I was reading an article on the Matadornetwork.com website about racism in Moscow, (http://matadorabroad.com/should-people-of-color-go-to-russia/) and the author's bio intrigued me.
It says:
In 1992, the guidance counselor at Buster's high school distributed forms to students so they could indicate preferences for Career Day. Buster refused to take part, declaring to the principal, "I don't want a career. The point of education shouldn't be job placement." He has spent the past 17 years avoiding anything resembling a career. He's collected money from the federal government to learn obscure languages of the Caspian littoral. He's taken money to do drugs before being loaded into an MRI machine. He has read over 1,000 surveys filled out by women with breast implants. He's now in 23rd grade and spends most of his time reading library books and begging for money from various institutes, foundations and societies. He still hasn't given in.
This really made me think. That is a very good point the author makes, about education perceived as a means to an end, the end being a career. And I think other generations before us have always seen it as that way: you go to school to go to college to get a job to support your family.
Times have changed.
In one of my communications classes a few years ago, the professor was describing characteristics of our generation. Due to our exposure to technology and the internet, we (our generation) multi-task a ton, and almost can't get by without doing so.
Another characteristic that is new and different from our generation compared to others is that we now look for jobs for pleasure rather than paycheck. Our parents or even their parents used to look for a career to be able to pay for having a family and luxuries or day-to-day needs. They maybe even hated their jobs, but it didn't matter because they had a family to feed. Now, we care about ourselves even more and cannot dedicate our time and efforts into something that doesn't provide us with happiness. We want to do something we like.
Evidence of this is our generation's more "job" oriented idea of work as opposed to "career." Someone working with my dad (a man in his late 20s) had once said that this was definitely not his career. It was his job.
My aunt tells us, frustratingly, that she has to job-train so often with this new crop of people entering the workforce because they come and go once they find something better. No longer are they settling for their first job--they are constantly on a quest to do something better.
Perhaps that is why careerbuilder.com is so successful. If you are unfamiliar, this job-finding website sets itself apart in its advertising campaign by clarifying that they are not for those searching for a new job, but for those wanting to build their resume, and potentially might quit from their new jobs once they find something more fulfilling.
Obviously I am interested in this job vs. career discussion because I do fall into that generation that seeks more. But also, as a recent college graduate, I am looking for a job. Not a career, but a job. I need money and experience at this stage in my life, but I am definitely not looking to do some of these jobs for my entire life. At my grad party, every guest asked me "what do you plan to do eventually" or "what is your ultimate dream career?" There were those who responded to my answer with "that's okay that you don't know, you have time to think" but there were also those who responded with "you better go to grad school to figure that out."
I don't have to figure anything out. I don't care if I don't know what I want yet. I can get a job to collect some money first, and find interests later. I will always love math and writing. I will always love acting goofy while working with kids but also being taken seriously. I want to own a little shop of something, I don't know, maybe antiques, but I hate customer service. I like cooking but don't like dealing with picky customers.
I will do what I want. Right now, that is applying for every job I am qualified for, even if it may not be my future career.
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2 comments:
Pretty interesting article. It's really true, I am only interested in getting a good job that pays well. If I have to bounce around to do it, then so be it. The point of an education is to do something with it, so a job is the ultimate goal I think. Otherwise, what is the point of knowing everything??
But don't you think getting educated is somewhat of a goal for schooling as well? Without college, I wouldn't have been able to critique media and such as I can now, with more analytical thinking that I learned in school. I want to be able to know more about my world, be able to explore it, but not just be on a conveyor belt to get a job/have a family, etc.
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