Are You Proactive or Reactive?

Haley Barnes, LCL

Haley is a M.S. candidate at the University of North Texas Health Science Center. She intends to join a PharmD/Ph.D. in Engineering program to specialize in drug delivery design. 

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Growing up, my family always taught me: Prepare for the worst, and the worst will never happen. I used to hate the tedious planning prior to traveling or cleaning the home each weekend to prepare for unexpected guests. But as a graduate student, I’ve come to appreciate my family’s timeless wisdom. If I am proactive, I will rarely need to be reactive. ​

Photo Caption: As an alumna, it was important to me to give back to my undergraduate SWE section. I had to be proactive in communicating with the section's new leadership in order to fulfill this value of mine. It was wonderful to be able to come back to speak to the section about my experience!

Let’s review the difference between the two. Reactivity, in its simplest terms, means responding to a stimulus, like freaking out after losing a passport in a foreign country or spilling hydrochloric acid on the bench top. All effort and remedy are placed after an event. Proactivity, on the other hand, means creating or controlling a situation prior to something happening, like purchasing a passport-holding waistband or using a funnel for acid transfers. By placing minimal effort before a situation, risk of catastrophe is diminished. 
Let me ask a few questions to get you thinking about if you’re proactive or reactive….

• Do you keep a planner or bullet journal (digital, paper, etc) or do you enjoy spontaneity in your daily schedule?
• Do you think 2 steps ahead when making a decision or do you act without future consideration?
• Do you seek deadlines or do you wait for deadlines to be presented to you? 
• Do you maintain a grocery list and meal prep or do you choose meals on the fly?
• Do you take time to strategize and reflect on your goals at least once a month or do you let others present you with professional stepping stones?

In short, do you choose to take action or do you let action request you? By all means, reactivity is not a bad thing. I will also argue it’s a refining skill of an engineer to address a critical problem as quickly as possible. Yet, it should not be ignored that the foundational skills of being an engineer require proactivity. As engineers, we are expected to perform safety tests, annual reviews, and ongoing investigations of our products in order to prevent catastrophic failure. As graduate students, we are expected to know our deadlines, manage our projects, and thrive in this new level of independence. As human beings, we do ourselves a great service by being proactive and taking pride in our ability to make our own choices about how our lives will go. ​

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Do you choose to take action or do you let action request you? 

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Proactive or reactive, my family’s lesson has empowered me to control my life’s direction, and I think this is a very important value that all graduate students should have. We have worked hard to be where we are! Your professional fulfillment should not be tainted by little catastrophes that could have easily been avoided. If possible, take some time each week to think ahead about how proactive efforts can make your work more enjoyable. I promise you your future self will thank you for it!

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