About a year ago, I spent what to me was significant money (4-digits) on 10 sessions with a career coach. By session 2 I realized that she had just repackaged What Color is Your Parachute but hoped that better more specific, actionable advice was headed my way. By session 8 I had checked out because it was not providing anything that I needed - she was just pushing an upper-middle-class narrative that did not fit me (which she would have known if she listened to what I said at all). I needed a career coach and not a babysitter, therapist or elementary school teacher to read the book to me.
For context: I left a stalled "career" in communications to attend law school at 30 and while my first legal role was unfulfilling, it gave me the tiniest hope that I do not need to live hand-to-mouth for the rest of my life. Being closer to 35 it seemed like the right time to at least try and get some professional advice and to start trying to build a real career. This career counselor made me cry. Not in front of her, not because anything she said was inappropriate in and of itself but from the platitudes and her evident inability to hear and understand my situation and what I needed. It felt like she lied to me when she said that she understood and could help; she couldn't help or if I needed to adjust my expectations of career coaches then just tell me but don't take my money. Clearly she did not understand that I was being literal when I said that keeping a roof over my head has always taken and will always take precedence so we need to talk about how I can make it so that I am not miserable and that maybe I can try to get to that upper-middle-class ideal that she was pushing of aligning my employment with my values and sense of purpose. I needed concrete guidance on the practicalities, on what to do and how to do it, on what was a reasonable expectation and what was not, on what to expect and how to deal with it. I did not need her to do the hard work of taking action, but I needed some professional guidance and I didn't get any. It felt dishonest, she clearly could not meet me where I am but represented that she could.
I am not embarrassed about putting my rent on credit cards and being on SNAP while holding a seemingly desirable entry-level job, I am not embarrassed by my undergraduate loan debt load. I am very open about having often taken any job that will have me and sometimes at any 2 or 3. When someone says that to you then you should believe them and proceed accordingly.
Just because I have an education it doesn't mean that I have money. Just because I have an education it doesn't mean that I know what to do with it. My career coach did not appreciate those facts plainly stated. I have no doubt that she thinks that she helped me but she just made me cry and further reinforced that I will never have a career because clearly I just don't get "it".
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