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If you asked me 7 years ago, entering varsity what profession I would be in to date, I would have probably said a psychologist. In high school I had no idea what I wanted to be when I “grew up”, infact I’m not even sure I knew what kind of career paths were available at the time. Sure I knew the usual ones like being a doctor, lawyer, engineer or a teacher (and they did not appeal to me) but careers such as marketing, public relations, programmer, or business analysis I knew nothing about. To be honest the decision to study psychology, I suspect I made unconsciously after watching the movie Analyse This. But even after 9 years later, since I finished matric and my university studies, I still find a lot of students who finish high school, and enrol in university without even a slightest clue of who they are, what they are passionate about studying and which careers they want to build. I asked myself, why is this? And why is it so common amongst students who come from townships or rural areas.
Is it the schools perhaps? Are there no career programmes such as career expos to create awareness of different kinds of careers paths out there? Is it the individual? I mean they have smart phones now; surely they can google what career paths they could pursue, instead of Facebooking or Tweeting this whole time. Or is it the department of education rather, aren’t they responsible for ensuring that schools have qualified psychologist who can administer suitable assessments. Assessments such as personality and career assessment to give students an idea of what they could possibly study. If anything else at least making sure schools have working computer labs, for students to learn how to open word, type, browse the internet and save a document (I know I wished mine had one, when I got to university) but that’s another topic on its own.
Luckily I am not one to completely blame everything on the “system”, because I believe the individual also plays a personal role in their own development. With that being said though, it would have been great if my school had some sort of career guidance programme that would expose us to different career paths one could possibly venture in, and their requirements. I wish the department of education, placed more importance on ensuring grade 11/12 did personality and career assessment, which would take into consideration the subjects the student is good in to better articulate their unique interests, values and skills to determine how well they may match with a certain career. A personality test to assess the personality in relation to the possible fields/professions one can study, and eventually make a career of. It took me a three year psychology degree, a year of occasional commerce in organisational psychology and a business analysis diploma to finally figure out what I want to do as a career for possibly another 9 years of my life.
So what now? It is fundamentally all our responsibility to do something about this. Waiting on schools or government to make this top priority, simply robs us of the impact we could make in student’s lives. I urge students, who are already in university or junior/mid even senior levelled employees to make time, liaison with school teachers and principals to set time to visit local schools. To formally or informally present to students about what they currently do, how/why they made their career choices, and what type of careers are out there. This is what Table of Honor (an organisation we started with some friends of mine) seeks to achieve as one of its objectives, I will speak more about it on my next article. This will not only offer students’ knowledge on possible career paths, but will offer students an opportunity to talk to people who are in working in different industries and it will be more real to them. It’s fundamentally really all about installing confidence in each student and giving each student a sense of “if he/she could do it, why can’t I” mentality. This is crucially important for students who come from townships or rural areas.
