Sol Rapoport
Ask almost any student on the Pierce campus what they want to do with their life and you’ll get the same response: a shrug of the shoulders and a blank look.
It seems that despite enrolling for classes, declaring majors and planning transfers to four-year universities, many students still haven’t conjured up a response to the age old question “What do you want to be when you grow up?”
To be fair, almost everyone has a vague idea of what interests them and what they’d like to avoid at all costs.
Even those who are currently working can’t say for certain that’s where they’ll stay for too long.
Most people gravitate towards one field or another, even if they have yet to isolate a particular career.
At least they’re not alone. According to the 2006 Robert Half International and CareerBuilder.com Employment Dynamics and Growth Expectations (EDGE) report, one in four respondents said they are currently looking for a new position and 44 percent said they will likely leave their present employer in the next three years.
So while it seems that plenty of people are working, not too many are ready to settle in for the long haul quite yet.
So when is it OK to panic?
At what point are we supposed to have it all figured out?
What’s the deadline for making a career choice and sticking with it?
In his book “What Should I Do With My Life?” Po Bronson notes that of all the gifts modern society gives us, the ultimate privilege is choice.
Most of us will get to decide what we do with our lives.
What jobs we take, how or even if we contribute to society-that’s all up to us.
For most societies in recent history this was not the case.
You were born into the job your family did before you. If they were farmers, you plowed; if they were blacksmiths, you forged; if they were warriors, you battled.
Nowhere did the notion of choosing that role come into play.
That’s no longer the case. Today we do choose, and that is both a tremendous opportunity and a great burden.
This process of choice is not just about choosing where we make money. It is also about choosing our identity, about deciding who we are.
And that’s neither a simple nor a speedy proposition.
In a commencement address at Stanford University, Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple Computer and of Pixar Animation Studios, gave the graduating class of 2005 the following advice, “Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life.
“Don’t be trapped by dogma-which is living with the results of other people’s thinking.
“Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition.
“They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.”
So maybe the answer then isn’t to hurry up and figure it all out.
Maybe it’s okay if we take our time and struggle a bit with one of the most significant decisions we’re likely to make in our lifetimes.
Maybe there isn’t even one right answer.
Maybe the question we should be asking ourselves is not “What do I want to do?” but rather “Who do I want to be?”
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