When we were first prompted to create a personal mission statement in Honor 401 this week, I thought it seemed like a pretty direct and simple task. I was feeling pretty chipper after our paper airplane activity, so I got down to business and started to jot down the parts of the statement: personality, values, interests and passions, and strengths/talents/skills.
As I walked into Althouse Lab on Wednesday, I was also occupied by a looming life decision. I received a job opportunity for an IT rotational program that I believe would be a great fit, in two locations: Seattle, WA and Charleston, SC. For context, my mom and I live in Pennsylvania and make up our little family, and she has been fighting breast cancer for the past several months. I will always prioritize spending time with her and supporting her, but I also need to be financially independent and kickstart my career. This point, and a few other complicated factors, were causing me to have great anxiety. Melissa received quite the rant from me at the beginning of class as I earnestly sought advice about job location and more. So, when faced with the personal mission statement activity, I froze. I was in the midst of a decision in which I had no idea what to do, or which way to lean, all based on what I value the most. This simple activity was a wake up call that I need to better understand myself, and what I want and need to prioritize in my life. Here’s what I ended up with:
Under Know Your Values, I had quickly written, “family – mom, integrity, honesty, communication”
Personality: “extroverted, empathetic, ambitious, creative”
Interests and Passions: “music/arts, involvement in community/social engagement, politics, living a culturally-rich life, living an active life”
Under Strengths, Talents, and Skills, every bullet point has a question mark after it. Yikes.
My hesitation and difficulty with this task has shown me that I need to be more self-aware on several different levels in order to help my decision-making process, and in order to be a more effective leader. I’m sure this will take a great deal of time and effort, but I am determined to find my personal mission along the way.
First of all, I’m sorry to hear about your mom, though if she raised you, I’m sure she’ll kick cancer’s ass. To your point on mission statements, I found it cheesy at first, but actually quite helpful to draft my own mission statement. My main takeaway, though, from the exercise was that the emphasis is on the word draft (imagine italics here for effect). A personal mission statement can well be a living document. I love what you have drafted above, and look forward to seeing how it develops over time.
Bailey – completely sympathize with the difficulty of crafting a personal statement, as I ran into similar difficulty on my own. Despite the struggle, I really like how you broke it down into different categories that would make up your mission statement. Even if you didn’t end up with a complete and cohesive mission statement, the exercise obviously gave you significant insight into things to work on in the future and was clearly worthwhile for you.