We’ve all heard that question at one time or another in our childhood. Like most other kids, I knew it was best to give grownups a great ‘feel good’ answer whenever they posed that question to me. I had previously tried the honest road and responded with “I want to be Ultraman”, but it always seemed to make them frown or just laugh out loud like I was crazy. For some strange reason, being a super hero wasn’t a commonly accepted career aspiration. So I changed my game a bit and gave them something that they liked.
I want to be a doctor.
All grownups and relatives love to hear that ‘I’m gonna be a doctor’ answer, it’ll make them smile and become proud of you just by saying it.
Oh!! That’s a GREAT aspiration to follow young man. You’re going to have to make real good grades and go to school for a lot of years, but you can do anything that you set your mind to.
Good grades? Go to school for a long time? What was that all about? All I knew was that I was good at that electronic game called Operation (The Wacky Doctor’s Game), where it takes a very steady hand to win. Whatever aspirations I had of joining the medical profession didn’t last long though, especially after I discovered that my stomach didn’t respond well to the sight of real flesh and blood. I didn’t realize that I had a deficiency for surgical procedures until I just happened to observe my father cutting up a whole raw chicken one day. The mere sight of raw chicken flesh and that bag of ‘innards’ they pull from the inner body cavity kinda made my legs go wobbly. This ‘weak stomach’ was definitely going to deter my surgical abilities. I quickly gave up my medical profession goals and decided I wanted to be a garbage man. They get to ride on the back of a truck’s bumper while hanging on to with one arm and whistling and cursing all day? That sounded like something that I REALLY wanted to do. It wasn’t until my mother gave me the JOB of making sure all the trashcans in the house were emptied and taking our big trashcan out to the curb once a week for trash pickup that I changed my mind. Being directly involved in the waste process gave me a whole new level of understanding..trash stinks.
Since then, I’ve had numerous career goals, as well as the reasons that made me change my mind:
1. A professional football player (I was too injury prone to last one game)
2. An entertainer like Michael Jackson (Unfortunately, I can't sing or dance)
3. A policeman (A lot of my family members hated the police, so I changed my mind)
4. Crime Fighter (I learned that Batman and Superman weren’t real people)
5. Mafia Boss (I wasn’t Italian)
6. Stuntman (I hurt myself everytime I tried a stunt)
7. World Class Chef (I only knew how to make fried bologna sandwiches)
8. A Pimp (My mom wasn’t going to let me keep any hoz in the house)
9. Gangsta Rapper (Main problem was that I wasn’t a gangster and I couldn’t rap)
10. Professional Wrestler (Being DDT’ed and put in the ‘sleeper’ hold changed my mind)
Obviously, I was just like most people, completely clueless to what I really wanted to do. Upon graduating from high school, I still didn’t know what I wanted to do. I followed the well-known formula of going to college and putting off making any real career decisions for as long as I could. Believe it or not, they don’t let you just go to college and have a good time. At some point you have to ‘declare’ a major, preferably something that you’re interested in. I had gotten a hold of a magazine, which listed the average starting salary for several different professions. Nuclear physicist was at the top of the list, but even I wasn’t THAT weird. I finally decided on Electrical Engineering because the average salary was towards the top of the rankings and it sounded pretty cool. “Yeah baby, I’m an Electrical Engineer..but you can call me EE.” Yep! I liked that one!
Since then I have sat in many engineering classes, seminars, engineering meetings and project groups and I’ve found myself wondering, ‘What am I going to be when I grow up?” It’s very easy to fall into the ‘trap’ of the road most commonly traveled. Get as much education as possible, then get the job that will pay the most money. Sometimes these jobs have absolutely nothing to do with our training. Instead, most jobs challenge our ability to conform. Because after you get the job, you have to perform to keep the job. For some, the hardest part of their day is just getting to work on time. Others have to grit their teeth and bite their tongue and put up with bothersome people, whether it be co-workers, customers or even the boss. We all do what we have to do to take care of our families and responsibilities. Some are blessed to have a job that they love that pays them very well. Others trudge to a job that they hate only to receive a paycheck that’s already spent before they even get it. I didn’t even ponder my own placement on this job satisfaction scale until I had a talk with my grandmother several years ago..
Do you like your job?
Yes ma’am, I like my job.
What do you like about it?
Well, its close to my house, it pays pretty well, I get to travel and see more of the world and it’s in a field that I was trained in.
When you wake up in the morning, do you get out of bed happy to go to work?
(this question caught me off guard) Uhhh…no ma’am, I can’t say that jump out of bed happy to go to work.
That means you don’t like it then.
Her simple definition of job satisfaction made me pause and reflect. I always try to approach my jobs with a positive attitude. Even if you don’t like your job, the people and/or the pay, having a bad attitude about it doesn’t help the situation. There are a lot of people that would be happy just to have A job..no matter the work conditions. I made up my mind a while ago to never complain about the things, which I have no control over. Instead of wallowing in self-pity I just focused my energies toward figuring out what I REALLY wanted to do with my life. Although my training and my vocation are in the technical world of electromagnetic fields and computer programming paradigms, my soul thirsted for a larger fulfillment. I was initially afraid of venturing out and following my wildest dreams, because that was just too scary. But once I surmised that this is my one and only pass through this life, I no longer had any reason to be afraid. Always shoot for the moon, even if you miss your mark; you will still land amongst the stars.
