What’s Our Gig? (Guest Post)
Ed Schmegley and I had lunch the other day and we were talking about how sometimes life after high school isn’t what you expect. We talked about his efforts to find his gig, and it made me think of a couple of friends of mine who are having the same problem. They could hardly be more different than Schmegley, but it’s funny how the kids who are the most different still end in the same place.
My friend Maria had been an honour student as long as she could remember, and her transition to university was as smooth as can be. She got high marks no matter what the subject, and I’m not sure if it’s because she was genuinely interested in everything, or if she wanted to be the top student just to prove that she could. By the end of her bio/chem double major with honours, her grades were all sky-high, and she’d aced her MCATs. She seemed like a shoe-in for med school, until the interviewer asked her why she wanted to be a doctor, and she had no answer. She sat there with her mouth open for what seemed like forever, and she realized that no matter how high your GPA is, you can still feel an idiot.
It’s something we’ve talked about more than once, because it was the first time in her life that she realized she didn’t actually know what she wanted to do. She’s working in a lab now, using the skills she developed during her degree, and trying to decide if this is what she really wants to do. I understand where she’s coming from, because I had difficulty choosing a career also. I was the same kind of student. I did everything I thought I was supposed to do. I took all the tough courses because I wanted to keep my options open. In reality though, there comes a point where you need to actually pick one of those options, and I had no idea how to do that. That’s probably why I kept putting it off.
I wish I could give my high-school self some advice to really explore some of the career options that are out there, because I really had no idea. Like most people, I could probably think of a few dozen different jobs, but in the whole world there are probably thousands or tens of thousands of unique careers out there. There are literally options out there for every talent, but the problem is most people haven’t heard of them. I was good at math, but I had never heard of an actuary before. Maria was good at biology, but she didn’t know that every food production facility, from dairies to meat-packing plants, had quality control departments that needed people with lab skills.
All we could think of when we were still in school were the jobs we either had seen people doing or heard about on TV: mathematician, teacher, lawyer, scientist, doctor, restaurant manager, gas station attendant, mechanic, air force pilot. I have another friend whose favourite subject was social studies. He loves politics, and he’ll talk your ear off about current events while he makes you an espresso at the café where he works. The other day I was watching the news with him and there was this story about someone who was fired from her job as a page in the House of Commons.
He said, “Whoa, how come I’m not doing that for a living? I could be talking to MPs instead of about them. Even if I still had to make coffee.” The simple reason is he’d just never thought of it before – he didn’t even know it was an option. In school our teachers and parents all told us, “learn this, pass that, and you’ll get a good job.” But our job skills are only half of the equation. We need to figure out what kind of job we want before we can blow away the interviewers with our employability skills. What’s our gig? Maybe there should be a class where they help kids figure that out.
Ed Schmegley and I had lunch the other day and we were talking about how sometimes life after high school isn’t what you expect. We talked about his efforts to find his gig, and it made me think of a couple of friends of mine who are having the same problem. They could hardly be more different than Schmegley, but it’s funny how the kids who are the most different still end in the same place.
My friend Maria had been an honour student as long as she could remember, and her transition to university was as smooth as can be. She got high marks no matter what the subject, and I’m not sure if it’s because she was genuinely interested in everything, or if she wanted to be the top student just to prove that she could. By the end of her bio/chem double major with honours, her grades were all sky-high, and she’d aced her MCATs. She seemed like a shoe-in for med school, until the interviewer asked her why she wanted to be a doctor, and she had no answer. She sat there with her mouth open for what seemed like forever, and she realized that no matter how high your GPA is, you can still feel an idiot.
It’s something we’ve talked about more than once, because it was the first time in her life that she realized she didn’t actually know what she wanted to do. She’s working in a lab now, using the skills she developed during her degree, and trying to decide if this is what she really wants to do. I understand where she’s coming from, because I had difficulty choosing a career also. I was the same kind of student. I did everything I thought I was supposed to do. I took all the tough courses because I wanted to keep my options open. In reality though, there comes a point where you need to actually pick one of those options, and I had no idea how to do that. That’s probably why I kept putting it off.
I wish I could give my high-school self some advice to really explore some of the career options that are out there, because I really had no idea. Like most people, I could probably think of a few dozen different jobs, but in the whole world there are probably thousands or tens of thousands of unique careers out there. There are literally options out there for every talent, but the problem is most people haven’t heard of them. I was good at math, but I had never heard of an actuary before. Maria was good at biology, but she didn’t know that every food production facility, from dairies to meat-packing plants, had quality control departments that needed people with lab skills.
All we could think of when we were still in school were the jobs we either had seen people doing or heard about on TV: mathematician, teacher, lawyer, scientist, doctor, restaurant manager, gas station attendant, mechanic, air force pilot. I have another friend whose favourite subject was social studies. He loves politics, and he’ll talk your ear off about current events while he makes you an espresso at the café where he works. The other day I was watching the news with him and there was this story about someone who was fired from her job as a page in the House of Commons.
He said, “Whoa, how come I’m not doing that for a living? I could be talking to MPs instead of about them. Even if I still had to make coffee.” The simple reason is he’d just never thought of it before – he didn’t even know it was an option. In school our teachers and parents all told us, “learn this, pass that, and you’ll get a good job.” But our job skills are only half of the equation. We need to figure out what kind of job we want before we can blow away the interviewers with our employability skills. What’s our gig? Maybe there should be a class where they help kids figure that out.