A recent conversation with a colleague got me thinking about how I ended up where I am. I'm not someone who seeks out network events or talks much about what I've done at work - I'd rather spend quiet time with the people closest to me, and sharing personal things in a public forum doesn't come easily to me. But that conversation reminded me how healthy it is to stop and look back every now and then, and that it's probably worth doing more often than I do.
The way I see it, my life so far splits in two. The first part ran on rails. You go to class because that's what you do, someone else decides where you should be and when, there's a clear system for how well you're doing. I never quite thrived in it, but I grew comfortable and learned my way around. The second part has been more my own - slower to arrive, and more about understanding myself than following a schedule. Learning to live that way, to think in years rather than in what was booked for Wednesday at twelve, is a big part of what I'd now call maturing.
For a long time my life was almost entirely shaped by school. I went from primary school straight to high school, and from high school straight to university. That might sound ordinary, but in Denmark - at least in my generation - it's fairly normal to take a gap year or two somewhere along the way. I didn't, which made me one of the youngest in my high school class and, I think, the youngest in my year at university, without having skipped anything.
When I had to choose my subjects in high school, there was no real plan behind it, I simply picked a combination I thought I'd enjoy. At that age, that's probably the right move. It was the same when I chose my degree - "Communication and IT? Sure, I like talking to people and I like computers". That was about the extent of the thought that went into one of the bigger choices of my life.
Both choices turned out fine. I enjoyed my time in high school and at university. But looking back, it mostly came down to luck. Almost everything up to that point I'd done because it was what you were supposed to do - not out of any peer pressure, but because I wasn't really aware or cared that there was another option.
It wasn't until well into my master's that I learned only about 15% of the population holds a master's degree or the equivalent. To me it had always just been "what you did". A few years later, an HR manager said to me, half in frustration, something like: "You have a master's degree, Rasmus - highlight it!".
We met at the start of the second year of my master's. I had little aim then. My studies were coming to an end and I had no real plan for afterwards. I figured I'd find a job somewhere, and it didn't much matter where. I wanted enough, and as long as I had enough, things would be ok. And ok is good.
But meeting her was one of my first real steps toward maturing. For the first time I felt a sense of togetherness that asked for more than that. More than ok. She's the reason I rediscovered a love for learning - and somewhere along the way, I became someone she leans on too. We rely on each other now. She's structured where I am not - she'll have the week mapped out while I'm still working out what I want from it - and somewhere in that difference we started leaning on each other. I'm thankful for the sheer unlikelihood of us meeting at all, and that she somehow sees a bit of her own brilliance reflected back when she looks at me.
While I was writing my thesis I started interviewing, and five minutes after I got my grade I was offered a job. The salary wasn't quite what I'd hoped, but it was a start, and it meant I didn't have to think too hard about what I actually wanted from a career. It was comfortable. I stayed on the tracks, even though they were no longer as clearly laid out.
I couldn't have asked for a better group of people to start with. They were caring, generous, and genuinely appreciative of my work - even after I slept through my alarm on the third day. That's where I learned what it means to have a job and to be somewhere every day. But I soon started to feel I had no room to grow. I was handed responsibility for things around the office, but nothing that felt like a real challenge or gave me the sense of progression I was missing. The track was still there, it just had no destination, only more of the same. So after about half a year, I went looking for something else.
When you're a hammer, everything looks like a nail. Having done well as a researcher in a consultancy, the obvious next step seemed to be a job as a full-fledged IT recruiter - more variety, more responsibility, surely more of whatever I'd been missing. The interviews came easily, and within a few months I had a new title, "Recruitment Business Partner", and a focus on startups, which I'd always found interesting. At first it seemed great.
It didn't take long to realise it wasn't what I was looking for. Crafting the perfect cold email is not something I enjoy - cold calling even less. I don't feel good about disturbing people who didn't ask to be disturbed. What I did enjoy was talking to people, understanding their situation, and seeing where they might fit. But much of the job was convincing people to leave jobs they were often perfectly content in, only to turn most of them down afterwards - somewhere between 80% and 95% of candidates. It felt like going back on my word, a small breach of a social contract, and I never got comfortable with it.
Maybe it was the timing, the narrow focus on startups, a slowing hiring market - or maybe I just wasn't as good at it as I'd like to think. Either way, when it came time to move on, I wanted to try something genuinely different. I didn't know what yet. But I knew my next job should teach me Excel.
Why or how I'd use it, I hadn't quite worked out yet. I just knew that was where I wanted to start if I was finally going to use the more technical side of my education. So I applied everywhere. I started studying IT compliance, took a couple of hopeless Excel courses, and went to somewhere between one and four first-round interviews a week. However many slides I prepared and printed, however many second and third rounds I sat through, no offer came.
It was a hard stretch, and one I couldn't see the end of. Early on I reached a final interview at a company I particularly liked. It went well, and I was told I'd hear back by the end of the following week. Then it was Thursday, and then Friday - the last day they'd promised an answer. I'd spent the day before completely paralysed, not daring to go anywhere in case I missed the call. In the end I gathered the courage to call the hiring manager myself. They'd gone with someone else. I put on a smile and thanked them - it had been a good process, and I'd learned a lot.
The next few rounds went the same way. Excitement turned into dread as I waited for the verdict. Did my own candidates feel like this when I couldn't give them a straight answer? If anything, it made me more certain I wanted something different - even as several companies asked whether I'd consider joining their talent acquisition teams instead. I'd made up my mind. I wanted something that felt like me.
I don't know how I'd have got through much of it without my friends and family - and, first and foremost, without her. She practised with me, went through my presentations, and made sure I got out of bed in the morning. Yet another day on the couch, four more applications sent, three more cups of coffee instead of lunch. Always waiting to hear back from someone who might, eventually, answer my smoke signals.
But it was only once I had to stop - once I was forced out of my comfort zone and off the predetermined track - that I got the room to understand myself better. I rediscovered how much I enjoy learning. I worked out what gives me energy and what actually interests me, and I learned that it was alright for my goals to be less sharply defined than they used to be. I was still working toward something. I just had to learn how to motivate myself, and what kept me going.
It was only after I started my current job - and probably not until six to twelve months in - that the path began to take shape in my head. Having been without work made me appreciate having it all the more. Not everything is perfect, and there's plenty I'm not thrilled about, but at its best I feel the progression I'd been looking for. I'm getting better, and I understand how to get where I want to go. Things constantly get in the way, but I control what I can - myself. As long as I do my best, keep my private life in order, and work in a way that makes sense to me, I know I've done what I could. And once I've done that, I refuse to settle for less than I've earned.
That same colleague who got me thinking about these things later asked me how I'd define myself in a single word, if I couldn't use my job title or my education. I smiled and said "happy". A little later, "ambitious". My first instinct, though, had been to reach for my job title, then my relationship, then my family - not in any order of importance.
I'd like to have a cleaner answer than my work. But I'm at a point in my life where I have a need to be something - to have influence, to be more. I don't yet know exactly what that is, much as I didn't in the slower years before - I just know I want it. It's a strange and almost uncomfortable thing for me to admit. But both sides of me are genuine. I have ideas of where my ambitions will lead me, of course. I'm just not quite brave enough to share them yet.
This is a different kind of writing than I usually do, and like all my writing, it's mostly for myself. But I always write with purpose and hope to leave whoever reads it with something when they're done. I think anyone would benefit from finding a moment every now and then to look at where they are and how they got there - and even more from writing it down. Knowing who you are means knowing where you are, how you got there, and will help you understand where you're going. Or, as my father used to tell me when I was an uncertain teenager: remember your name.