ThisMortalSoil

...at the sight of that question? I don't even know what the hell I see myself doing two years from now.

Anybody else an incredibly directionless junior/senior?

intparent

Heh. This question dogs almost every human being on the planet, not just college juniors/seniors. I am 50 years old, and it makes me sweat, too. Just saying, get used to it!

asianamericanson

I know. It drives me insane having such uncertainty. I remember a middle aged man once told me that at one of his college reunions at Stanford University, one of his friends confided to him his despair at the meaninglessness of his life saying that he doesn't want to die having lived his life as someone else's employee (I think the friend was in business or something). I'm not sure what the answer is but maybe if we choose a life path that we think (to the best of our capacities) is the right way, at least we can tell ourselves at the end of the road that we tried our best and that's that.

spectastic

then why do interviewers ask this useless question?

asianamericanson

Because they secretly want to know the answer.

romanigypsyeyes

Not really. Doesn't bother me much at all. I plan on being wherever I am. I have no particular ambitions (other than to work somewhere that I'll have to wear business clothes less than 10% of the year) and I'm kind of a happy panda wherever. I'll have my SO by my side if all goes well and a pit bull sitting next to me on a couch. The rest is gravy.

For interviewers, I can tell them my ambitions for me in their company/school. That's easy. If I didn't have any, I wouldn't be there.

CalDud

Well, graduate school. Where? I can't say. Wherever and whoever takes me for the PhD program. I could always stay at my university and do a master's before going that route. I'll probably be married before I start graduate school.

I'll be a physicist in some form or fashion, whether in academia or industry. Maybe I'll have a beagle named Chip. Everything somehow in my life is directing me down this path of becoming a physicist and I find myself going to physics seminars, talking to physics teachers, doing physics (even though I'm a math major) in my spare time, dreaming about physics, checking out books about physics, and talking physics with engineers who want to be physicists but won't because engineering is more secure financially. Hell, the reason I'm in math is because I fell in love with science through a physicist that has a huge poster of himself on my wall and all of his books on my bookshelves.

Girlfriend/future wife will be in graduate school as well. Financially, I'll find a way to make it work. Just because I'll have a PhD in hand doesn't mean I won't take a job that is "beneath me". My plan and hope is to do research and teach at a university. I'd work in industry too or for the government.

spectastic

It's particularly hard to answer this question in a job interview when your real ambition is grad school. haha... In that case, I'll just have to give'em the run around, because the other option would be a ridiculous lie. "YES, I would absolutely love to manage operators twice my age, in a plant in the middle of nowhere, living in a crappy little town of 7000 people!"

Philovitist

I know exactly what I want to do in life.


Okay, so maybe I've only narrowed it down to 20 or 30 things.

PRiNCESSMAHiNA

I've woken up from nightmares about this very topic.

Stressed? Absolutely.

But I have confidence that it will all work out for the best

Wiscongene

I want to be some kind of biotech/software entrepreneur, but I realize that's not really a plan. I only wish it were more than a pipe dream.

So, in other words, I'm screwed.

asianamericanson

biotech field sounds like computer science or something. You could do a lot of things with that--work for Microsoft, work in IT, or program computer games! That would be cool; you could help make Call of Duty 45

CollectivSynergy

Just have some quippy response prepared, it doesn't have to be 100% accurate. As long as it's roughly in the ballpark of what you think you want so you're genuine. I hated that question too so I never ask it myself.

ZombieDante

I have no clue where I'm going, what I'm doing, and why I'm doing it. I'm just doing me and trying not to go insane (currently failing at the moment)

clamzo

I don't think most people know where they're going to be in 5 years. Just live in the moment and do the best you can!