blogs
What I Want to Be When I Grow Up
There are a few things I remember about the big family party my grandparents had every Christmas night. My Dad always acted as bartender. My Mom made baked beans. And since we didn't see many of these people at any other time during the year, we typically heard the same refrains:
"You've gotten so big!" (Note to family members everywhere, by the time a girl is a teenager, you might want to change this to "You've gotten so tall" or something else completely...teenage girls don't want to hear that they've gotten "big.")
"What grade are you in?"
"What do you want to be when you grow up?"
The last question was a fairly simple one when I was growing up in the 1960s and 70s. I always wanted to be a teacher. My friends might have answered that same question with doctor, lawyer, baseball player, banker, etc. Most of us didn't end up becoming whatever it was we thought we wanted to be at 13 or 14, but having that occupation to aspire to kept us focused and centered in school.
Now, times are different. Think about the impact it has made on our kids trying to answer that question from others or for themselves. My son wants to be a sports journalist. With the decline of printed media and the rise of other forms of communication, that occupation as we know it today may not even exist by the time my son gets through college.
In my kids' lifetimes, the internet went from 1200 bps on Prodigy or CompuServe (I can still hear the static of connecting over the telephone line) to information so instantaneous that a 2-3 second delay becomes really irritating. Careers that weren't even thought of when I graduated from college are now an integral part of our society and our economy. Webmaster? If we had heard that back then, we would have rolled our eyes and thought it was part of Dungeons and Dragons or something.
What our kids are going to be when they grow up is likely to be something we can't even imagine right now. How do we, as parents, deal with that?
That wasn't rhetorical. I'm really asking. I went to a small, liberal arts college where declaring a major wasn't expected until sophomore year and was something broad like Economics, Biology or English (guess which one I was). I have been brainwashed that keeping it general in college teaches you how to learn and your liberal studies are applicable to whatever career you choose. Of course, on my first day at my first job after college they asked me to fax something and I said, "What's a fax?" So clearly I don't have the answers.
When I was in college everyone had a copy of "What Color is Your Parachute" and that was supposed to help you narrow down your possible career paths. Talk to me Triangle Moms. Talk to me educators. Does it still matter what color our parachutes are? Are there new and different ways to become what you want to be when what you want to be hasn't been invented yet?
Diane appears Wednesdays on TriangleMom2Mom. Read more about Diane on her blog Live and Let Di.
Live and Let Di
Diane is a TriangleMom2Mom featured blogger, appearing every Wednesday.
I try to be the voice of Moms with teens. My daughter Haley is 16. She's at that age where she is convinced that I know nothing. I'm thinking I'll seem a lot smarter when she's 22. We bond over Broadway shows. My son Rory is 13. He started reading the sports page when he was 5 and his passion for anything sports-related has grown ever since. This year he beat out 9 guys in their 40s to win his Fantasy Football League. Watch for him on ESPN in a few years.
My husband Hurley works from home, but travels quite a bit. When he's gone, I usually take a break from making dinner and cleaning the house. Oh, I don't do those things regularly when he's here either! Our parenting philosophy is "choose your battles." The only problem is that we often choose different battles. It keeps it interesting!!!
Comments
What scares me (and makes me feel really OLD) is when I look at the want ads and do not know what half of the jobs encompass!
My daughter attended a college that insisted on graduation in four years and highly recommended that each student have a marketable skill when they graduated, even if this was achieved through a minor or from work on the school paper or something else. They pride themselves on an extraordinarily high employment rate for each graduating class within a couple of months of graduation.
JOANN
There are some basic skills every student needs to have that will help them no matter what their career is.
Writing skills. Your sports journalist son has this. And no matter what the medium, he can continue to use it. He may not be writing in a traditional newspaper, but as long as there are sports, there will be people who want to learn more about it. Your son will be writing online. He'll be blogging. He'll be twittering.
People skills. Managing yourself and others. Knowing how to work in a group. Knowing how to lead, and how and when to follow. Knowing how to solve problems whether they are with customers, clients or patients.
Ability to keep learning. Being able to embrace the new technology that comes along and stay proficient.
I think these three skills will be universal and will give our kids the flexibility to adapt to whatever situations they encounter. I'm sure there are more. Moms?
I wish I had an answer. I'm 30 and have no idea what I want to do. If I didn't need the money, I'd continue being a SAHM without doing anything else full- or part-time. The English degree doesn't help either.
What's funny is I was talking to my kids this morning about what they want to be when they grow up. My 7 yr. old wants to be a race car driver and my 5 yr. old wants to be a princess (or a teacher if the princess thing doesn't work out).
I think Ms DeL hit it on the mark. I came out of college with some writing skills, but wish I had developed that a bit more. I found that the focused discipline helped me get the job (accounting & business, 20 yrs ago), but developing and nurturing the other attributes has helped me stay engaged (and employed), even as a telecomuter 95% of the time. Ability to adapt to change is a tremendous asset - I agree with the comment to "keep learning" , and it is so key for our kids. My 2nd graders are adept webbers, and want to be a teacher and a vet, and my 6th grader has stuck with her assertion to be a doctor - with our virtual world, that could mean their patients or students are half a world away. The skills of working with a virtual team, having a "phone presence", and enabling the mentoring process via distance are all challenges I see every day, and will likely become foremost in the next gen.
The writing skills are still so important! I am so afraid that in the era of FaceBook and instant messaging, the value of using correct grammar will be lost.