Paving Your Own Path When You Don’t Know All the Roads
Navigating Your First Role: How to Balance Confidence with Humility in a New Position
There is an interesting moment that happens when you finally get the job you have spent years preparing for: excitement quickly meets reality.
You earned the degrees. You built the experience. You went through the interviews. Someone looked at your qualifications and decided that you were the right person for the position.
And then you start.
Suddenly, you are sitting in a role with real responsibility, expectations, and decisions to make—and there is no longer a syllabus telling you what comes next.
I recently began my first faculty position at an R1 land-grant university. I came into the position with a Ph.D., years of research and teaching experience, industry connections, and a strong background in my field. I knew I had worked hard to earn the opportunity.
I was also brand new at being a faculty member.
Those two things can be true at the same time.
Starting a career, particularly in a position with significant responsibility, can bring excitement, pride, and what I can only describe as anxiety galore. There is a strange expectation we sometimes place on ourselves that because we were hired for the job, we should immediately know how to do every part of it.
But experience in your field does not mean you have experienced every situation you will encounter.
Ask the Question
One of the most important things I am learning is that being qualified for a position does not mean knowing everything on day one.
There are questions I have asked since starting my position that probably have very simple answers to someone who has worked at a university for 20 years. To me, they aren't simple. I have never done this before.
Early in our careers, it can be tempting to avoid asking questions because we don't want someone to wonder whether we belong in the position. I have found that the opposite is often more productive.
Ask.
Ask how something works. Ask why it is done that way. Ask who you should talk to. Ask what someone wishes they had known when they started.
You don't have to prove that you belong by pretending you already know everything.
Find Mentors—Plural
I also don't believe in finding one perfect mentor.
Different people have different experiences, strengths, and perspectives. The person I go to with a teaching question may not be the same person I ask about navigating my profession. Someone within my field may understand challenges specific to my work, while someone completely outside of it may see an opportunity or solution that I would never have considered.
Build a diverse network of mentors.
Seek out people at different career stages, with different backgrounds and expertise, and even people whose careers do not resemble the one you envision for yourself. You aren't looking for someone to hand you a map. You are building a group of people who can help you recognize roads you didn't know existed.
And sometimes, that matters more.
Stay True to What Got You Here
As responsibilities and titles change, it can be easy to think we need to change with them.
Growth is important. Pretending to be someone else isn't.
I didn't arrive at my current position through one perfectly planned career path. My experiences in agriculture, research, teaching, animal welfare, and working alongside people throughout the swine industry all shaped how I approach what I do today.
Those experiences don't become less important because my title changed.
There will always be people who are more experienced than you, know something you don't, or approach a problem differently. Learn from them without assuming you need to become them.
The goal isn't to fit someone else's definition of what a person in your position should look like. It is to continue developing into the professional—and person—you want to be.
Confidence and Humility Can Coexist
Earning an opportunity and being proud of it does not require believing you have mastered everything.
You can walk into a room knowing that you earned your seat while still being willing to listen to the people around the table.
Some of the most valuable lessons in my career have come from people with very different experiences from my own. Producers, students, colleagues, mentors, researchers, and industry professionals all have knowledge worth listening to.
A title should never make us too important to learn from someone else.
I hope I never reach a point in my career where I believe I have nothing left to learn.
You Don't Need the Entire Map
When you are just beginning your career, everyone around you can appear to know exactly where they are going. The reality is that careers rarely unfold as neatly as they appear from the outside.
Sometimes you won't know what the next opportunity is because you don't even know that opportunity exists yet.
That's okay.
Ask questions. Find people who challenge and support you. Stay curious. Stay humble. Pay attention to the doors that open along the way, including the ones you never knew were there.
Most importantly, don't become so focused on following someone else's road that you forget you are allowed to build your own.
You don't need to know all the roads to start paving your path.
