Trust Your Gut

Present a classroom with any topic, be it as controversial as global warming or as mundane as the importance of matching socks, and I assure you, on each topic, each person in the room will have at least some mildly-formed opinion (yes, we all know that those try-to-please-everyone, neutral types actually have opinions, they just don't want to share them).

So, given the fact that everyone has an opinion, and that hundreds of these conflicting opinions are thrown at us daily, how do we go about choosing the right one? How do we settle on which one to trust, especially when sometimes we've asked for all of these different outlooks?

Recently, I asked a Fordham alumnus to critique my resume. For anonymity's sake, we'll call her Cynthia. Most of Cynthia's advice to me was extremely helpful, but some was also confusing. As I read through her comments, I found that several of Cynthia's recommendations actually conflicted with those I had received from other critics. One example is the small issue of the placement of dates on a resume. Cynthia says that dates should be placed on the far right because they balance out the resume visually. My business communication professor says that dates should actually be on the left, next to the position title, because you don't want to draw attention to one of the least important details on your resume. So who do I trust? Cynthia? My business communication professor? A third party?

In my opinion (see what I did there?), when in doubt, go with your gut. Given all of the opinions in this world, we are bound to run into disagreements eventually. And there is no way we can please everyone.

So, certainly, consider others' perspectives, but if you find yourself stumped with indecision, trust your gut to lead the way--when shit hits the fan, it's the best intuition you've got.