When I was a child I was too busy doing childhood things to worry about my future. That job belonged to my parents. They were busily wrapped up in the task of providing for themselves and their offspring. This in itself is a noble undertaking for any parent. It is just that they should have done a little more in preparing me for what life could offer. I understand that they probably wasn’t given many choices and it is true that the number of choices back then were limited.
When it came time to answer that question from my high school guidance councilor that everybody eventually faces, “What do you want to be when you graduate?”, I was stumped. I was totally unprepared for it. I wasn’t terrified until later after realizing that I had indeed come to that crossroad in everyone’s life when I realized that my future was coming at me ready or not.
Looking back on the way my life has turned out I can see that I have been fairly fortunate that I am not more poor than I am. I am not financially wealthy, but I am not as financially comfortable as I would like to be either.
I can’t help thinking that I was not given the proper guidance by that high school ‘guidance councilor’. As an adult I now realize how difficult it must have been for him to sit across his desk from a high school student whose face was as blank as an unused chalk board. When he asked me that question, the only thing I can remember thinking was that I had no idea what I wanted to be.
Of course, he was trying to determine what classes I should take in order to prepare me for my eventual life after high school. Since I had no idea what to tell him he loaded me up with all the academic level classes so that I could be ‘generally’ prepared for making a decision later.
When I walked away I felt that I had secured a course that would help me through life (of course I didn’t really phrase it that way, I was just glad I was no longer in his office and that I could get back to class and get through the day).
This was really my first ‘confrontation’ with real life. This was a very important moment in my life and I was not prepared. Did someone fail me for not preparing me for this moment? Was I supposed to have been shown what my options were by my parents? Was the councilor himself supposed to give me a long list of possible career choices? Was there some test available to identify my ‘aptitude’ that would at least point me in the right direction of a career choice?
I did not have any of these things given to me.
When I graduated, never making a real decision on what I wanted to become, I went to work doing anything I could to earn money.
I had always been willing to work. My first income was mowing lawns, delivering newspapers, doing odd jobs for neighbors willing to pay me. My first ‘structured’ job, complete with time clock and a paycheck, was as a dishwasher at a local restaurant. A job I thoroughly hated. Then I worked in a paint store as a salesman. Another job I thoroughly hated. I was quick to decide that dealing with the general public was not something I wanted to look forward to each day.
I got a job in a warehouse and felt a little better about life in general. Most of my time away from my job was spent with my girlfriend. And I never really ever put much thought into my future. Things were going well enough so why bother.
Then Uncle Sam reached out to me with draft papers in hand. I politely refused to go into his army and be shipped to Vietnam, where I am sure my future would have taken a decidedly darker turn. I did what every other red-blooded American male did at the time who did not want to run off to Canada and who did not want to kill anyone, I joined the Air Force. They gave me a test that defined my ‘aptitude’ for electronics. I was placed in tech school to become a computer operator. This was okay for the next eight years, but I was beginning to want more. I used the GI Bill to go to college to become a computer programmer. After all, everybody said that computers are the ‘big coming wave of the future’ and ‘Get on the train now for a brighter future’. After four years of college and a degree in hand I went to seek my fortune. Many jobs I found turned out to be ‘sweat shop’ operations. Nothing at all like the picture that had been firmly planted in my brain.
After spending years writing programming code I eventually burned out. It became boring. Luckily I was able to save money though the companies payroll stock sharing programs available to me and was able to retire before age 65. Not too bad for someone who had no clue about what life could offer.
Looking back on all of this with the advantage of actual experience, the picture I am presented with is a very common one. Most kids don’t know what they want to do with their future so they just go with the flow taking whatever comes along and hope they can make enough money to retire on after it is all over.
This course of action, or inaction, is really very mundane and scary as hell. If I had gotten real guidance, if I had been shown what my real options were then I am quite sure things would have turned out differently. Every child should have this type of guidance while they are young so they can be shown what they need to do to prepare themselves for the business of surviving this life in this capitalist society.
Recently, I answered my front doorbell on two separate occasions to be greeted by a neighborhood child wanting to earn some money.
On one occasion it was two young girls who had made bead bracelets and were asking two dollars each to earn some ‘extra’ money. My first thought was that it was refreshing to see youth taking the initiative to begin to earn their own way. This means a lot to me. My next thought was that they had priced their wares too low. Sure, it was only string and beads, but they had put their time into making and designing them and created very nice looking bracelets. I told them they should be asking for three or four dollars and that I would give them three dollars each for three of them. I have three granddaughters and I can’t by just for the youngest one.
On another occasion, two young boys came to the door offering to mow my lawn for five dollars. I refused their very generous offer by telling them that I mow it myself. Then I thought to tell them that they should ask for more than five dollars. I explained to them that the price of gas alone was enough reason to ask for more. Then I told them it would take about an hour to mow my lawn and they should ask for at least twenty dollars if they did a good enough job. I am sure there are some neighbors who would like to take advantage of these boys inexperience, and that would be wrong, so I hoped that by telling them this they would place a higher value on their time.
The point to these two stories is that someone (parents) should have told these kids that their time is worthwhile and they should set a higher price for it. Now I think it is great that these four individuals took it upon themselves to earn some money, but really, where is the guidance they clearly did not get?
Every loving, caring parent wants their children to become something more than they became. We can do this by trying to find out what the kid is interested in and has an aptitude for and then nurturing that interest toward a career possibility. Kids don’t see the future. We need to see it for them. Maybe by the time they are sitting across the desk from their guidance councilor they will be able to answer with more than a blank stare.
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