How am I Going to Work!?

Written By: Matt Zwilgmeyer, Undergraduate Student at West Chester University

I’m caught and cornered, I tried and failed to fend off the onslaught of questions inevitability lobbed at every college student by their friends and family. "What are you going to do for work after graduating" or "What are you going to do with that degree" are common questions but nobody seems to ask the most important question about work. 

Hi! I'm a twenty-two-year-old on the verge of graduating from West Chester University. Any time the topic comes up that I am graduating soon, I'm flooded with a storm of "what's". Chiefly, WHAT am I going to do or WHAT industry I'm going into.

Finally, on an ordinary Wednesday, a unique question appeared in my LinkedIn inbox …"How do you want to work". "How? Huh? what'd you mean how? "I inquired. Nobody had ever asked me that before... So what does the how mean when talking about work? It prods at questions like "Over the next twelve months, are you going to be more career-focused, building relationships, having fun, or something else?" or perhaps "What hours do I prefer working?" Remote? Hybrid? The amount of employment options available to employees are truly dizzying. How am I supposed to know? How are college students supposed even hear about these options? 

I stared at the question in my inbox, racked my brain, and came to the concrete conclusion that I didn't have a single clue about how I wanted to work. So started my quest. Surfing across the internet for answers and came up with some lackluster answers. "Try new things” and be open to change were common answers but really didn't provide the kind of framework I was looking for. I forgot about the issue resigned to letting it go unanswered. "I'll figure it out later", one of my all-time favorite thoughts.

A few months later my internship revelated the answer. As a LLUNA intern, I've become very familiar with personalizing work for employees. LLUNA's free tool is called MyLLUNA and allows anyone to build and share a "work design" in under three minutes! Click here to check out my work design! and click here to create your own. So, now I must ask you the question: HOW do you want to work?