As a parent, sometimes you feel as though you are supposed to be all-knowing, dispensing little nuggets of wisdom and truth that will guide your child to some pinnacle of success that doesn’t really exist…maybe it’s success without failure that we want for them, but you can’t have one without the other.
Photo of Ireland. No relation to this blog post.
As a society (please don’t notice how I started two paragraphs in a row with “as”) we put tons of emphasis on grades and ACT scores and social mobility. I’ve never been a good guidance counselor in those areas – and I’ve given myself all sorts of grief for that. But when I look back at my own path, that’s not what stands out.
Yes, I did graduate from college. Got out in four years. But I was hardly close to knowing what I wanted to “do with my life.”
I did end up with a job that allowed me to be self-supporting – eventually. And I stuck with that job after I had kids. Though I was fortunate to be able to work part-time for many years. Three days a week. That made working in a technical-administrative-engineering-oriented corporate job I didn’t love (assuming one is supposed to love their job) more palatable while my husband and I were in the thick of our child-rearing years.
What I really liked doing, I found out, was writing. Only because this little “voice” or “feeling” gnawed at me – and I started to explore it through writing groups. But not until I was in my 30s and our kids were still toddlers.
I explored that interest on week-ends and in the evenings and even on my lunch hour when I edited drafts of work I produced. Sent some family essays to magazine and newspaper editors and got published in a few different publications.
I don’t think there was any type of formal schooling or rigorous testing that could have predicted how much I’d like to write or the satisfaction that I feel when I have success. Success being defined as some combination of being hired to write, exploring and researching topics that are interesting to me (because I thought of them), getting a byline, getting paid, blah blah blah. It’s satisfying in a way that working part-time in a corporate job that wasn’t ideally suited to my talents was not.
But who gets their job-choice, their career-choice, right on their first try?
I don’t know that anyone can tell you how to pick a career. I think – over time – you become more aware of what you like and what you don’t like. There are periods where we get “trapped” because we have obligations – like bills to pay and families who are dependent on us financially. But you can still experiment there. Just can’t go whole-hog into exploring new careers and paths until some of that responsibility lessens. At least I couldn’t.
If you can get hold of what you really like, what turns you on, early on, perhaps you have a better chance of turning that into a long-term career. But even if you don’t – because so many people don’t have parents with the resources or the means or the guidance-counselor talent to guide you in a certain direction – it’s never too late to learn, to change.
I do think it’s important to find those paths that are deeply satisfying. The lucky few find it early on. The rest of us get there through some combination of trial and error and experimentation. So based on my own experience, it’s probably not fair to expect a 20-something to have their own career aspirations all figured out.
For those of you who are experienced, your own career path has likely helped you reach some conclusions about what works, what’s important, what you’d still like to do with your life. In my next post, I’ll be arrogant enough to write about what I think has worked for me. (Unless I go all ADD and forget.)
Not that I’m this huge success; but I think I’ve learned a few things. Won’t suggest anything pie-in-the-sky. Most likely it will be stuff anyone can follow…like, you got to have staying power. The ability to think independently is a big one. Zig-zagging your way to whatever you define your end goal to be is perfectly acceptable.
What little nuggets of truth (aka realistic career advice) would you give younger people? (And for the record, I don’t find the overdone, overused “find your passion” very useful.)
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