For my entire life I have been taught that since I have had the potential and the brains to do well in school, that I need to make school my entire life, and that I need to make school the path by which I reach my career. I have also been taught that once I have my career figured out, and once I have a career in mind, I have my life figured out, I have solved who I am and what I want to do with my life.
Life and career are two different words.
Life (n.) 1. the condition that distinguishes organisms from inorganic objects and dead organisms, being manifested by growth through metabolism, reproduction, and the power of adaptation to environment through changes originating internally.
2. the animate existence or period of animate existence of an individual
Career (n.) 1. an occupation or profession, esp. one requiring special training, followed as one's lifework
2. success in a profession, occupation, etc.
A career is a subheading in one’s life. It is not the main title. It is a sidebar. An indentation. Even if you decide that you are going to make your career your entire “life” (and keep in mind, when you say your entire “life,” you mean only after a certain point, only after you have made the decision to make your career your entire “life” (think of this as a linear timeline)), you cannot escape that it is still a subheading, and not the main title. When you were born, you were not “Dan, English teacher.” You were a squirmy, wet, dripping little baby with nothing attached to you anymore. You were out of your mother’s womb and thus not attached to her no longer, and perhaps your parents had not even named you yet. You existed. You were life. You career came later, and thus it is not the main title of your life. It may be the first subheading of your life, but it is not the main title.
That said, why do our guidance counselors, our parents, our grandparents, our peers, our teachers all insist that “career” is the main title of everyone’s life?
In kindergarten, the first step on the path to your career, your teachers have career days. You can bring your parents into school so they can tell your peers about their careers, how they got there, and why they love it. The association begins: school=career; life=career; school=life=career. They are all synonymous, and yet you are 4 or 5 years old. Your teacher then teaches you “stay in school if you want to get a good paying job.” School=career. If you don’t have a good paying job, or a normal job, or the job that the parents of your peers have, you are unsucessful. School=life=career. These three words are all synonymous at the age of five. FIVE!
And so you graduate on to 1st grade, then to 2nd, and then to 3rd, working to pass each grade thinking that your schooling is also your career, and without it, you don’t have a career, and thus without school, you also don’t have a life, because your career is synonymous with your life.
In the 3rd grade, however, you probably have not decided “what you want to be when you grow up” (remember that phrase?). Once you graduate on into high school, and you sit down with your guidance counselors, and you decide “what you want to be when you grow up,” you can put a period at the end of that sentence. You’ve figured out your life. You are all set. Your guidance counselor can move to his next 15 minute appointment.
So you graduate on to college knowing that you have your entire life figured out, and you have your entire life ahead of you SOLVED! AHA.
Only, you don’t work 168 hours a week (the number of hours in a week). What are you supposed to do with the rest of the time you have off? Even if you have an 80 hour a week job, there are still 88 hours a week left. But most people are content with a 40-50 hour a week job. So that leaves over 120 hours a week! What do you like to do in your spare time?
I am only writing this because the pressure that is placed on children and high school students to define their lives at such a young age is so harmful, and so ridiculous. If someone is the type of person in high school who does know exactly what he wants to do with his career, that means he is that one specific type of person, and yes, that may work very well for him to set a goal for his career, and to work towards that, and to work and work and work towards that. But, there are 6.5 billion people in this world. There is not only one singular type of person. The world would be a far less interesting place if there were only one type of human being. We are all different, but school puts us into little boxes that are all the same size, and are all designed to carry the same weight, and are sent off to the same destination: career (and please, note that career is different from job (or a means to support yourself and to eat)).
It is only now, my third year of college, that I am realizing that, even though I have a career in mind (English teacher) I DON’T know what I want to do with my life, and that is something that is so hard for some people to understand. I say, “I don’t know what I want to do with my life,” and they respond, “I thought you wanted to be an English teacher?” (again, life=career). They are not the same thing. And I don’t know what I want to do with my life, and that is ok, but to realize that when I am 21 years old, after years and years and years of people telling me that I do in fact know what I want to do with my life since I have a career chosen, is very troubling.
So now the question is: what do I want to do? (AND DON’T SAY ENGLISH TEACHER).
I don’t know. I only have vague ideas.
Vague ideas like: I want to drink beer on summer nights outside. I want to ride my bike. I want to buy a beagle and name him Maurice. I want to wear flip flops. I want to have sex on Saturday afternoons. I want to live near the ocean. I want to write. I want to read. I want to drink tea. I want to drink black coffee. I want to wake up early and sit in my backyard. I want to walk around barefoot.
They are vague ideas, but they seem like pretty good ideas, no? And imagine, after all the years I have been in school (let’s see, since I was 4, so that 17 years!) I have never really sat down with myself and thought these things out until now. That is a shame. The things we do while we are living define our lives. And I don’t care what you say, you cannot possibly work 168 hours a week, so you must be doing other things, and if you’ve never thought about those, or don’t care about those, I feel sorry.
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