Friday, November 18, 2011

Life Lessons from the Twilight Saga

How many of you are Twilight fans out there? Well, it might surprise you to know that there are a couple of us here at The Career Center, me included. The movie premieres tonight and I was lucky enough to have tickets to an advanced screening of Breaking Dawn Part 1 on Wednesday (the movie was amazing!). As you are watching and swooning over Edward and Jacob, don’t overlook the important lesson Bella teaches us about making choices. Yes, there is more to Twilight than vampires and wolves. There is an important message that life is about a series of decisions. Every day we are faced with decisions, big and small. We can weigh the pros and cons, ask our friends and family, postpone the moment as long as we can, but eventually we must choose.

As students, you are forced to make a lot of important decisions about your future: what classes to register for, what major to choose, and what career to pursue. As career counselors we can listen to you, provide you with resources, and give you assessments. However, the best advice we have to give comes from Bella Swan: trust yourself. We were all given the gift of intuition – an inner voice that guides us. This voice knows what is best for us; it is our truth. Yet somehow many of us have learned to ignore this voice and over think the decisions we have to make. We have let logic and reason, or even other people make decisions for us. Many of us are paralyzed by all the information available today that we let things happen to us rather than going with our gut.

So today I challenge you to take a page out of the Twilight series and make the decision to listen to your inner self. Today make a choice (a healthy choice) that just “feels right.” It could be as small as what to eat for lunch or as big as taking that art class you have always wanted to try. With every decision, you will begin to nurture and trust this relationship with yourself.

-Deanna Rodin, Associate Director, The Career Center

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