2.0 Career Basics Course: Summer 2025, Day 1

“There should be more sincerity and heart in human relations, more silence and simplicity in our interactions. Be rude when you’re angry, laugh when something is funny, and answer when you’re asked.”

“The world perishes not from bandits and fires, but from hatred, hostility, and all these petty squabbles.”

“A tree is beautiful, but what’s more, it has a right to life; like water, the sun and the stars, it is essential. Life on earth is inconceivable without trees. Forests create climate, climate influences peoples’ character, and so on and so forth. There can be neither civilization nor happiness if forests crash down under the axe, if the climate is harsh and severe, if people are also harsh and severe….What a terrible future!”

~ Anton Chekov

Today's Work

Reconnect with Five Mentors (or individuals) From Your Past*

"This exercise is about building momentum rather than the advice that mentors will share. For this to work, you don't even need to have had formal mentors -- it's the informal kind that counts. Someone you have turned to in the past, or a colleague who gives good advice, or simply someone you look up to, will do just fine for this exercise. The most important thing is that you have fine, distinct conversations. -- and this is the WHY of the exercise."

Note: This is either ...

• Way 36, if you reference, the 50 Ways to Get a Job: An Unconventional Guide to Finding Work on Your Terms, or
• Way 27, if you reference the 2018 version of the book, which I have.

For me, I will be reaching out to the following individuals:

1. Fr. Christopher Promis, CSSP; we lived in community together at Usa Seminary in Usa River, Tanzania
2. My Uncle Tom, a veteran of WW2, a medic who held too many young men in his arms, comforting them before they gave up their last breath. He died when I was very young, but he taught me chess, and so I'm going to sit with a few chess problems and recall what he taught me and what he might say today.
3. Jean T., a neighbor who was my college advisor.
4. Mary P., in her late 80s, and one of my mother's best friends of more than 65 years
5. Sal S., a friend of my parents for more than 70 years, is now in his early 90s, and he's navigating life in its final days

If there's a theme (for me), it's to learn from individuals in the later stages of their lives and to gather the wisdom that they would offer across the arc of lives yet to be lived. I will also seek out their advice on volunteering, retirement, and ongoing work and learning as they navigate their days ahead.

What might they have done differently? How are they continuing to adjust? Their careers and lives have been defined and redefined, over and over again. If you're in your 20s and 30s, these kinds of inter- and multi-generational conversations are important for you and those you speak with.

I will report back on what I learn. Please do the same.

Who will you connect with and talk to? Good luck. You've got this.

All the best to everyone; thanks for accompanying us on this journey.

Gerald and Al Nunez

P.S. Looking ahead: "Write Fiction About Yourself"

P.P.S. Ezra Schwartz - let's talk more about this in light of your thinking about #AgeTech.

Appendix:

The Career Basics Course was originally offered across 10 Weeks, beginning in February 2023.

Here's a link to the companion article from two years ago:

• Career Basics Course: Week 1, Day 1

If you're in Chicago and looking for a terrific place to talk to Five Mentors (or friends, colleagues, etc.), check out Ricobene's.