When my dad sent my article about career funneling to our extended family group chat, my aunt replied, “Bravo, Nazlı! But idealistic?”

It is concerning that many Stanford graduates don’t have jobs this year. Perhaps this is reason enough to simply accept any employer who will hire you. The causes of the horrendous job market — crumbling democracy, extreme inequality and more — are the reasons I reject the urge to join my peers in the race to become McKinsey’s next management consultant.

So, how do young graduates build a meaningful career in an uncertain world? To answer this question, I interviewed six recent college graduates I admire who illustrated how to find and fine-tune your professional direction, a critical aspect of pursuing a meaningful career. We talked about guilt-free time-off, salaries and how to embrace trade-offs. I targeted recent grads based on advice from a Distinguished Careers Institute (DCI) Fellow who told me to stop thinking about my entire career and just focus on the next right step.

My interviewees represent a microcosm of interests and sectors. Kahlil is a self-employed content creator known as a Gen Z historian. Sydney is a fellow at the California Coastal Commission. Ryan is the founder and lead organizer at Class Action. Arabella is figuring out her next steps after a year as a Gardner Fellow. Cathy conducts research at Cascade Climate. Anna is a founding engineer at a startup called Germ Network. And Shiro is Head of Portfolio Services at Equator, a climate tech venture capital firm in her hometown of Nairobi, Kenya.

Reflecting on my circuitous journey, I asked my interviewees how they found their professional direction. Many learned what not to pursue by trying conventional paths. Kahlil tried computer science, economics and political science majors on for size, but none of them “scratch[ed] the itch in the right way.” While talking about his summer internship at McKinsey, Kahlil had a moment of collective disillusionment while talking to a fellow intern: “Slowly we unraveled… we were both like, ‘I hate this so much’… I’m having a breakdown. She was not sleeping. She was crying every night.”

Sydney described a similar aversion to trying things others considered successful or practical  — “I just didn’t find any of the work interesting or enjoyable, to be honest… I didn’t feel authentically like myself.” 

Anna entered her summer at Google skeptical. Before her internship, she wrote an essay about the negative aspects of Google titled, “Honey, I Fired Both Co-Leads of the Ethical Al Team.” But even after enjoying her summer internship, she decided she wanted more — something she would feel proud talking about with her peers. 

I saw my own journey in each of their stories. I, too, have felt compelled to pursue lucrative and shiny opportunities and found myself disheartened, uninspired and even depressed at times. I’ve even tried to talk myself down and tell myself I should apply to McKinsey and that I liked climate finance.

I wish I had spent more time listening to myself. 

Listening to yourself, however, is confusing, especially when even the “right” work is frustrating at times. My interviewees spoke to this tension. 

Arabella began what she thought would be a dream job working on asylum seeker resettlement as a Gardner fellow but did not gain the satisfaction she’d hoped.

“I realized that every time I achieve one of those shining star jobs, it doesn’t actually end up the way that I want it to be,” Arabella said. “The dreams that I had as a 20 year old… are slowly fading.”

She’s now leaning into that feeling of uncertainty. When we talked, she was visiting her sister in Germany prior to her upcoming stint at a Montana ranch.

Arabella emphasized the importance of taking time. “Burnout is real. And taking the time to recover from four years of an intense university experience is only going to help you in the long run.”

Sydney also took time off postgrad. Despite the stress of an uncertain future and seeing peers jump into postgrad jobs, she said it “was really helpful having that time to regroup.” The time off “really allowed me to think… what are my values? What are the outcomes that I want to create? How do I want to make the world a better place?”

When it came to doing the things you find worthwhile and consciously choosing fulfillment over the conventional path, my interviewees had different takeaways.

Impact-oriented careers are often perceived as less serious or “fluffy,” according to Sydney. Kahlil, conversely, points to the need to be “a hustler” when charting your own path, emphasizing learning they don’t teach you in school: “[You] have to learn how to sell something… You cannot wait around for something to land on your lap… Pitch who you are, what you’re doing, what makes you interesting. Do it in the same way that you do in a college essay.” 

Anna shared her framework of “drawing a line” where you are no longer willing to compromise, such as committing to not working for defense tech. “If you are spending effort looking for jobs in which you wouldn’t be happy, then you’re not going to spend that time looking for things that matter to you,” she said.

“Drawing a line” can help us decide what kind of tradeoffs we are willing to make between income, impact and desire. Shiro and I talked about the inevitability of making tradeoffs when choosing work — and the importance of being honest about the tradeoffs you make. Many people will end up working for corporate giantsm but you have to accept that you’re likely compromising your morals. But being able to articulate these inevitable contradictions is “actually really powerful for the world.” 

At first, Ryan worked unsalaried to found Class Action. He voiced gratitude for the friends who let him couch-hop, teaching him the importance of asking for help. “The idea that I just made it happen on my own is just totally wrong,” he said. “People will show up to help you realize your vision for trying to make the world a better place, however cliche that might sound.” This challenges the notion that asking for help is a sign of weakness. In the business of charting your own path, knowing when to ask is vital. 

Ryan also noted that, as Stanford students, we have a very skewed perception of a “normal” postgrad salary. When I asked if he ever felt pressure to do something more lucrative, he said, “I didn’t care at all. The breadwinner in my family is a first grade teacher… So to me, the idea that I could make $50,000 out of school and that would all be for me, it was like, what would I even do with all that?”

I realized I had to reorient. With that came unexpected freedom: in accepting I would make less than six figures right away, I’d actually opened up the door to opportunities that genuinely excite me. I’m not alone in realizing this fact.

In a place of resolve to chart your own path and pursue a worthwhile post-grad job, there is uncertainty.

“Embracing uncertainty has been the best thing I’ve done because every single time a new, scary opportunity presents itself, whether it’s testifying in front of an assembly, or whatever, I tell myself that I’m not gonna let the fear decide and dictate my life and my decisions,” Ryan said. 

This, coupled with Sydney and Arabella’s words about time off, gave me solace in the inevitable uncertainty of graduating without a job lined up. 

All of this — tapping into your intuition, diverging from what your peers may be doing, taking time to replenish — takes courage to embrace the uncertainty of rejecting a conventional path. This courage comes from community.

Shiro, my most experienced interviewee, articulated this beautifully: “I hope that I continue to cultivate friendships and professional networks to have people around me that hold me accountable… finding a way to be sympathetic to the fact that people are swimming against the current and finding an opportunity for collective bravery to do that is really important.”

In charting your own path, you will inevitably be swimming against the current. Through leaning on community, embracing uncertainty and taking time to be intentional, the pursuit of meaningful work and life is within reach. 

Nazlı Dakad ’24 M.S ’25 is a recent Earth Systems graduate hoping to use her brain for good.