I soo wish it was Friday. I’m tired like it was Friday, why can’t it be Friday!? Candi is going to be gone all Saturday and I was looking forward to an entire day of vegging and now it looks like it’s going to be jam-packed with work. Isn’t this December? I’ve got a meeting in the morning, a side job in the afternoon, and work to do at Mom’s house in the evening. Amidst all of that, I’m hoping to get 2-3 computers repaired. When will I sleep? Oh well, at least we’re getting some $$ for the work.
I finally completed my short dissertation on career choices and you can view it below if you dare. It’s about a page and a half to read (sorry if it get’s a bit long):
I have had a long standing opinion about how we chose our careers as young adults and thought I’d share it with the world. I will first qualify this dissertation by saying that this is intended for young adults or people without children in their care and have no immediate need to put food on the table.
With that said, I want to first share my own experience with choosing and pursuing a career. While still in high school, my dream was to be a pilot. I think that many boys that age dream of flying on some way or another so I felt being a pilot would be pretty cool. I thought I’d improve my chances by joining the Civil Air Patrol (which is sort of a combination of the Boy Scouts and the Air Force). It was a good experience for me in many was but what I found out most importantly is that I HATE flying! I hate it with a passion. I’m sure there are many people that enjoy flying but I’m not one of them. I’m glad I found out while I was still in high school and not college though. I’m sure I would have wasted my time for at least the first couple of semesters coming to the same conclusion (if not longer). I did however realize that I had a love for airplanes. Maybe I could be an aircraft mechanic? I decided to do the same thing I did before and get my feet wet in the real world of aircraft mechanics before making the final decision. So for the good part of my senior year, I visited as many hangars as I could find around Illinois and talked to as many mechanics as I could find. I wanted to know how they liked their job, what the typical day was like, that sort of thing. By the time I “completed my research”, I was very certain that this was the career path for me. In fact, I managed to get in to one of the most prestigious schools in the country for such study –where it was very difficult to survive if you really didn’t want it. Only 12% of the initial enrollment lasted the 2 year program!
By the time I got my degree and license from the FAA, I was offered the chance to work on the B-2 Stealth Bomber –the opportunity of a lifetime. I fully expected to go there and meet many people just like me: people that thoughtfully planned out their career choices by first finding out what it is that they truly love and then going after it. I was sorely mistaken. Most of the people working there didn’t even like their jobs –only their paychecks. It was a shock to me. I’ll never forget the conversation I had with a manufacturing engineer that was planning on leaving and moving away. I sat in his office one day and asked him if he had any job lined up where he was moving to. He said,
“You know, I’ve always wanted to be a waiter.”
I replied, “What? What are you doing here?”
“Well, this is where the money is.”
“Yes, but you’re miserable –and we all know it!”
I sure hope he’s a waiter now.
After a while working on the B-2 program as a mechanic, I started to realize that I’d like to be an engineer. I worked with them all the time and knew for sure what the job would be like. I did after hours schooling and soon “weaseled” my way into the engineering program –all without an engineering degree! My job was very boring compared to what I used to do –but I loved it. What I started seeing though were all these engineers coming straight out of school that were so upset when they realized that there is a HUGE difference between “engineering school” and “engineering work”. Most of these kids were expecting something like “Apollo 13” or something. The reality is that most engineering work is pretty boring and you don’t actually do that much design work (what most consider the fun part of engineering).
Over time, I’ve started to see that this is a similar case all over the working world. School will give you very little understanding of what a certain career is truly like to work in. Teaching is a MAJOR one. I’ve talked with many teachers that describe the shock of getting out of college and starting up their first class. The have no idea how to deal with the stresses of children, parents, and the politics of working in a real school. So I’ve come to the following conclusions and suggestions:
First and foremost, find out what it is that you think you’ll like to do for a job –your “dream job”. It’s important to know that there’s a big difference between a job and a hobby. There are things that we like to do for fun but would cease to be fun if we had to do them for 40+ hours a week. For instance, I enjoy playing the piano and singing in a band but I’m pretty sure it would cease to be fun if I had to do it full time. On the other hand, I do enjoy working on computers and doing engineering work all day long. That is the difference. Don’t presume to know what a certain job is going to be like until you’ve tasted it somehow either by some sort of “ride along” or several interviews with people working in that field. And don’t expect school or college to convey that to you!
Don’t be surprised if you were wrong about your first few choices. Most people I’ve talked with about this were. Understand that once you know for sure what it is you want to do for a living, there will little to stop you from achieving that goal.