I just talked with my daughter about her school's tool to select future careers. As things go, it's a pretty good tool. It puts a lot of effort into matching what you like, what you're interested in, and what your skills are with the characteristics of jobs. She's not happy. All of the jobs that she matched on for all three areas are things that sound dull and tedious to her. She doesn't know what she wants to do, but she knows, or thinks she knows, what she doesn't want to do -- and a lot of it is on that list. I told her the old joke about the reason why adults ask kids what they want to be when they grow up, and I told her stories -- one from a book called Don't Sleep on the Subway (about forty years old), one about how I got a job that I liked, purely by accident, one about the accountant who was looking for a new job after getting his job deleted, and another about getting slotted for standard jobs, and how I think she's cutting herself short if that's what she's willing to settle for. Which she isn't, but even so, she has a limited view of whats possible. An expanded view is that this tool is supposed to give her, but -- well, who really knows what a job will feel like, whether its a match or not?
At the end she said "Thanks. You should go into public speaking." True enough.
1 comment:
Took me twenty years of working in the rat race to discover that what I really wanted was to be an art metalworker.
Where is that on the list? Where is musician, sculptor, business owner. Industrialist or oceanographer?
I was having a brew at the Maryland Renaissance Festival with an underage young lady who told me that she had been raised to be a "Rennie", that is to say, a person who sells at ren faires and county fairs on a circuit. I asked her if she had any education. "Nah", she said, "don't need it. I can sign my name and do sums, thats enough." So I asked her what she was going to do when her parents were no longer able to support her. She pointed to a booth across from the tavern "I own that booth, and the one over thar, and I rent out a third down in the vale. I also own four other booths at different fairs around the country. Bet I bring in more than you! And my parents own a half dozen from here to Texas, so we are doin' all right. "
I was suitably taken down a peg or two.
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