Speaking with Lisa Nishii at the Rose Cafe the other evening provided me with some unforeseen food for thought. I expected to learn more about Nishii’s field in organizational psychology, but ended up learning more about the process of finding your own path instead. One of the most reassuring things I heard from Nishii was — “At your age, I didn’t know at all what I wanted to do, either.” As a student who is rapidly approaching senior year, I often feel like I should have my life planned out. However, hearing that many people just wander where opportunities take them until something feels right–and that this works— was very reassuring.

Another thing that struck me from our conversation was that Nishii found her passion through following things that interested her. This may sound obvious, but when you’re young and looking for the “perfect career”, you consider just about every field out there instead of focusing on what you already know you love. If you notice that you’re very into writing papers for a certain class, or that you spend all your free time researching one specific topic in the news, it might be a sign that you’d like to continue doing that.

Overall, speaking with an adult who has actually been through the same experiences and has come out the other end in a happy, satisfying career (and who is not necessarily at the end of her career path–there is always more to explore) reminded me that it isn’t a race to finding the “perfect job”, and that following opportunities and exploring interests as I go is a worthwhile method for enjoying my post-college worklife.

It’s interesting how many of the Rose cafes have been about applying for a major that you wouldn’t ever dream of. This seems to be a common theme and finding yourself and it honestly terrifies me. I always want to know if I’m on the right path and I have everything under control but this talk testifies that it doesn’t always work out that way. And the comforting thing about that is  that, *it’s okay.* As long as you’re happy with where you are and what you are pursuing, the details don’t matter, just your happiness.

Prior to this evening I had no idea who Lisa Nishii was. I was so happy and interested to speak with her on the shift Cornell is making towards active learning initiatives, particularly in the sciences. As a biology student who has taken the experimental active learning class (Evolution and Diversity 1780), I’m excited that the methods and applications of disseminating information through a more collective and collaborative approach is speaking to other subjects that could very well benefit from greater collaborative learning, like general chemistry and physics. I hope she returns soon as I would like to know how all of this is going along!

Attending the Rose Cafe led by Lisa Nishii, a Japanese-American professor at the ILR School here, was very informative about her path to becoming involved in academia. During this meeting, she informed us about how she utilized her mentors and took risks to get where she is today.

Through this meeting, I became more comfortable about not knowing what I want specifically do in the future. As a food science major, I’m not sure which path I want to take in the future (product development or food safety). By meeting with Prof. Nishii, I now understand that it is okay to not know what I want to do now, and that I can work things out as they came.

I think for a lot of us at Cornell people expect us to know exactly what we want to do with our lives or how we at least plan to get there. I mean in a sense, we’re expected to know this when we’re applying for colleges as most people tell you not to go in undecided. Personally, I wouldn’t encourage being so closed minded and focusing on your studies instead of something that you may actually be extremely passionate about. Hearing Lisa talk about how unpathed her career was and how uncertain she was during some parts of her life kind of gave me hope for my future that is currently unknown. Prior to Cornell, I was supposed to be training in Korea to become a K-pop idol. Do I regret giving up the opportunity that millions of teens across the world try to reach? Yes, but also no. I think my mind always likes to wander to what my life would’ve been like if I hadn’t left but I’m also a huge believer in fate and I think that I was brought to Cornell for a reason. Of course, whenever I tell my friends about the story, they are always shocked that I left but I think that focusing on my past isn’t going to get me anywhere in my future. Instead, I want to be able to be proud of everything I’ve done and work hard to do everything I want to do. There’s a lot that we all don’t know and I think that the uncertainty scares most of us but we have to be willing to go through with it in order to go further and transcend both ourselves and the community for the better.

Walking around Cornell, at a first glance, it looks like everyone has their lives figured out and all put together. The reality is that all of us have an idea of where we want to go but none of us have our lives completely put together. It was refreshing to here Lisa Nishii talk about her career story and how she got to where she is today. She could have never imagined that she would end up where she is today but she absolutely loves what she studies and is so happy where she is at. I loved her story and the message behind it. We don’t have to know exactly what we want to do with our lives right now and it is okay to explore different careers to figure out what we love and want to do. When I was younger people constantly talked about how important it was to figure out what you wanted to do and to pull your life together. It is funny that as I grew older I would hear that less and less. I would hear more people tell me stories closer to Lisa Nishii’s. I know I am only a sophomore but I am trying to figure out what I want to do after graduation and I don’t see myself sticking with one career path or with one job. It is reassuring to know from someone who has experienced it herself that things will work themselves out.

Dr. Lisa Nishii, a professor in the ILR school and part of the Cornell’s board of administrators responsible for facilitating inclusion on the Cornell campus. Born in Tokyo to an American mother and Japanese father, she grew up wanting to become the very trade ambassador between America and Japan. As she made her way through her educational journey, she struggled with figuring out what to do for her career. In one of her classes regarding how culture affected how people think, and how that affects how they act, she wrote a research paper. She realized her passion was understanding the relationship between these elements in the human psyche. At first, she was hesitant toward going into academia, but her mentors pointed out her passion for learning was suitable for going into academia, as opposed to working in a corporate environment. Long story short, she became a professor here at Cornell.

While this was her story, it made me feel more comfortable not knowing exactly where my educational journey would take me. Ironically, the things she described as being interested in are also my own interests. But as a Plant Science major, I’m not sure if I’ll be able to take that many classes in that field. And now, when I finally got to writing this post, am considering changing my major to Interdisicplinary Studies (Make your own major). The question is, whether to specialize in Plant Breeding and Genetics, or incorporate social studies (history, culture, government, etc.) into my new major?

I was inspired by Professor Lisa Nishii’s life talk about how she had her whole life planned out, but ended up in a totally different path and loves where she ended up. I contemplated about my life decisions for a long time during my freshman year about my major and what I wanted to work as in the future. From studying abroad, I was able to decide where I would be the happiest and most passionate about my work. I am glad and feel grateful for the opportunities given by Cornell that helped me with my career paths and goals. From this cafe talk, I became more aware of the opportunities that I can talk and will be open to any changes that happen throughout life.

The Rose Cafe with Lisa Nishii was a wonderful time as she walked us through her educational and professional journey that brought her to Cornell and ultimately to her role on our campus today. It was refreshing to hear someone tell us that you don’t need to have everything figured out right now and that it is mostly experiences and life that will shape your path.

I think this was an important conversation to have as often times students will get tunnel vision in terms of their career and will feel as though they are falling behind. The reality that we still have time to figure everything out, try new things, and even stray from our original intent is important.

We also discussed our time here at Cornell, both the pros and cons, and had a wide conversation about what we are doing right and what can be improved upon. It was refreshing to see that someone in an administrative role cared so deeply about feedback from students themselves when shaping the future of our university.

Besides the fact that the Vice Provost for Undergraduate Education personally came to listen to our opinions about Cornell, I really vibed with her take on “meandering” through education and even life.  Just a year ago, I was ready to bang out four years of premed, hop into med school, and grind through residency to land an MD. In fact, I even considered an accelerated BS/MD program in high school. I faced a lot of pressure from my parents to do medicine, and everyone around me seemed to already have such a clear idea of what they wanted to do. In the end, I’m glad I didn’t launch myself into premed because I was pleasantly surprised to find I had a knack for business/analyst work. Freshman year I joked about switching to AEM, but this year I was actually seriously considering it. Talking with advisors and mentors about career paths has made me realize it’s important to have faith in the meandering, and trust that the time spent seemingly getting “nowhere” will actually tell you more about yourself.

I’m sure my experience is not uncommon amongst Cornell students. Sometimes you need to be told that it’s okay not to have a path charted and a trail blazed right away, that it’s okay to loop around and get lost for a while. And I’m glad Lisa took the time to make sure kids knew that because influential adults and people we look up to are integral in normalizing healthy meandering.

Last week, I had the pleasure of hearing the Vice Provost for Undergraduate Affairs, Lisa Nishii, speak about her experience and path to her current position at Cornell. As someone considering an academic career myself, I was especially enheartened to hear her explain how her own life was not a direct path to Cornell Professor, but one that took many turns and twists before coming here. I also was struck by how her original career goal was far from being a Cornell professor, but rather a state official. It made me sit back and look at my own ambitions, and realize that they too might be much different in a decade or two than they are now.

From career day to having dinner with relatives, we are asked what we want to do for a living. This leads to us making up our minds at a young age that we want a specific career and we have to accomplish all these goals to obtain our dream job. This can be dreading for some of us who do not have it all figured out or when someone realizes that his or her career goal is not what they want anymore. Thus, hearing Lisa Nishii speak about her trajectory was a relief. Even though she had a dream job in mind, she was still open to new opportunities. As my years in college advance, I decided that this is a good way to think about life since there are so many fields out there that it can be hard to figure what I want now. I hope to be able to explore different jobs through talking to professors, internships and future jobs. I also found it interesting how she wanted to get a PhD to be best that she could be. This is also a mentality I have and it is helpful at times, but I realized that it is not necessary to be the best in everything.

****Partially necessary (though unnecessarily long) personal background****

At 9th grade, I was fairly sure I wanted to pursue Physics as career. My interest for the subject steadily grew as I learned more and more about it, and so it seemed my career was decided. Because of that, in the last few years, I’ve mostly been trying to blaze through this path. From the middle to the end of 12th grade, when I got a ‘break’ from physics competitions (and particularly after university entrance exams (in Brazil, university admission is determined solely by entrance exams) and US universities’ application processes were also over), I started to question myself a bit more, to wonder about completely different paths, and to fear that, in my rush to be the very best I could be, I was missing something.
Nowadays, I’m still pretty sure I’m staying in Physics: even though questions about my career path still linger in my head on a daily basis, Physics intrigues and excites me all the time*. In this sense, I still don’t think I’ll change my current direction of preparing for grad school, and I have no intentions of ever changing majors. However, that does not mean I don’t have several questions about my future career, or even about my interests.

*(the latest case being yesterday, when it felt magical to me that I looked at my physics homework’s calculations in terms of my math class on Lie Groups, and finally started to see how a Coulomb potential and Lie Groups are related. And I know this will become even clearer and more general as I go on, because the entire Quantum Mechanics uses the idea of commutators, which is nothing more than ‘Lie brackets’ in a Lie Algebra. And this is awesome!!! 😀 )

Recently, I’ve been slowly understanding other parts of myself that were almost never able to flourish beforehand, as I was too focused on my (supposed) career path to really explore them (for example, I’ve now established a personal goal of making a video-game. And although I don’t plan to minor on Game Design here at Cornell due to time/schedule constraints, I’m studying game development by myself during free time in order to work towards this goal). As these other interests become stronger, I can’t help but wonder where they’ll take me: will they change my career ideas? Will they take me in a different direction? Will they somehow overlap with my current plans? Or will they remain as ‘side-projects’?
These are questions I ask myself daily even if, as mentioned, I have no plans of changing either my major or my plan of working towards grad school.

****About the event itself****

With this unnecessarily long introduction out of the way (which reminds me I need to practice being concise), prof. Nishii’s story very much resonated with me. The path she took reminds me a lot about my own, as she originally had plans to take a 5-year long program at UPenn to continue blazing through her own path. Differently from the direction I’m taking for my college career, however (although similarly to my ‘personal rediscovery’ process), she took a step back in order to figure out what she actually wanted to do. Frankly, it feels a bit comforting to hear that while grasping with my own questions about my career.

For me, nonetheless, the most reassuring part about her story is what happened after she graduated: the process from graduating from college still unsure of what she wanted, deciding she wanted to go to grad school, and effectively going to academia. And I say this because, when hearing people talk about it being okay to not know what you want, I often have the impression that the overarching idea is that “sometime during college, you’ll figure everything out”. This idea hits me harder with time as, due to my self-discovery process, I increasingly have questions about my future (and it hits me particularly hard when I realize I’m close to being a junior already, because I had this idea of juniors as people who have it all figured out). In this sense, prof. Nishii’s life story brought me a slightly different perspective on the ‘it’s ok to not know’ idea, which helps alleviating my own burdens/tensions.

I think these kinds of stories and talks are very important in the context of university to deconstruct the (seemingly) increasingly common idea that ‘everyone has it all figured out already’ (and not only for university but for our age group in general, as this seems to usually be the time when people figure out what they want to do. It seems to me it’s particularly important in universities because of the pressure involved, but it’s important in general nonetheless), so I’m very much glad events like this exist!

Last Wednesday during the coffee chat, Ms. Lisa Nishii talked with us about her personal journey of how she came to be at Cornell. It was interesting, as she discussed how at first, she just knew she wanted to be the Trade Representative for US and Japan, but she ended up changing her career path several times. Nishii said that she majored in psychology in college, but hadn’t gone to college with that intention. When she had gone to graduate school, she still wasn’t sure of what she wanted to do, but she had never given being a professor or a teacher much thought because of her stereotypical biases against the average, boring, sweater-vested professors with glasses. Eventually, however, she was told by her professors in graduate school that she should consider being a professor because she would always write so many notes in the margins of whatever they were discussing as a class. Although hesitant at first, she eventually gave it more thought and decided to become a scholar, working at Cornell as a professor for a number of years. Her story was revealing, as she encouraged us to continue to be open to different ideas in regards to our career path. Even if we have different goals in mind, it is important to continually try new things because you never know where you may end up. Nishii said that she never planned on having the job that she currently has, but stressed how glad she was to be where she was and not be where she had wanted to be when she was younger. So, even if you have a good idea of what you want to do, it is important to go with the flow of life and stay open to possibilities that you may not be thinking of right now.

There are multiple ways to trudge up the slope to get to your class in Baker Laboratory.  You could take the straight path: the 90 degree angle of a slope.  You will probably be staring down the gravel beneath your feet, praying you don’t slip and tumble back down the slope.  You’ll be sweating at the top, but you made it!

Or you can take the smaller slopes by the sides, enjoying the view and the path up.  You could even stop by Jennie’s for a muffin or Libe Cafe for a much needed iced coffee.  Regardless of which path you take, you will probably end up where you want to be.

Like going up the slope, finding your career is not a straight path; there are multiple winding or direct paths that can get you there.  Rather than stressing about the destination, why not enjoy the journey there?

After hearing from Lisa Nishii and her elaborate journey to where she is today, I discovered that our path is constantly shifting, as new roads open up and others close.  Sometimes you might trudge up a dead end, but that’s okay.  Just turn around and begin again.  Sometimes you might meet people along the journey, who will help you get there.

Listening to the other students, I found myself agreeing with how there’s always a pressure of having our end goal in mind and be dead set on completing our time here at Cornell.  However, in this process, we lose touch with the important people in our lives and the small things in life.  We begin to lose the passion that started our journey in the beginning.  We lose our purpose.

Another thing I realized is that I take Cornell for granted sometimes.  Hearing the transfer students speak about their previous institutions, about the lack of opportunities and supportive environment, I appreciate all that Cornell offers, from the research or outreach opportunities to all the amazing people I’ve met here.

Therefore, it’s quite important to take a step back and evaluate what we are doing.  Are we doing what we truly love or just pushing along hoping we finally reach our goal? Will we be satisfied and happy at the end?

Honestly, I’m not sure where my path is gonna take me, but I’m going to enjoy the journey and my time at Cornell.  In the meantime, I’m going to stop by for that coffee from Libe.

I really enjoyed the Rose Café lead by Lisa Nishii this week because I feel like she offered extremely important advice that is rarely given. I believe that Dr. Nishii’s emphasis on taking time to explore what it is about which we are most passionate and having faith that things will work out is a point that students today need to hear and do their best to internalize. Indeed, students often feel pressure to find a resume-enhancing internship, and the priority thus becomes landing any internship but preferably one prestigious enough to powerfully enhance their resume. Finding an internship or opportunity that will enable a student to explore his or her passions seems to take a back seat. Additionally, I think that there is so much pressure to keep moving along the fast track to success that it can be not only easy to forget why we decided to start striving for that destination in the first place but also easy to lose sight of how exciting the journey can be.
Accordingly, I very much appreciated how Dr. Nishii took the time to allow us to remind ourselves and our peers what we love about Cornell and why we wanted to be here. Like many Café attendees, I also am really amazed by the opportunities and experiences that Cornell has to offer, from attending the lectures of and conducting research with some of the most renowned scholars in the world to attending an event with Justice Sotomayor to stumbling across a cattle auction on your way to the Dairy Bar, as I once did. As Dr. Nischii said, now is likely the only time that we will be immersed in an environment like Cornell’s, so we really should make an effort to let ourselves enjoy it whenever we can. As I was sitting at the discussion and taking in Dr. Nischii’s advice, I realized that when I reflect back on my time at Cornell, I am almost certain that I will not be thinking that I should have spent more time studying and stressing, but I might be wishing that I had explored Ithaca and the surrounding area more or that I had attended more lectures of visiting scholars or prominent professionals. Dr. Nischii’s discussion has given me an extra push to invest efforts in enjoying Cornell and all that it has to offer.

After attending the Rose Cafe talk from Lisa Nishii,  I realized that it is 100 percent okay to not know what you want to do in the future. Often people are certain that the path they take will lead to certain outcomes but that is not always the case. Many people in their current professions often got there through twisted roads. Although there is pressure to decide what career path to take and what to study, people should take their time to really think about what they enjoy and what they want to do with their lives. The talk gave me the opportunity to self-reflect on my current academic path at Cornell and if it really is the path that I want to take.

I attended the Rose Café this week and Lisa Nishii was the speaker. I looked up her credentials beforehand and I was happy to find out that she is part of the ILR school, as I am an ILR major. Throughout the talk she told us about her life and started off by saying that it was not a straight-set path as many think people’s lives are. I found it interesting that she turned down a fast-track 5 year program at UPenn to focus on what she wanted to figure out with her life. I also found it fascinating how her bicultural background really affected her interests and guided her to what she really wanted to do – organizational psychology.

From her talk, I learned two important lessons from her which I intend to keep with me. One, is that life is not a straight path and we’re going to take steps forward and steps backward and steps to the side and that’s okay. As long as we keep learning and keep growing, I think we’re on the correct track anyway. The second lesson is to get in touch with our faculty and professors as they are here because of us and to serve us. I feel as many of us get intimidated by the people who want us to help us the most.

Attending the Rose Café with List Nishii was enlightening and reassuring. I personally have been feeling pressured to figure out what I want to do with my life. No longer being a freshman makes it seem like I should be adjusted by now and that I should have my education and career precisely on track. As a high schooler, I thought that the college experience would magically guide me down a straight and narrow path to finding my “passion.” Recently, the fact that I haven’t had the epiphany of what my passion is yet has worried me. My parents’ frequent inquiries about my career goals keep the unyielding question at the forefront of my mind, but I feel that I haven’t experienced enough to decide that any one thing is what I want to do forever. In addition, being surrounded by driven and ambitious people has certainly put the thoughts that Lisa Nishii mentioned of “everyone else has their life together and I don’t” in my mind. However, it was very comforting to hear that she faced similar struggles and made it out the other side with a fulfilling purpose even if her path was not as direct as she first envisioned it to be. As she talked about her journey, I saw some nods from others showing that other students feel or have felt this way as well. It was nice to know that I am not alone in trying to figure things out.

I went to see Prof. Lisa Nishii’s Rose Cafe talk. I don’t think I got a whole lot out of her life story. I get that she had a winding path and that she was telling people that’s okay but I already fully expect to have a winding path. I came to college thinking I would be a neuroscience major, switched to economics once I actually got there, and then transferred to study public policy here.

I don’t know how to not sound petty about this, but it’s also frustrating when left-wing people claim to care about diversity and inclusion, but then once I pipe up and say that this campus is not ideologically diverse and is not inclusive of people who are not some shade of left, I get laughed at. I get that people see libertarians as crazy conspiracy theorists, but our ideology traces its roots back to Laozi, John Locke, and the Levelers. The fact that diversity of something as insubstantial as someone’s genitals or skin color is seen as more important than intellectual diversity is extremely frustrating.  I get that most college-age people are left wing and the overwhelming majority of professors are left wing, but it’s intellectually bankrupt to demand diversity of race, gender, and socioeconomic status while refusing to acknowledge the value of diversity of thought. There are organizations like Heterodox Academy that broaden intellectual diversity on college campuses, and they seem to be doing a great job. Why can’t Cornell try to have some initiatives to support diversity of thought?

This week I attended the Rose Cafe by Lisa Nishii. Although her life story did not generally apply to my situation as it was largely focused on the social sciences and psychology, there were some general concepts I could relate to. The first was that it is not necessary that you know your desired outcome with education, especially in your undergraduate degree. The second is that you should take advantage of faculty and mentors while you are still college so that they might guide you in your professional path.

Although I am set in my desired career, I can certainly attempt to make the most of faculty while I am still here at Cornell. Particularly in this semester, I hope to get to know my current professors and learn their path to academia.