How to get a job and enjoy yourself
When I was a kid in a small town high school, the concept of career direction was vague, and the people who provided “guidance” had one answer to every question. Go to university, young man. So, I did. After all, our academic pyramid placed that at the apex; everything else was a shallow second choice. In retrospect, none of my close friends “made the top”, yet they’re all still out there, somewhere, doing something. Illusions of education. Don’t get me wrong; I came close to choosing “university student” as a career (in and of itself), but financial pressure finally pushed me out of the womb and into the real world.
Today, I was back to a local high school, trying to drum up interest in “getting a job” among a roomful of students. No illusions from me; I was trying to foster an interest in technical jobs (where I landed after various test flights). I don’t think I even offered university as an alternative.
Instead, my talk (monologue) was strong on looking for satisfaction and settling for pay that was better than slavery but below idle rich. The idea that a job could use their skills in video games and Lego blocks was a surprise for some. I also advised them to learn how to read their own handwriting, because if they couldn’t read their own notes a few days after the fact, it was going to require amazing feats of memorization to get through three decades in the workplace. Tech talk.
Like last year, the audience was polite and attentive, but now I run the risk of being labelled as a long-haired hippie; just like my parents feared.
