In a New York Times op-ed, columnist Frank Bruni comments on the nondefinitive path to success after college. Bruni focuses on the life of Joel Benenson, one of Hillary Clinton’s chief campaign architects. Bruni admits to being personally “fascinated by what the jagged arc of Benenson’s life and career says about higher education, the liberal arts, indulging your passions, allowing for digressions and not sweating the immediate relevance and payoff of each and every step you take.” Basically, his article speaks against the existence of a definitive career path or path to success. While I agree with him, there is something unnerving about how simple he makes it all sound.
Bruni himself admits to being concerned that “too many anxious parents and their addled children believe in, and insist on, an exacting, unforgiving script for success and (supposedly) happiness.” And so, he points to Benenson’s life story and career path as a way to show young people like us that there is no need to worry so much about having a solid, straightforward, goal-oriented career path.
Benenson, now 62, graduated from Queens College, part of the City University of New York, as a theater major. Originally, his plan was to become an actor, but he ended up co-owning a beer distributorship business for the most of his 20s. But he didn’t complete college straight away, and he left his degree unfinished to pursue a career in acting. Eventually, Benenson had to enter the beer business to make ends meet. He ended up finishing his last credit for college in his late 20s and went on to become a journalist in his 30s. Only in his early 40s did he get settled into his current successful career in polling and political strategy.
This story is supposed to show, as Bruni summarizes, that “the biographies of many accomplished, contented people aren’t formulaic. They’re accidents of a sort, except for this: By taking approaches that weren’t too regimented, these people were able to color outside the lines and surprise themselves. And their learning transcended their formal studies.”
Maybe it’s the way Bruni says this that pisses me off. What does he mean by “learning transcending formal studies,” anyway? It reads like a fancy way of saying these successful people actually learned what they were supposed to learn in college. But what about the others who also learned what they were supposed to learn in college and just didn’t make it in life? No one writes articles for those people. Their stories remain untold. And I’m willing to bet that there are much more of those stories than of ones like Benenson’s.
Moreover, while a part of the learning experience consists of taking different and perhaps more adventurous approaches to life, Bruni fails to note the stakes.
Of course it’s easier to talk about success and big life decisions when you’re not talking about yourself. But when every step can be a deciding factor for — at least — the next decade of your life, it seems more reasonable to make more informed and realistic choices. And perhaps in the context of being realistic, stories like Benenson’s aren’t great examples. While they can prove to be uplifting and inspiring in some ways, they still set a certain kind of gold standard for success and prosperity that often leads to the misconception of equating success with overall happiness. Though, for some people, the two can be rightfully equated, it’s important to keep in mind this is not always the case. Keep in mind that while we can scoff at someone’s happy and unsuccessful life, the unhappy and successful life is, perhaps, where the real tragedy lies.
