It’s fascinating to think about the slew of options available to us in our career paths, both charted and uncharted. Every Friday I get a chance to teach a group of really interesting students about career preparation, and how to get ‘a job’, and an underlying concept I have been attempting to convey to them is the idea that there are numerous paths to success in their careers. As it happens, I read a great post this morning on Zen Habits that I thought I’d share, as well as comment on. Food for thought!
Be it doing a different job in their industry (especially an area with fewer professionals but higher demand) or using their skills in a different industry altogether (animators in medicine or architecture or information and communications?), I think there are fewer limits on what we want to, and can do, with our careers than we imagine. The article above also talks about how we get to that job. I have talked with countless graduates about what they’re doing with themselves post-graduation, and a surprising number of them say ‘I’m thinking of going back to school to study for x’. Always makes me ask to myself, and sometimes to them, ‘Why?’.
Is it because we’re trained to believe that schooling is the ONLY way to a successful career? Is it because we are ingrained with the belief that there only specific tracks to our careers that we must follow, and that without some success early on, we are preordained to not succeed? It’s less like we have career paths, and more like we have career ‘rails’, where we are lead to believe and follow these tracks that can’t be changed, lest we fall off the rails and fail. Yikes! Failure. Don’t get me started on our failure-averse behaviours…
I have a strong belief that the schooling we receive, which I can compare to schooling in other regions of the world, can be very valuable, and our graduates are very capable. But I also believe that what we teach our students, and our children, and ourselves, about what we do with our schooling and after school is still staggeringly out of touch with what is possible in today’s day and age. Even in a sliding economy. In fact, more important because of this sliding economy!
So check out that post above, and maybe visit the site of Dan Pink and see what he’s saying these days.
I have more, but I’ll save it for another post.
Cheers,
Ben
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