My loving and well-meaning parents were way off when it came to career direction.
Probably because the local doctor had everyone’s respect and an expensive car with MD plates that allowed him to park in restricted areas, I was raised to be a physician.
I was given a chemistry set, junior doctor kit, and constant brainwashing about the benefits that would come my way with the coveted M.D. title. I entered college as a pre-med student, and piled on advanced biology, chemistry and physics courses. I joined a pre-med group that visited hospitals and even got to watch some surgeries.
But two years into the process, I wasn’t liking a lot about my career path. Not the unbending rigidity of the sciences, the constant academic pressures and certainly not Mrs. Kramer’s gall bladder surgery that I witnessed much too close-up.
One of the courses I was taking at the time (to lighten my load) was American Theater. It was everything pre-med was not. Creative, free-flowing, fun! I joined the Drama Club, added humanities courses and changed my focus completely. Eventually I graduated with an English major and have enjoyed a successful career as a media writer/producer since.
From the perspective of adulthood, I now recognize that clues to my career satisfaction had been there from a very early age. I had enjoyed my camera much more than the chemistry set, and a good book intrigued me in a way the junior doctor kit never did. But my overcrowded and understaffed urban schools had few resources for career education, so adult guidance came only from the well-intentioned parents who had planned my future to match their dreams rather than my reality.
I developed The Career Game to give students, educators and parents a simple, enjoyable way to investigate how a student’s individuality fits into the world of work. Educators have the training to do their part but most parents do not, so some might appreciate a few ideas for helping their kids with this important process. Many of these practices can begin as early as elementary school, while others can be added age-appropriately as students grow in comprehension and experience. You can get the list HERE.
P.S. Some of these suggestions assume the student has online access to our sites via the PIN numbers that were assigned to your order. If that is not your situation, you can omit all references to The Career Game, and still offer parents some good ideas.
