“What Do I Want To Be When I Grow Up?”
I’m sure everybody asked this question growing up. First thing I knew was that I wanted to see the world. So I wanted to be a stewardess (which is called “flight attendant” these days) for one because I didn’t know what other professions would allow me to travel the world. I wanted to be an artist (I’m not sure if I knew what kind of art I was interested in). I wanted to be a dancer (I took modern dance lessons from age 11 through high school). I wanted to be many other things throughout my youth well into my 20s.
Today I had an opportunity to stand in front of a school assembly of 4th to 6th graders in Glendale to make a presentation about possible careers to be “green heroes.” I was invited to be a speaker by one of my colleagues in my green building field, who was volunteering to organize a whole week of events to celebrate the upcoming Earth Day. She wanted me to tel the kids about the careers that would help the planet. Hmmm, that can be anything.
As I prepared a slide deck presentation, it got me thinking about how my career choice processes were like as I was growing up. Obviously, when I was growing up in the ’70s, the source of information I had access to in terms of thinking about my career options was quite limited compared to today. I didn’t have teachers talking to me about all the possibilities, either. I mostly relied on my imagination. I ended up taking a fairly unconventional career path where I didn’t have a long term goal of becoming a certain “something.” Rather I pretty much followed bread crumbs and tried many different professions led by my curiosity.
So that’s what I told the kids. I told them to follow their heart. I told them they get to try everything they’re interested in, and they can always change, and that they can be more than one thing at a time. Besides, by the time these kids I talked to today are old enough to choose careers, there will be professions that don’t exist today. There will be professions we know now that might be “extinct” by then as well. Possibilities are literally endless. It would be my honor if someone in that assembly got to plant a seed in their mind about a possibility of what they can do with their life although I will probably never know.