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Channel / Source:
TEDx Talks
Published: 2015-04-30
Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ARGkp6am3S8
so nope we've been made a lot of promises as a generation one of the very first promises we hear and for many of us the very first experience we have with the idea of career planning does the promise that you can be anything that you want to be when you grow up we hear this early on and we hold on to this this is deeply rooted
and our society and our culture we call it the American dream and that we love it because it sounds awesome right this anything you want to be anyone that you want to be it's out there all you have to do is go get it and when you ask kindergarteners what they plan to do when they grow up you will get a creative and widely varied set
of answers they seem to have absolutely no idea of whether a job would be possible or if it exists no consideration for how much money they with me and then we start to grow up and the rules change the message we hear changes you can still be anything you want to be as long as you follow our rules as long as you do well in school
you passed there a task as long as he meet our expectations and those children were okay with that we're used to playing games that have rules and that have one clear winner so we accept that but for the first time the idea of scarcity comes at the promises now that some people can be anything but not everyone and then they are gone you know it's not
enough to do well in school but you also have to go to college and at this point some of us start to question right you might have noticed that not everyone goes to college and they seem to be doing okay right in fact the ten most common jobs in the United States include things like retail cashier janitorial staff maidens transportation office manager things that don't actually
require a college degree although they also don't make more than the national average salary but there wildly successful people out there to you who have skipped past college for example Bill Gates or mark Zuckerberg tacky giant giants who have never actually graduated or celebrity is like Taylor swift who is about my age and has more famous friends more money and more houses than I will ever
see in my life but if you tell people that you plan to skip college and instead be a full time yoga instructor or write that novel you'll normally hear some variation of the same comment you have to get a real job so you can be anything you want to be as long as it's a real job he and I hear this term fellow frequently when I
work with students when I talk to their parents and orientation and I hear it in conversations with my own friends and family that I thought I should figure out what it means right what do we mean when we say a real job so I asked the smartest person I know I asked Google I what is a real job and I was surprised I didn't get a
clear answer I did find a definition from urban dictionary which contains words I cannot share with you today I am but I aside from that what I found were articles blog posts podcasts all made by people who didn't have a real job or had been told to get a real job or had decided they never want a real job and what surprised me about that is
those authors how job titles Mike entrepreneur or have marketing specialist the to me sound real though I was in this weird predicament Google didn't know the answer I have not been in this situation many times in my life so if Google doesn't know the answer rate what am I supposed to think but we still talk about it so I tried to piece together what we mean
when we discuss a real job and I was able to come up with these five characteristics if you have four out of the five of the is congratulations your job is probably real if you have less than four unfortunately your job might be imaginary and sorry about that and this didn't so normally what we look for is some sort of required education college generally or some
other expensive certification program and for example to be a nurse you do need to go to nursing school but you don't necessarily actually need a bachelor's degree you have to be paid well and that one is the magical requirement it can actually and make all of the other ones irrelevant if you get paid well enough any job is a real job and which is why for
Brad Pitt acting is a real job and that if you tell your parents that's what you wanna do %HESITATION it's really a hobby right I was so that's where again that disconnect so once again that idea of scarcity some people can do anything that they want to do be anything that they want to be but not everyone can certainly not you maybe if no I'm not
saying that college is an important and I'm not just not saying that because I work at a college and I need them to continue paying me I'm I usually feel the college is important because if what do you do you want to do you and that in any way with one of those real job chances are you do you actually need to be in college also
college is one of the first chance as we got in an educational environment to explore our creativity to develop critical thinking skills and to really explore options that we have never seen before maybe this is your chance to open your horizons to meet new interesting and diverse other people and to find out what your passion is but it's become not enough just to go to college
so they keep adding on right the economy is not what it used to be and we've become really scared it's not enough anymore to get a college degree it doesn't guarantee you a job and so now you have to pick the right major and if you do you pick the right major your side you know you're gonna go off you're gonna make lots of money you're
going to have a great life if you pick the wrong major you are doomed to a life of under employment in jobs that don't necessarily require a degree anyway and that's why some of you may be contemplating your new and exciting career as a Starbucks barista who my love by the way they keep me in caffeine %HESITATION bed this promise for me feel so far removed
from what we started with rape we've started to subscribe to this idea that your major leads to a particular job we're set of jobs and from there on out few success and a happy life so now you can be anything you want to be as long as it's one of the is three or four specific professions right so that doesn't seem like the same promise where
did our promise go I was promised anything no questions asked and so what we tell kindergarteners and what we tell eighteen year olds is so wildly different but I decided I needed to look into it like believe a lot of other people already have so the American Association of colleges and universities have polled employers the people who hire you for those real jobs and the less
than one quarter of them actually look for a specific college major more than seventy five percent of employers will hire any college major as long as you have the skills to do the job and overwhelmingly employers value critical thinking creativity and problem solving skills above any major that you could use in college which is crazy right when you think about it creativity critical thinking problem solving
or things that we are naturally inclined to you as children we naturally have that and that's why you would ask kindergartners what they want to do you and you got the answers you would never have thought of because they're creative they're creatively solving problems and that's something that we stop doing as they come up through school and if you do college right you can get some
of that back great so if your major doesn't matter what does is the obvious question and I figured this answer out by looking around at the change makers the big names that people who really make an impact on our world and if you look at those people they did not get where they are by listening to what other people told them they should be doing they
just didn't and a lot of cases they fought very very hard against those outside voices so it does matter if you and what you know to be true disregarding what other people tell you about whether it's real who hear about whether it exists or about whether you're good at it Walt Disney was fired from his first job at a newspaper because he lacked imagination Oprah Winfrey
was fired as a newscaster because she was unfit for television but they kept going yeah right and the Mead connections if you are true to your authentic self if you do what you're passionate about rates if you choose the major that you're in love with even though it might not lead to a stable career path right now you're gonna connect with people who share your ideas
who share your passions and you can start a business are you can start a movement are you can change the world so let's hold on to that first promise you can be anything that you want to be and ignore all the people who tell you but you cannot that it's not valid or that it's not real and when you go home tonight I want you to
take just five minutes for yourself turn off all the voices that are coming in at you from the outside so turn off your cell phone it's okay you can call your mom back this turn off the internet get away from from friends there remains any other voices that are coming in what other people are thinking or what they're saying and listen to your own voice what
do you love what do you want to deal and then tomorrow do it just a little back I mean you don't have to be hired at a magazine to write something just this write it and you don't have to be a doctor to help someone who's in need you don't have to be a CEO to start a company or a business when you do you what
truly makes you passionate and excited it's practicing listening to your own voice and just like anything with practiced it becomes easier and if you are living a true to yourself to your own voice then you will have much more to offer any possible employer but more importantly you have more to offer the world thank you
