By Kwok-Sze Richard Wong for American School Counselor Association
Each year, my children’s elementary school yearbook publishes the goals of all the students who are moving on to middle school. A few years ago when he was in sixth grade, my son Tyler wrote that he wanted to be a professional athlete and an electric guitarist. I have no doubts that he has the ability and the drive to accomplish one or both someday, just as I am sure some of his friends will fulfill their goals of becoming judges, marine biologists and fashion critics.
Unfortunately, these responses illustrate the common notion that life goals are inextricably tied to occupation or vocation. This is probably a holdover from the archaic practice of asking children what they want to be when they grow up. Most young children would find it almost impossible to answer this question. After all, most elementary-age children don’t know enough about potential occupations or their own skills and interests to even have aspirations. Yes, they need to be aware that they eventually will need a profession. However, some professions that will engage today’s children do not exist yet. Others that currently exist will be long extinct.
When I worked at a publishing company, on the eve of the computer age, all manuscripts were sent to two women who manually entered every manuscript into a large machine that printed the manuscripts in columns. The columns of print were then sent to another person who cut them up and pasted them onto boards. Few of us today even remember that as recently as 10 years ago, there were professionals called “typesetters” and “paste-up artists.” Conversely, 10 years ago no one would have grasped the concept of a profession called “website designer.”
Asking young children what they want to be when they grow up perpetuates a misconception that even most adults hold. Too often, we confuse what we do with who we are. As adults, we are defined by our roles: we’re somebody’s mother, somebody’s teacher, somebody’s counselor or somebody’s boss. Invariably, those roles revolve around our occupation and tend to disregard the other facets of our lives.
Career planning should begin not by asking children what they want to be, but how they want to live. Some of Tyler’s friends had the right idea. They stated that their goals were “to have a good life,” “to have a healthy life,” or “to love what I do.” From there, they can explore what is important to them, what would make them happy and what they would need to do in order to lead a good life.
Some of Tyler’s other friends set goals “to win the Nobel Peace Prize,” “to start a Fortune 500 company,” or “to save an endangered species.” One adventurous classmate said he wanted “to have a formal dinner on top of Mt. Everest.” Undoubtedly, any of those accomplishments would bring them happiness and fulfillment and may have little to do with their chosen occupation. I hope Tyler pursues and accomplishes his life goals. I hope he leads a happy life full of contentment. I hope he enjoys what he does, even if he never gets paid to play basketball or the electric guitar.
In the meantime, he is finding contentment just playing his guitar for fun…and loudly. Fortunately, he shares my taste in music. He favors The Rolling Stones and Pink Floyd over Linkin Park and Three Doors Down. He enjoys asking me to name a famous guitarist so he can guess the kind of guitar he played or dissecting lyrics by The Who. Last year, he was assigned to write a paper on the most influential person in his life. Given our shared interest in rock and roll and our long conversations during our frequent drives to the guitar store, I should not have been surprised when he wrote about…Les Paul, a pioneer of the electric guitar.
I don’t mind that he didn’t write a paper about me. I know that parents are the most important influence on their children’s lives, but we all need to revere someone bigger than life. We look to our parents as mentors and guides, but we also need someone we idolize.
As a writer, I have always had a high regard for Ernest Hemingway, although I don’t necessarily emulate his lifestyle. I like his simple writing style and his ability to paint vivid images or to capture complex ideas with a minimum of words. I’ve always been fascinated by the fact that he first checked into the Mayo Clinic in 1960, the year after my family moved to Rochester, Minnesota. In fact, my father worked at my uncles’ restaurant, Wong’s Café, which is near the Mayo Clinic and is still operated by my cousins. I’m enthralled by the idea that I was just a few blocks away from him. I often wonder what would have happened if I had been older and had had a chance to meet him. How would that brush with greatness have affected me?
I suspect that Hemingway may have told me that he never set out to be famous or important. He never intended to be one of the most influential writers of the 20th century. In fact, he stumbled upon his first job as a journalist quite by accident when he was just 18 years old. Hemingway was certainly larger than life, but he probably would say he was simply living his life and following his passions.
This seems to be true for most people who attain greatness. The pursuit of fame is an empty endeavor. The pursuit of passion leads to fulfillment, and if it was meant to be, fame and fortune. Many influential and pioneering theorists and inventors certainly seemed to believe in this principle. Most of them probably could not imagine the impact that their ideas would eventually have on future generations. After all, Les Paul didn’t try to become famous as a pioneer of electric guitars; he just wanted to sound good when he played for his wife.
For the past several years, I have had the privilege of serving as a judge for the USA Today All-USA High School Academic Team. Each year, all of the 80 finalists I judge are outstanding, making the judging extremely difficult. However, I have noticed one thread common to all the finalists: they all have one interest that absorbs them, an interest that sometimes has little relation to their academic studies. Whether it involves music, art, science, drama, math or community service, the students have jumped in head-first because they enjoyed it or because it had some meaning to their life, and any academic or career benefits were a bonus they discovered afterward.
From these astonishing students, I learned an important truth about career planning. If we help students do what they love, then everything else will follow. Sometimes, the best way to find something is to stop looking for it. Similarly, the best way to help students plan for the future is not to help them find successful careers, but to help them find meaningful and fulfilling lives. As parents and as educators, we shouldn’t just help our students plan for a career, we should help them pursue a passion. We should help them understand that what they do does not define who they are. We should stop asking them what they want to be when they grow up and start asking them how they want to live.
