weeks and am finally getting into a routine and grasping my assignments and responsibilities. During these six weeks, I have been working with students who have the goal of returning to school to continue their education in healthcare. The company I work for is grant-funded, allowing us to provide full coverage for their tuition and textbooks.
Going from being a student to working with students is a strange adjustment, but it also allows me to draw from my own experience of just graduating and being somewhat in the same boat as the applicants—starting a new opportunity to get closer to their careers. I’ve worked with applicants ranging from those fresh out of high school to those in their 50s, sometimes applying alongside their children. Many applicants have shared that without this state grant, they would never have been able to continue their education because of the cost of tuition.
I’ve also come to realize the social pressure on college students to have everything figured out as soon as they graduate—landing a good job and having their life mapped out. In reality, though, it’s okay not to have everything figured out right away. Seeing applicants start new opportunities even in their 50s gave me a sense of relief. Life is so short; you should do whatever makes you happy—even if that means reaching your end goal at 30 or 50.
Good point about doing what makes you happy. Could you say more about how Iroquois Healthcare was an eye-opening experience?
Seeing and talking to applicants who are pursuing healthcare education continues to spark my interest in working in the healthcare field. The little voice I heard throughout college has persisted in this job as well. I have a particular interest in becoming a coordinator for pediatric healthcare. I’ve always wanted a career where I can help others when they need assistance.
I’m grateful for the opportunity to gain experience in the healthcare field, learn industry terminology, and become familiar with different schools and their programs.
So, what is happiness? Clearly, one aspect of it is employment that inspires you. (They say “If you love what you do, you never have to work a day in your life”.) Happiness is measured in many different ways and is individualized. One person’s happiness may not be another’s, and you have to find your own that fits you. This is the quest of college — to begin that process. Then you graduate, take a job, and see how it feels. That little voice inside you will tell you if you listen.
In fact, if this entire blog series has a theme it is to see where plans are tested by experiences (e.g., an internship in college, clubs, organizations, volunteering), and of course the first job or jobs. In this blog series, we think of plans as being cognitive. We think of experience as impacting our emotions—the “felt knowledge.” The combination, which is what is happening here, may be the best way to achieve happiness, giving that little voice something to talk about.
To further explore this happiness issue, let’s engage two experts: Mike Evans – and Hedonic Homeostasis, and Dan Gilbert and synthesizing happiness. What do you think?
Mike Evans and Dan Gilbert have both researched the science behind happiness. Mike Evans discusses the science of subjective well-being and determined that happiness is, in fact, a subjective experience that everyone goes through. With this being said, happiness is influenced by many factors, ranging from life circumstances to genetics. He discusses hedonic homeostasis, emphasizing that individuals tend to maintain a stable level of happiness even after experiencing significant life events. Mike Evans reached these discoveries through surveys and self-reporting tools. He concluded by discussing how external events, along with internal disposition, ultimately play the main roles in an individual’s overall sense of well-being.
Through Dan Gilbert’s studies, he discusses the concept of synthetic happiness, which is the type of happiness a person feels when they don’t get what they want. He took more of a cognitive biases approach, finding that through the psychological immune system, people can still be happy even if something doesn’t occur as they had planned. Dan Gilbert concluded that happiness is complex and isn’t solely dependent on external factors but also on internal processes and perceptions.
Mike Evans and Dan Gilbert provided great insight into how humans sometimes misjudge what will make them happy and how difficult it is to measure happiness. With all this being said, these concepts can be applied to how a person may measure their happiness in relation to their career path, their experiences at full-time jobs, and other life decisions.
This seems like a good place to stop. More later as we continue to trace Molly’s development.
