In this post, I continue thinking about what in the world I am doing with my future career.
Background
I am in my early-to-mid twenties, and I haven’t yet graduated, but soon enough I will have a B.S. in Civil Engineering. Then, I will move to Australia from the U.S. for a better life. I take my future career very seriously, I care deeply for my education, and I want to make the built environment of our world a better place. I care for the natural environment and for women’s day-to-day issues in my heart, but I have yet to properly show it in my life’s work.
Problem
I don’t know what to do. I have the vague idea, but I don’t know if I’m just not old enough to want to do the work ahead, or if I’m just not inspired enough to do the work ahead, or if I really don’t know what to do. I used to think I knew my life’s purpose: To help women (lead better lives), on a systematic level more than an individual level. I want to incorporate these values into my life’s work, my future career. I am not interested in money for myself, but I have some other expensive goals. I am not sure if I’m interested in helping build any sort of “utopia”, I just want things to be sustainable and better than today. I want the sprawling, wasteful, American pattern of city-building to stop, since this behavior benefits no-one in the long run1 2 3 and destroys beautiful and necessary natural environments, all at once.
Solution
It should be simple. I read articles by Strong Towns, and I see that there are no chapters in my future home country, so I should join their conversations in a greater sense. I hesitate because I am young, and worried about how I come across and about being looked down on at my age, and being looked at differently by others my age who do not yet know what they want to do. It may seem silly but this is one of my greatest remaining barriers.
Logically, I have figured out all else in the broadest senses. I have quite a head start in life for various reasons, I feel, and now since I did everything else early I can continue forth and have a few more years than everyone else in beginning my greatest life’s work: Playing a part in building cities worth living in, that won’t melt away on us whether from bankruptcy or climate-changed-fueled storms in the night.
I want to live in one city for the rest of my life, and benefit it. I don’t know what part of myself will be of the most benefit. I have proven myself as a good public speaker in the canvassing sense, and I can be a pretty alright writer when I try to be, and I research well enough and try to fulfill tasks to completion. I’ve had engineering internships where I paid even too much attention to detail sometimes, and the others’ reports didn’t hold up to mine in their comprehensiveness. I genuinely want to do hard work, and do the right thing morally in every situation, and stand up for others who are doing the right things too, but I don’t want to get stuck in a rut and have my life be boring because of it. Do you know what I mean? I want to help out, but I don’t want to be saddled with work like so many women end up being as a result of their good natures and lack of abilities to say no.
Again, I don’t know exactly what to do, or if an organization like Strong Towns will help out my making-cities-better-for-women goal. I am not going to stay in this country, and I don’t know what is useful to do in these remaining two years I have here or not.
I chose to go into engineering because it is challenging, and my brain will be able to be used every day of my life at work, at its current or future (increased?) capacity. I get the ability to get home tired for good reasons. But since I figured that out, now I need to make sure I know I’m going to get the right sort of job once I graduate. I’m impatient like any young person with ambition, but the alternatives to being impatient are to let the world happen to you and then you end up working on a super-highway project, so… I will continue to be impatient and know I need to work in certain projects and not others even right away, because this is my life’s work, and working for the enemy for any amount of time in life sets you up to continue working for it later down the line too. Plus a hundred different reasons, too. I have already worked a summer in roadway construction, and that was more than enough. Maintenance was fine by me because it wasn’t building anything new.
My Morals
I believe cities should simply stop sprawling. I agree with Strong Towns in many things, and believe in the work they do, although I think in America it will never amount to much visible change, since the people’s opinions on projects like highways are not meaningful blocks to their implementation, and the people’s opinions on city design are quite the same. So much is out of their hands.
I believe that cities should stop sprawling because of the environmental implications first. The sprawl eats up natural habitats of the rest of the members of this planet, and ruins the global environment further through oil and gas usage (roads, and everything else).
The more I write, though, the more I see that my only perspective on these issues has been taken from Strong Towns philosophies. There are no contenders. Nobody else I have encountered speaks at all in a technical manner on our cities’ real issues like these (sprawl, highways, etc). And I have long since discovered that I am someone who just reads a lot, not someone who, well, necessarily thinks for themself. I accept or deny the ideas I am given, I don’t really make any theories of my own, nor do I have any desire to. It’s too much work for absolutely no cost, is my opinion, since I know for a fact that there are millions who already broadly agree with what I believe: Environmental protection and better qualities of life. I’m not a leader, nor do I plan to be. Maybe someday I could bring people together for a common goal, something I already have experience doing in my time as a canvasser, but for now and as far as I can see, I’m a technician. I’m going to work in a group of like-minded people because it’s literally just easier that way. I just have to find the right group.
If my view count goes up and someone has any insight into my issues here, let me know. Maybe I’m overthinking the problem and should just join an organization in the States until two years from now when I leave. I feel a lack of external guidance, which is what is making any decision hard to follow through with.
If I Joined an Organization
It would be more responsibility. Do I want more of that? And, would it actually be? Well, yes, it would, because my whole point in joining something would be for work reasons, and so I wouldn’t be able to stop myself from creating work for myself. And I’m still a college student, I’ll have a lot to work on and learn for my technical skills alone in the coming year or so.
I don’t want more responsibility. I just want to set my future self up for career success. I guess that comes with putting in some projects’ worth of work, though… But then again, my field isn’t science. I don’t even have the proper technical knowledge, I feel, to do real projects. And I’ll have to do a project in my senior year anyways. I could just incorporate my ideals into that. But I’ll have to work with others… So I need to start collaborating with people in my classes already that agree with what I’m talking about. That want to build sustainable cities with me. Maybe reaching out to classmates is a better start than communicating with adult professionals. And less pressure too. So much of my life seems to be figuring out who is worth communicating with… since once the floodgates open, it doesn’t seem to stop.
It doesn’t answer my questions though, of if I should join an organization and open those communication floodgates already, or wait. I know in my heart once I start I can’t rightly go back to staying a silent observer afterwards, but I’m losing so much time in networking basically if I don’t…
Conclusion
I know I’m getting closer to the answer by the day, but I still don’t know what exactly to do. All my possible choices are obvious ones. I don’t necessarily want to do any of them. I could continue as-is, not collaborating with anyone or speaking about my dreams and goals until I leave this country for my new one. Or I could join a professional organization now. I could also join a student one. I could add better SEO to this blog to find like-minded individuals through my own methods. What would give me the most career success once I get to my new country of Australia? What would ensure that I wouldn’t be stuck in a project I know is wrong for humanity as a whole to pursue (like superhighways and oil/gas based construction and the infrastructure put into sprawl)? Where can I even go? Do I just hope for the best? Leave it to the wind? I have absolutely no clue. I have a degree to finish, and after this, my planning period is over, and every day of my life will be spent working on something. Where do I go to look for a job that gives me the right thing to do?
- “The Costs They Don’t Count”, Strong Towns, June 25 2026, https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2026-6-25-the-costs-they-dont-count. ↩︎
- “Warning Signs of a Fragile Town”, Strong Towns, https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2026-6-23-warning-signs-of-a-fragile-town. ↩︎
- “America’s Growth Ponzi Scheme”, Strong Towns, May 18 2020, https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2020-5-14-americas-growth-ponzi-scheme-md2020. ↩︎
Leave a Reply