Everyone Needs a Mentor

"If you don’t wake up in the morning excited to pick up where you left your work yesterday, you haven’t found your calling yet." -Mike Wallace

Over the past several weeks, my interest and motivational levels to complete my work has decreased drastically. Every morning I wake up and think to myself "I should just take a personal day," but I somehow force myself out of bed, get a shower, and head off to waste eight hours of my life for 5 days a week. My work is extremely repetitive. Every week I do the same task over and over again. For some people, these type of tasks are great, but for me, I need change and something new that give me a challenge daily. I find that if I am not challenged, I often couldn't care less to give it 100% of my effort.

The quote above describes my current sentiments with respect to my career. I definitely agree that you will know when you have found your calling in life. Confucius once said "choose a job that you love, and you will never have to work a day in your life." Confucius hit the nail on the head with this one. We spend 1/3 of our lives working. With that in mind, a job should not be something that we have to do, but something that makes us happy to do it. Currently, I am not at all happy doing my job. I know that my calling is somewhere else.

Recently, I was contacted by my old marketing professor about having dinner. E, as I call him, is quite the odd man. Brilliant professor when it comes to marketing. He has a lot of experience that he often combined in teachings. He used to head up China's marketing division for Mobil, which has now merged with Exxon. He also holds a doctoral degree in marketing, and is extremely caring and inspiring to his students. He also is legitimately insane. He drinks a case of diet coke and several cups of coffee everyday. He is always buying random, useless things online, and in order to hide his spending from his wife, he has everything shipped to his office. He once purchased a Canada Goose jacket, and had it sent to the office. He then proceeded to wait for a day when he knew his wife was going to be out of the house for the day, brought the jacket in, and hid it under another jacket in the closet so his wife would not find it. Needless to say, his wife is not stupid.  But back to my original thought, I had him for four years of marketing classes, and was able to learn a great deal from him. He has been very inspirational in my life and is the reason that I want to pursue marketing as my career.

E sent me message asking if I was living in the Baltimore area, which I replied that I was. He asked if I would like to have dinner with him. I told him that would be great, and we are meeting this Saturday for dinner. As I have stated beforehand, E is someone who I look up to as mentor. He started out with just a college degree and made a name for himself in the marketing community. He has great network and can offer a lot of assistance in steering you in the right direction. While at college, I was able to learn a lot from him, but I really never had the time to learn how he made his way in life. Although I have been lost in my career thus far, I feel that my meeting with E might just set me back on the right course for success.