You were taught to find your career. Now you need to learn how to build one.
The rules that worked for previous generations emerged from conditions that no longer exist. We teach a different approach. Ask what else you could be, and test the answers through action.
The Problem
Students are anxious. Career centers are stretched. The old tools were not built for this moment.
The real problem is not information. It is orientation.
Students keep asking "What should I do?" Career centers keep answering with assessments and job boards. The tools assume the answer exists somewhere and students just need to find it.
This is the FIND orientation. It worked when careers were stable, industries evolved slowly, and the path from education to retirement was predictable. Those conditions no longer hold.
AI is not taking jobs. It is making specific arrangements of skills obsolete while creating new ones. The people who see this clearly can adapt. The people stuck in FIND mode feel trapped because they cannot see what their capabilities could become.
FIND
Search for the right answer
BUILD
Create options from what you have
The Brief Experiment teaches students to make the shift from FIND to BUILD. Instead of searching for answers that may not exist, students learn to ask a different question entirely.
This question assumes you already have valuable capabilities. It asks how else they could be arranged. It opens possibilities instead of searching for the one right answer. This is the anchor question of the BUILD orientation.
What Students Learn
A framework for building professional judgment through action, not waiting for certainty.
The Anomaly
The historical context that changes everything. Why the FIND orientation emerged and why it no longer matches the conditions we face.
What's Emerging
AI is not destroying capabilities. It is making certain job arrangements obsolete. Understanding this distinction is the first step toward seeing options.
FIND vs. BUILD
The core shift from searching for answers to creating options. This is the intellectual center of the entire framework.
"What Else Could I Be?"
The anchor question of the BUILD orientation. How to ask it, how to answer it, and how to test your answers through experiments.
The Practice
BUILD is not a concept to understand. It is a skill to develop. Exercises for building professional judgment through repeated cycles.
The Frame
The inherited assumptions keeping students locked in FIND mode. Language, beliefs, and mental models that limit what seems possible.
Chapters
What you can build changes by life stage. The possibilities available at 25 differ from those available at 45.
Experiments
How to test possibilities without committing permanently. Small, reversible tries that generate clarity through action.
Also Included
Self-assessment tools for understanding what you have to work with.
Values
What drives your decisions
Skills
Your portable capabilities
Professions
Arrangements to explore
Industries
Where opportunities exist
Give your students a framework that scales
The Brief Experiment extends your team's reach. It teaches a way of thinking that students carry with them long after they leave your office.
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