Why we're asking students to do the impossible (and what architecture taught me about building careers instead)

Picture a bright sophomore sitting across from me during office hours, fidgeting with her coffee cup. "I know I should have my career figured out by now," she says, "but honestly? It all feels so... fake."

She's not alone. After fifteen years of watching students navigate career decisions, I've noticed something troubling: the students who seem most anxious about their futures are often the ones who care the most. They attend every career fair, schedule informational interviews, and dutifully fill out career assessment forms. Yet they leave more confused than when they started.

"This is a complex, systemic problem that requires institutional changes far beyond what any individual educator or career center can solve alone."

Let me be clear: this is a complex, systemic problem that requires institutional changes far beyond what any individual educator or career center can solve alone. The way we structure higher education, the timeline pressures we place on students, and the economic realities they face all contribute to the career design challenge.

But within this larger context, I've been reflecting on something specific: a different way to think about the problem itself. What if the issue isn't that students are bad at career planning, but that we've been asking them to do something fundamentally impossible?

Living Inside the Illusion of Later

Most students exist in what I call the "illusion of later." Time feels infinite when you're twenty. The real world—the one with mortgages and commutes and difficult bosses—feels abstract, distant, unreal. So, career planning doesn't feel like building something meaningful. It feels like completing an assignment for a class they never signed up for.

This disconnect runs deeper than procrastination. Students have been taught to think of careers as something you land, not something you design. They imagine careers as predetermined paths—lawyer, doctor, consultant—rather than as something they could actually create.

When I ask students about their career plans, I often get responses like: "I'm thinking maybe finance? Or possibly grad school. I'm still exploring my options." The language itself reveals the problem. They're "thinking maybe" and "possibly considering" because they're trying to select from a menu they can't actually see.

The Sprawling Terrain Problem

Even when students do engage seriously with career planning, they face an overwhelming landscape. The modern economy offers thousands of career possibilities, many of which didn't exist a decade ago. Without clear feedback loops or signposts, students freeze.

They default to what's visible and prestigious: medical school, investment banking, consulting. Or they punt the decision entirely, choosing graduate school as an expensive way to buy more time.

"Students have been taught to think of careers as something you land, not something you design."

I've watched brilliant students choose paths that look impressive on paper but leave them feeling empty within months of graduation. They followed the plan, but it was never really their plan.

The Architecture of Career Design

This is where a different metaphor becomes essential. Career design isn't like choosing from a catalog—it's like architecture.

When architecture students begin their education, we don't hand them a list of building types and ask them to pick their favorite. We teach them to understand materials, to work within constraints, to prototype ideas, and to test their assumptions. We show them that good design emerges from the interplay between vision and reality.

Career design works the same way:

You work within constraints. Just as architects must consider site conditions, building codes, and budgets, career designers must account for their skills, interests, family circumstances, and market realities. Constraints aren't limitations—they're the raw materials of good design.

You prototype relentlessly. Architects build models, sketch sections, and create mockups before breaking ground. Career designers need internships, informational interviews, side projects, and volunteer work. You can't know if something works until you test it in the real world.

You expect iteration. The best buildings evolve through multiple design phases. Similarly, careers require constant adjustment. The goal isn't to plan perfectly from the start—it's to develop the skills to adapt and redesign as you learn more about yourself and the world.

You design for how you want to live, not just how you want to look. A house can be architecturally stunning but feel cold and unwelcoming once you're living in it. Careers can appear impressive from the outside but leave you feeling disconnected from your deeper values and aspirations.

What Students Really Need

If we took career design seriously—as seriously as we take architectural design—we would completely restructure how we help students think about their futures.

Instead of asking students to name their values and imagine their ideal life (while they're still figuring out who they are), we would help them build small, real things. Instead of career planning workshops, we would create career design studios.

Students would work on live projects with real constraints and real feedback. They would prototype career possibilities through structured experiments. They would learn to see career development as an ongoing design process rather than a one-time planning exercise.

Most importantly, they would understand that the goal isn't to have all the answers. The goal is to develop the capacity to ask better questions and to build iteratively toward work that matters.

Building Something Real

When I think about the students who have found fulfilling career paths, they share certain characteristics. They didn't necessarily have clearer goals or better plans. Instead, they treated their career development as an active design process.

They built things—websites, research projects, student organizations, creative work. They sought out real problems to solve rather than abstract exercises to complete. They cultivated relationships with people whose work they admired. They treated internships and job experiences as learning laboratories rather than just resume builders.

Most importantly, they understood that career design is iterative. They expected to change direction, to discover new interests, and to continuously refine their understanding of what work means to them.

The Question That Changes Everything

So if students aren't "planning" their careers in traditional ways, maybe we're asking the wrong question. Instead of "What do you want to do with your life?"—a question that paralyzes many students—we might ask: "What are you building right now that teaches you something about the kind of work you want to do?"

"Instead of 'What do you want to do with your life?'—a question that paralyzes many students—we might ask: 'What are you building right now that teaches you something about the kind of work you want to do?'"

This shift moves students from abstract speculation to concrete action. It helps them understand that career design happens through making, not just thinking. It gives them permission to start small and iterate rather than needing to have everything figured out.

Career design, like architectural design, is ultimately about creating something that serves human needs—in this case, your own need for meaningful work that aligns with your values and uses your talents well.

The students who thrive aren't the ones who planned perfectly. They're the ones who learned to build, test, reflect, and redesign. They understood that careers, like buildings, are meant to be lived in—and that the best designs emerge through thoughtful iteration rather than perfect initial planning.

"The question isn't whether students care about their careers. The question is whether we're giving them the tools and language to design careers worth caring about."