When I grow up I want to be...

When I was a kid I wanted to own a pet shop. Then I discovered that you had to sell the pets. Later I figured I would become a vet. Then I watched All Creatures Great and Small, and it didn't seem as glamorous any more. Then I wanted to be a lawyer, the manager of a rock star, or a journalist, or a diplomat. Then I got over all of them. I secretly wanted to be a writer but that didn't count as a career... By the time I entered my fourth year of university my career aspirations amounted to 'anything but a waitress'. Fortunately a friend bribed me to go to an information seminar on the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade. And fortunately when I applied they gave me a job. I say fortunately, because I still don't know what my fall back plan would have been.

Throughout your school-going years people are always asking you what you want to do with your life. Given the way the world is now, with jobs being created before your eyes - not generated, but coming into existence in a space where such a career path has never been seen before - I wonder whether it's worth asking the question any more. You only have to watch the closing credits of a Pixar movie to see jobs that no one had ever heard of when I was in high school.

I watched a wonderful Ted talk the other day by Janet Echelman. An artist by training she went to India on a Fullbright Scholarship intending to create a series of paintings to be exhibited - except her paints got lost on the way. Under pressure to produce she came up with something completely new. I think this clip should be shown to every art student, and every artistically inclined student, who thinks they need to fit into a pre-determined box.



Maybe the question to ask is not 'what do you want to do when you grow up?' but 'what do you love doing right now?'

Photo credit: jscreationzs