It often pisses me off when people ask young children what they want to be when they grow up. For starters, they'll just change their minds anyway. Second, I'm not convinced it is healthy or necessary to bring a child face to face with their adult responsibilities before its time to do so.
Regardless, if someone had asked me what I wanted to be at the age of 7 through 18 I would have answered immediately, without any hesitation: Lawyer. Then I would have said "actually, probably a judge". This disposition continued until the second week of law school, when I decided that if there was one thing that I did not want to be, it was a lawyer, or even a law student for that matter.
The number of torts classes I literally slept through after that faithful day, or how few law tutes I attended doesn't really need to be discussed in detail. What I actually want to talk about is that since the day I decided law wasn't for me, I haven't ever managed to hang onto an aspiration for more than 3 months. I have considered writing, sports coaching, tennis playing, academic work, policy work for the govt, working in a third world country, teaching, education administration, journalism, being a public intellectual, working for a philanthropic organization or something like TED.com, private investing, publishing, and others. When I say I have considered these industries, that means I have actually undertaken employment in them for a period, and then decided that it wasn't for me.
The problem, besides the fact that I am a whiny bitch and don't appreciate how hard it is to make a living, is that the ongoing division of labor and our society's preference for ultra-specialized professionals means that if I want to do some interesting work, I have to sacrifice almost all of my interests for the sake of one. For example, if I wanted to be an academic in philosophy I would need to read an obscene amount, which wouldn’t leave much time for playing the amount of tennis I play at the moment, nor would it leave a whole of time for long adventurous holidays or a side-career as an art teacher.
One of the things that pisses me off the most about life is that you can't have it all. Everything has opportunity costs. If you want to be a skillful athlete you are going to have to sacrifice a great deal of reading time, effectively ruining your chances of being a successful academic etc.
The ongoing division of labor and need for extreme specialization of professionals means that if you have several interests your working life is always going to be plagued by the question "what if?" What if I'd chosen to pursue journalism instead of this career as a lawyer? What if I'd resisted the allure of expense accounts and chosen to apply my economics knowledge to the third world instead of Macquarie’s invest portfolio? If I decided to be a professional sports coach, would I really have drifted away from all those intellectual people whose company I so greatly appreciate?
All this leads to a taxing angst ridden state during the university years, where those of us who don't have an inner calling can't make up their mind regarding what to do with their lives. Life is perpetual tension.
So what advice can I give?
Well one thing I live by is that it is fine to regret a decision as long as you don’t regret your reasons. If you spend a year going down a particular path and then realize it isn’t for you, don’t lament the lost time because you made the right decision at the time. If you have good reasons for doing something and by your best judgment it is the correct call, then do it, don’t agonize over whether you are right or wrong. If you turn out to have been incorrect you can chalk it up as unlucky, an accident, or just one of those ‘we all make mistakes’ kinds of mistakes.
Remember that it takes a while to get to the top. Just because you aren’t enjoying journalism after 12 months doesn’t mean you won’t really start to enjoy it in 3 years’ time when they ask you to investigate corruption in the mayor’s office. As much as I used to bitch and moan about it everyone needs to do their time before they get to the really good stuff. It takes experience and knowledge before you can sink your teeth into the great stuff. You don’t want to be described with the following impersonation:
“Oh my god, I am waaaay too important to be doing this photocopying. Why don’t they just make me president already and I can get on with doing what I’m good at.”
At the same time I think a really good piece of advice is that should try and avoid starting done a career path where you don’t enjoy the bottom of that industry. For example, a friend of mine wants to go into commercial radio. Now while everyone would like to be Hamish and Andy, he would also be happy hosting late night drive on Bega FM, so it is a viable career choice for him because he will genuinely enjoy his journey to prime time on 2DayFM. By contrast, someone who joins politics because they want to be in cabinet but hates caucus meetings is in for a very bad few decades.
The last things I would say is just to remember that you don’t need that much money to live well in Australia because of the awesome environment and high minimum wage. Doing something you don’t enjoy is an absolute waste of time. Take a pay cut and do something stimulating. There is no point having money if you don’t have the time to spend it. If you can’t choose between all the different types of jobs you enjoy, perhaps consider that the weekends are days too and that you can feasibly have a full time and a part time job, or several part time jobs, such as teaching, writing and painting.
Perhaps another point worth making here is that some people just aren’t cut out for one profession. History is littered with wonderful polymaths and jack of all trades type characters. Just go with it. Spread out, diversify, try your hand at a few things. You’ll never never know if you never never go.
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