Ditching the Recipe for the Perfect Career

Lately I have been enjoying reconnecting with people from my past and building new relationships. Seeing the news of Maren Reepmeyer, AIA LEED AP, being promoted to Director of Adaptive Design at CBT prompted me to reach out to catch up with her. Maren is a former coworker of mine and has over 20 years of design experience.

I already have been realizing this, but in catching up with Maren it was even more apparent how much I should be thankful of my unique path and opportunities. Maren spoke of discovering that her career is a winding road and it is important to be open to and recognize opportunities. Whenever you are handed something you are not as excited about, it might take a little while to see the little spot of gold. If you dig a little, you can see the gold and open the doors to opportunities you may not have had if you had not taken on this task.

She mentioned that many people have a perfect idea of what their career path should look like. They may have it perfectly laid out and if something they come across does not fit within that path, they may turn down that opportunity or feel defeated like they are being side-tracked if they take it. I have struggled with feeling inadequate and feeling side-tracked at times.

For some backstory-I turned down the offer at the job I ended up at first out of school, TROJB, to accept an offer in Chicago. Soon after my acceptance, my husband (boyfriend at the time) just found out that he had gotten a great offer at Northeastern University for graduate school. We had just about finished 4 years of long distance and it was either we were going to break up or I would stay in Boston. I just couldn’t handle doing more long distance! I reached out to TROJB to see if they still had the position open. They didn’t…but they had an idea. Revit MEP was new for engineering and they thought it would be good to have someone focus on learning it and then teach it to the engineers. That ended up becoming my first big project before I really dug into engineering. The implementation took a bit longer than expected and because I had a good reputation for my expertise in BIM, I often got pulled into projects to help with the BIM management. I started comparing myself to other engineers who were my same age and same number of years in the field and felt inadequate. I felt like my engineering experience was being compromised.

As I got more experience, I also started to find that “gold” that Maren spoke of. My experience and career path was different than a typical engineer, but this was not necessarily a bad thing. I had grown leadership skills, an expertise and a name for myself-something that isn’t always as easy if you are following the standard career path. I also learned to face some conflict and find ways to be a changemaker. If we were going to fully implement BIM, I had to get the team (including myself) thinking outside of their “this is how we always did it” mindsets.

Another lesson Maren learned was to “Take the bull by the horns and don’t be afraid of change. Carve your niche and make it your own. You can make the role you want and build your brand.” She spoke about how she is known to have a lot of ideas that don’t all stick but she is willing to try them out to see what works and why something may not work. This really resonated with me because I feel that I often have a similar mindset. Seeing her energy, enthusiasm and passion inspired me to not be afraid of the non-traditional career path. She said, “Forget about titles and recipes for the perfect career! Find the thing that you love to do-what makes you happy and excited to get to work every day!”

I am in the process of evaluating what really gets me most excited and how I want this to shape my role and future. I’ve realized how important it is to regularly take a step back to really think big picture what that is as it will change throughout your career and life milestones. I may share some of my musings as I work through my thoughts and I welcome you to share yours!

Thank you Maren for your time and being such a great role model! You can connect with and learn more about Maren on LinkedIn!

Questions for you…

How do you feel about a non-traditional career path?

Do you have similar experiences?

If you could have the perfect role, what would that be?

What gets you excited to get up every day?