“Every semester, I want to dissuade 5 students from going to law school!”
Schnur exclaimed as he first introduced himself. Our cohorts’ reaction was mixed and confused, why is this distinguished professor dissuading us from further education? I was bewildered for a while, until he began to explain his thought process, and draw from his life experience to tell us: try new things! Prior to Professor Dan Schnur coming to talk to our cohort, I was apprehensive and anxious about where my career path was going. Most of my colleagues in college often are so sure of their careers. They boldly exclaim that they want to become doctors, work at Google or Meta, become major editors at Simon and Schuster or go to Harvard Law and become a partner at Latham & Watkins. I can barely decide what I want to eat for dinner, let alone decide a career path for the rest of my life like my peers.
CLA Interns listening to Professor Dan Schnur’s lecture.
When Dan first started with his lecture, he was confident and insightful, but most importantly he was a great listener. When we did introductions, he made sure to take pen and paper notes on our fields of interest and remember faces and names. For all of us, we felt that he really cared about where our career paths were going which meant we were going to engage more and talk about the anxieties and worries we had. Just from our short lecture, I could tell he had a high rating on RateMyProfessor! At lunch with Dan and the rest of the cohort, he revealed to us something surprising. When he first started his career, he had never planned to be an educator or a teacher. With his attention grabbing lectures and sound wisdom he provided us, I envisioned that this was a career he had yearned for his whole life. In reality, he had worked as a leading campaign strategist for 4 presidential campaigns and 3 gubernatorial campaigns. He had a whole other career prior to becoming an educator! He joked that when he was younger, he himself would have guffawed at the notion of becoming a professor. What Schnurr wanted us to understand was that people don’t meticulously plan out their lives in their early 20s. Life has a way of throwing curveballs, captivating opportunities, and downturns. He assured us that being hyper prepared for a tract of life wasn’t necessary to succeed.
Professor Dan Schnur with CLA cohort members.
For Dan, your career shouldn’t be a binary choice, where you decide between working for the rest of your life or going to law school and becoming a lawyer. Too often, college students think in a binary. We think that, at a certain point in life we come to a crossroads, where we have to choose between working in the private industry or the public, or between a lawyer and filmmaker. Dan sought to reframe this, where he said our youth is where you’re meant to try things and find out what you don’t like. Career choices are about choosing what to do first. If you don’t like working in the private industry, then try public afterwards. If you don’t like law school, try something else afterwards. You are not forever pigeonholed into a path that teenage you envisioned in high school. He finally clarified, that when said he was intent on dissuading 5 students from law school, it wasn’t a dig at being a lawyer or being anti education, but rather that his students who worked and gained experience in other areas of life succeeded even more as lawyers. Working at a non-profit or on a campaign provides someone with valuable experience. Skills developed handling case work, doing policy research and memos, means that you are more than just a student who’s good at keeping their heads in the books all day. For me this workshop did a lot to relieve my anxieties and woes about my career path. Maybe it’s okay that I don’t have my entire life planned out, otherwise how boring would that life be?
The views and opinions expressed in this publication are those of the author and do not reflect the views or positions of CAUSE or the CAUSE network.
Written by William Chao, Leadership Academy 2023 Intern.
The CAUSE Leadership Academy (CLA) for students is a nine-week, paid, internship program that prepares college undergraduates to lead and advocate for the Asian Pacific Islander community on their campuses and beyond.