The Third Option

You’ve done sixteen years of school, your ACT, your SAT, your etc.; you have been preparing your whole life for this one question…….good thing it’s multiple choice.

• Q 1] What are you going to do when you graduate?
  • Option one, get a job. 
  • Option two, go back to school. 

So what’s it going to be? Well, let’s think about it.

Going back to school…unless you know exactly what you are training for, why delay the inevitable? Let’s scratch that for now.

Getting a job, on the other hand, implies money, independence, and experience – and you crave all three! Now this sounds better.

While the money will be entry-level, let’s face it – you have never really been compensated for your skills before, and have no idea how much you are really worth. Moreover, you are young, psyched to get your first paycheck, and don’t really need all that much to get by comfortably anyways.

The independence…..well, if you don’t count the 40 hour cubicle, then yes – working allows you to strike out on your own. But enough of that whining about long work weeks -you aren’t scared of a little hard work.

Experience, however – this is the sleeper. The big one. You have no real world experience; no management skills, specialization, or industry relationships. What’s more, you have to have experience to get the jobs that would give you experience, and you aren’t too sure if that entry-level admin position will give you the exposure, skills and credentials you need to take the next step (wherever that may be).

Further, despite the probability that you will change careers 7 times before landing in a life-long pursuit, you feel that whatever you do first will define your resume and trajectory for the rest of your life. All this is compounded by the fact that you really don’t even know what you are good at, yet, let alone what you want to spend the rest of your life doing.

Depressed? Don’t be. There’s a ‘C’ to this multiple choice, a third option if you will. At least that’s what I found 5 years ago when I graduated University.

Being a liberal arts student I graduated without any appreciable, resume-worth ‘skills’, but I did have a couple of quotable wisdoms tucked away from my education in the classics. One of them was from the wise Guy Ritchie: “If you change the rules on what controls you… you will change the rules on what you can control.”

I wanted desperately to get experience, to take control of my job search and define my path. Neither option in front of me, going back to school or getting a job, seemed to fit. My natural conclusion was to start my own business – this, certainly, would give me the experience and control that I wanted. However, I lacked both the capital and credibility needed to get a business off the ground, and plus knew that I had a lot of learning to do before I could succeed on my own.

Knowing that I wanted to work towards some public good, preferably in an international context, I had previously gained some experience in the nonprofit sector, and later, with the United Nations system. This work had brought me to Switzerland for studies, I studied water development issues, and later to Uganda, East Africa, where a friend of mine was working with a well drilling company to startup a nonprofit internet center for community based organizations.

As such, after graduation I founded a technology and leadership capacity building nonprofit. Called DevelopNET Iganga, this nonprofit led me to live and work in Africa where I saw how something as free as information can help to bridge the logistical barriers keep small farmers isolated from the market and stuck in a cycle of poverty. I took this lesson with me when I began working with coffee farmers, and now, five years later, I help Crop to Cup Coffee Company to source coffee, and information, directly from the farmers themselves.

I’m not sure what this story’s worth, as I’m not sure how it will end. However, I did find it refreshing to know that one can put their confidence in themselves, and themselves in a position where life can happen, and that the rest sort of follows.

It reminds me of advice that my older brother and rock climbing buddy would give me when I was stranded on the wall. “where do I go”, I’d ask. “Up”, he’d say, and he was always right. You move up an inch, not knowing where to go from there, and suddenly see a mountain’s worth of handholds within your reach.
By Jacob Elster

Jacob is the founder of Crop to Cup, a Fair Trade coffee company which uses technology to reduce the distance between producers and consumers.

Blog originally published  by Change, 12 March, 2009: http://socialentrepreneurship.change.org/blog/view/eotv_the_third_option