Bullish: Do You Belong In An Institution?

By Contributor Jen Dziura 

This article originally appeared on TheGrindstone

I’ve been thinking a lot about institutions – those who can’t function without them, and those who can’t fit into them.

Two things converged for me this past week: I’m working through a training program in executive coaching and considering the difficulties of coaching my clients to function better within large organizations, especially in cases where the clients may not really want to be part of such an institution the first place. And then, a question came in from someone wondering whether to drop out of college to start a business.

And personally, I have a storied history with institutions: I was always in combat with teachers and professors (like my third-grade teacher who incorrected corrected “ice cream sundae” to “ice cream sunday” – rage, rage, against the dying of literacy!) In my masters in education, I’ve viewed my classmates as horrifyingly subservient and unskeptical. And I always harp on multiple income streams – I don’t want any one boss to have enough power over me that he or she can tell me when to get up in the morning and where to sit for forty hours per week.

Read the rest at TheGrindstone.

Jennifer Dziura (jenniferdziura.com) writes career and life coaching advice for young women at TheGrindstone and TheGloss. She believes you can make money without being a douchebag. She believes in working harder and smarter now so you can have "balance" when you're wrinkly and covered in diamonds. She believes in starting businesses on zero dollars, selling expensive things to rich people, and laughing very hard at people who try to "manifest their dreams" without learning any real skills or shaping the fuck up. She likes to help. Jennifer also performs (sort of) educational one-woman shows about philosophy and punctuation. Her "The History of Women in 30 Minutes" has appeared in the Women in Comedy Festival.