When I grow up I want to be...
A question I often asked myself and ironically still find myself asking this question at the ripe old age of 24.
The number of professions that I 'believed' that I wanted to get into going through school, 6th form and even whilst working, you'd need two hands to keep count of. Whilst I doubt that this is something that's unique to myself, the question isn't just is our current education system providing children with the right level of support and 'relevant' life experience, but do you ever actually have to know what it is that you want to be when you grow up?
If you were to ask me whether I dreamt of being a management consultant when I was 11 reading Harry Potter or even 16 deciding what A levels to study than you'd receive a perplexed face at what a management consultant even was. Considering that I still have a 'simplified' explanation for friends and family about what a management consultant is now, proves my point. I'd bet my mortgage that the response would be the same for 9/10 of my friends with their current careers, with the odd ones being those studying medicine.
I've been fortunate enough to enjoy most of the jobs that I've had to date, with them all being 'office jobs'.
Yet if you were to ask someone In school whether they want an 'office' job when they leave school, more so whether they'd love it, you'd be more likely to find a message from Donald Trump sent by something other than Twitter. Not likely.
I'm a wholehearted fan of the push to get more people to get an apprenticeship, trying to break the thought that to get a good job you need to go to University, get a degree, get a good job and everything will be okay. But is this enough?
People have often said that to counter act not knowing what you want to do when you grow up, than it's okay to know what you don't want to do. This will get you by. But why aim for just getting by and constantly ticking jobs off a list that could never end?
Perhaps it's not important at all to know what you want to do when you grow up, regardless of not knowing what you don't want to do. Perhaps it's about finding a purpose or an end goal that you're continuously working towards, that your job or career is your enabler to.
Whether that would be philanthropy, continuously learning new skills, passing on knowledge or continuously aspiring to try and make the world a better place, regardless, should we not take a school of thought of knowing what our purpose and aspirations are life in, as opposed to what the potential enablers to this, our careers, may be.