Do you know what you want to be when you grow up? I don’t. Like most people, I was asked that question quite a few times when I was a kid. It was always a source of some stress for me, because it’s a loaded question. It’s asking what are you interested in, how much education are you going to pursue, what do you think you’d be good at, how are you going to support yourself, what are you going to do with the rest of your life. That’s an awful lot to ask of a kid!
The answer has always been pretty vague for me. I’ve always had hazy ideas about working with animals, or travelling, or maybe something to do with reading. But after all these years, I still really haven’t been able to narrow it down beyond that. I’ve spent a big chunk of my life in a career that I stumbled into. When I started college I was an accounting major, but one thing became clear that first semester: I did not want to major in accounting. The easiest class on my schedule was a computer class, so that’s what I switched to. Almost 30 years later, I’m still in the field. It’s gotten a little stale, though. I’ve got quite a few years left before retirement, so I’m thinking: career change.
Which brings me back to wondering what I’m going to do when I “grow up”. Thankfully that question doesn’t bring the same anxiety now that it did when I was a teenager. Back then it gave the impression that when you’re 16 or 17 years old, you need to set a course that you will follow for the rest of your life. That’s a lot of pressure if you don’t have a crystal ball. I mean, just because you love medieval literature now doesn’t mean you want to be immersed in it for 40 hours a week, 50 weeks a year, for the next 40 or 50 years. The good news is: you don’t have to be. It’s a long working life for most of us, and there are all sorts of changes that we’ll go through during that time. I’ve stayed in the same career for almost 30 years, but there have been lots of variations during that time. I work in the field of computers, where nothing stays the same for very long. I started working on something called mini-computers, and then switched to servers, and finally to desktop computers. My first job was using a language called COBOL, and then I switched to SQL language, then to Visual Basic, and finally to C#. So even though I haven’t actually changed careers, my career has been filled with change.
I don’t have a bachelor’s degree, and I’m thinking that maybe I need one. Having a degree opens doors. I’ve got an associate’s degree, which helped me launch a successful career. But the fact that I don’t have a bachelor’s degree has caused some doors to slam in my face. There have been jobs that I applied for, only to be turned away by the HR department because I don’t have the appropriate degree. I’m very good at what I do, and some of those jobs were right up my alley. I can’t speak for anyone else, but I’ve learned a lot more from on-the-job training and professional development classes than I learned in college. I don’t believe that having the bachelor’s degree would have made me any more qualified for those jobs. And yet those doors keep getting slammed. When an HR department receives dozens of resumes for any given position, they don’t look any further than the Education section of mine.
Which is why I’ve gone back to school. Yup, seriously. I know it’s crazy to go back to college at 50 years old. Luckily there are colleges now that cater to people like me: responsible adults who need to hold down a job and take care of a family while going to school. I found one that accepted all of the credits that I earned for my associate’s degree, and even the few night classes that I took after that. So I’m on the fast track to earning another degree.
It’s a culture shock, being back in college. The textbook is pretty dry, and the amount of reading is overwhelming. I’m slogging through, and it feels like the cobwebs are slowly clearing out of my brain. You know when you start a new exercise program and you feel muscles being worked that you’d forgotten you had? It’s like that, but in your brain. I hadn’t been aware of those cobwebs, but they were there. The best part is that each class is only nine weeks long. I can make it through nine weeks.
I can’t say that I now know what I want to be when I grow up, but I’m not worried about it. Once I get that degree, doors will open. I probably won’t figure out where I’m going until I get there. But you know what they say: it’s the journey, not the destination.
First Photo (of me!): Koch, Bruce (I think?). Circa 1970.
All other photos: Wix.com