Well, it just happened. I had a conversation with my
daughter about work, a conversation I know my father had with me. And I’m sure
I’m just as frustrated as he was. In the case of my father and me, I was making
an argument for dropping math in grade 13 (yes kids, we had grade 13 in the old
days). I was trying to convince my dad that as a big time journalist, I wasn’t
going to need math. There was no math beat at the Globe and Mail, and being up
on my calculus wasn’t going to help me get, or keep a job. I’d just be so much
better off if I could take Italian. Or better yet, a spare. Somehow, I won the
argument and calculus got dropped. Sweet victory.
Haley, my delightful, beautiful, and smart teen-aged
daughter is about to enter high school. I was there when she popped out, and I
can’t believe that fourteen years have passed by and we’re already talking
about grade nine. She got her class option selection form last week, so it
should have been a wonderful week spent planning her future, right? Wrong. It’s been yelling, fighting, door
slamming, and the occasional crying fit. And that’s just me. She’s been quiet
and huffy, but if truth be told, it’s not that much different than normal. She
is a teenager after all.
Haley wants to be a marine biologist. That career idea came
to her on a visit to Sea World a bunch of years ago, and it was reinforced on a
visit to Peggy’s Cove the next year. Then we went dolphin seeking in South
Carolina, and most recently, whale watching in California. The kid wants to
work with marine life and I’m a proud dad. Haley’s as sure at age 13 that she’s
going to be a marine biologist when she grows up as I was at 16 that I was one
day going to be the CBC Bureau Chief in Moscow.
 |
| In high school, all I could see in my future was me reporting, Live, From Red Square. We know how that panned out. |
So I gave up on math. And science. I worked my ass off, and
got into Journalism school. I traded calculus for a spare period, and when I
hit university, I even took Russian to help me get that Moscow gig. As it turns
out, I despised J-School. I hated it the minute I walked in, and I hated every
day of it thereafter. The idea of four years of journalism school made me want
to jam knitting needles into my eyes. Russian was a bust, my professor, Gennady
Orzornoy, promised me a C if I promised to never take Russian again, and I took
him up on that deal with a heartfelt ‘Dah!’
Dasvidaniya Russian and J-School, Bonjour French and Political Science!
I’m not a journalist, and I have haven’t regretted it for
one single moment. Had J-school worked out, I’m convinced I wouldn’t have the
life I have today. Everything would be different. It might be good, but it
wouldn’t be the same, and I wouldn’t trade what I have. Besides, newspapers are
dying, and as it turns out, I only have a face for radio, and a voice for
silent movies.
So imagine, over breakfast, trying to convince a 13 year-old
future marine biologist that perhaps a credit or two in business might be a
good thing. Without trying to kill her dream, I’m attempting to help her to
realize that the world of work doesn’t always turn out the way you think it’s
going to when you’re thirteen. This beautiful creature, who should be an
amazing realist blend of a glass-half-empty mother and a glass-half-full father
is absolutely convinced that there is no place for a business course in her
sea-loving future. She’s viewing her future through her Shamu-goggles, where
she’s wearing a wet-suit and riding a dolphin.
How many of us are doing today what we thought we’d be doing
when we were going into high school? I
doubt that not taking a grade nine credit in business will stand in Haley’s way
of a career on Bay Street or Wall Street if that’s what she ultimately decides
she wants to do, but I also know it won’t hurt her either. I would love to take
a poll to see how people are where they thought they would be…Are they doing
the jobs that they thought they’d be doing, and the ones they thought they were
preparing for.
I’m not doing anything close to what I thought I’d be doing,
and for the record, it doesn’t make me sad one bit. In fact, I’m thrilled. But
if I would have been a little more open to the possibility that the journalism
gig wasn’t going to pan out, I might have stuck with calculus. And maybe
physics. I hear physics conferences are a riot.
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