Bullet-Proof Glass or a Bunker?
When I was leaving high school, and before I went to college, I faced the challenge all young people face when asked that question, ‘What do you want to do?’
I still find this such a s*** question to put to a teenager who’s spent an entire life to date moving between classrooms; as though somehow they’ll have a really clear idea of what the world has to offer that complements their personality, character and ‘skills’. I was an absolute baby.
Like most people of my generation, I don’t recall my careers advisor setting the world alight for me, a bit of a dead duck from the off if the truth be told. In my first session, she said, “You’re bright, you speak well, present smartly - you should work in a bank.”
She didn’t laugh with me.
Anybody who had shared a classroom with me for any period of my childhood knew that there was too much going on, energy-wise at least, to put me behind glass all day. Nothing at all wrong with it; it just definitely wasn’t me.
‘Ok, I’ll take a look’
My second session was a classic. Ask a teenage boy in the ’80s if he liked cars, and you got a ‘Yes’ 9 out of 10 times, so I was advised to consider the motor industry and asked if I wanted to know more. There was a local showroom she could send me to. “Ok, I’ll take a look”, I said.
She arranged a time over the phone, gave me an address, and I set off the following day to have a chat with someone interested in ‘...smart young people like you.’
I headed down one of the roads off Wembley High Road in London, right to the bottom, to the railway arches and giant doors. I knocked, no answer. I knocked again, still no response, so I stepped in. It was nearly pitch black, apart from the tiniest bit of light leaking out from somewhere in the floor. Actually, the light was coming from beneath the floor.
I called out, and a guy in overalls climbed out of a hole underneath a yellow Datsun, took a look at me and asked, “What?”
I explained, and he said, ‘Ahh right, you’ve come for the job?’.
“No”, I said, “I’ve come to find out about the motor industry.”
“Yes,” the guy said, “I’m looking for a young person to train up to work for me here.”
I’d already seen all I wanted to see and, no disrespect to the guy; it was a one-man-band. There was no room for him to expand, recruit, promote and certainly not enough room for my energies, any passions I had, or any skills I was developing.
I’d started my journey at a dead end. However, he made a great cup of tea had a great turn of chat and some funny stories.
“Passion is energy. Feel the power that comes from focusing on what excites you.”
Later, I heard from the careers advisor who told me the guy genuinely liked me; I’d be fully trained and get a trainee’s salary. I wasn’t interested, and she wasn’t happy with me, described me as ‘difficult’ to work with. We never spoke again.
This scenario still plays out
Young people are still getting poor careers advice without a proper examination and a thorough audit of who they are, what they do, care about, spend their time following, or even what they are passionate about.
I had enough in me to reverse out of the dead-end I was being driven towards, but how many young people are nudged firmly forward to start a working life they aren’t motivated by on the first day?
That was the 80’s; slow, limited, uncreative, dour, stereotyped, analogue, traditional, conventional and industrial.
Class was (and still is) massively defining, plus many young people were the 1st generation children of immigrants, who had no interest in moving into the roles their parents were enticed to the UK to fill.
I wasn’t difficult.
Like most young people, I just needed to know more than she knew about the world of work and didn’t have the same narrow idea of where I’d fit into it.
#achangeisgonnacome
