I’m sure many of us at one time or another has wished we’d chosen a different career. You’re having a bad day or a bad week at your job, bills are piling up and you wish you made more money, or perhaps you’re working hard and getting no recognition for your efforts, so you start to daydream about what could have been if you had pursued the other career you had entertained thoughts of all those years ago. In this day and age when nothing is our fault and there’s always someone you can take to court to solve your problems, don’t we all have someone we wish we could sue for giving us bad advice?
Think about it. Who helps you pursue that first job or pick your first college major? A high school guidance counselor. High school guidance counselors have the easiest job in the world, yet not once have I ever heard of a high school guidance counselor telling a kid to pursue a career as a high school guidance counselor! They get summers off and they sit around all day browsing college catalogs and telling kids to pursue their dreams. Pursue your dreams?!!? What the hell kind of advice is that? Sometimes kids are stupid and their dreams suck. When you choose your first job or college major you’re a kid. Not even old enough to purchase a single beer and yet you’re considered old enough to choose your path in life for the next 50 years?
I think I may start a new career as a high school guidance counselor. Here will be my advice to my future students:
Be a high school guidance counselor. Whatever you do, don’t listen to the dolts still running around saying “go into computers.” The job of Bill Gates is already taken and there won’t be another opening at that position, possibly ever. Computers are old news. Everyone can operate one now. I don’t think the I.T. guys who have to crawl under desks on their hands and knees to plug in someone’s ethernet cable are too happy with their career choice, and judging from their wardrobe I don’t think they’re making millions as a technology wizard. Just because you can score 10 extra lives and 8 power up packs on Halo 2 does not mean that a company will hire you to design video games. Oh, and this just in: the position of Tony Hawk has already been filled. Tony has made billions off of being a great skateboarder, but you’re not going to. No one else is going to either. You can play sports, but you’re probably not going to make a living as a professional athlete unless you’re some sort of glandular freak who won the genetic lottery. If you’re in the 8th grade and a major college hasn’t already started recruiting you to play sports for them, then you should probably pursue your plan B, which if you’re smart, is to be a high school guidance counselor.
High school guidance counsellors are all retarded in my experience. When I was trying to sort out my future career, I said I wanted to go to university to study journalism. I was told that there was only one course and I wouldn’t get on it. This despite the fact that I was a straight A student. Needless to say I did make the course. And now I wish I wasn’t a journalist. So you’re right Phil – become a guidance counsellor, give crap advice and get 15 weeks holiday a year!
maybe thats what I should do, when Im done my masters. I really dont want to be a teacher in a classroom, so maybe i’ll do that instead. good idea.
You know what ……you should just do what ever you think it is at that time that you want to do.If you are in high school and you think being a mechanic is what you want to do ..then you know what…screw what anyone else says and just go for it…or if you want to try to be the next Bill Gates because that is your interest and what makes you happy then go for it too….Too many times people are told or influenced to not do something that they feel is their interest in search of something others think is more suited for them or has a better income potential…..I say go for it..follow your dreams …so what if you are 16 and you don’t really know yet…do what you think you want to do…what is the big deal ..so you get in and find out that no maybe it isn’t what you thought..at least you aren’t then one day 50 years old and wishing you had tried what you truly wanted to.I speak from first hand….I wanted despirately to be either a paramedic or go into veterinary med.My adoptive parents..convinced me that I would be no good at either .so you know I never even tried..I am now in my 40’s having stayed home doing home daycare for 15 years longing for fast paced exciting constantly changing career I have now missed the boat. I wish I had not cared so much about what others thought would be best for me and had just gone for it. Maybe I would have sucked..maybe it wouldn’t have been the right things for me. I would have at least known and would have been young enough to try something else too.( am I bitter? no shit..I sure am…I have two sons and they are both teenagers now and they have asked me what do I think they should be??? I say what do you think you would really like to do..and that is what you should try. I will support them 100 percent in this. IF they try something and it doesn’t work out big deal..you only have one life and when you are young you have so many more oppoturnities to keep trying….I think that is what a good parent does.
Nowadays, with the gut of information available to anyone who knows how to turn on a computer (and that certainly includes al high school students), high school guidance counselors are an anachronism and a drain on the financial resources of the school district. Students don’t need them to find scholarships, don’t need them to find the best college for their chosen field of study, don’t need them to lend encouragement or squelch their dreams. Guidance counselors would be better used to patrol the halls of their schools to ferret out the gunmen and bomb throwers. Might even get rid aof a few guidance counselors that way……
Jock- You don’t want to be a journalist? Want to trade?Princess- I think you’d be a perfect guidance counselor. If you don’t want to teach in a classroom, why get the degreee?Quinn- I’m 100% in agreement withyou. This post is actually the opposite of what I believe about going for your dreams. I wrote it about 6 weeks ago after a bad week at work. I didn’t post it then because I thought it sounded too mean spirited.Bobciz- I thought the same thing. With the internet who needs a guidance counselor to help them pick a career or college.
When I asked my guidance counselor about various college entrance exams, she said, “You have beautiful teeth.” She’s right, and I think that helped, b/c I got into college. Apparently, competence isn’t a requirement for being a guidance counselor.
wanderinggirl- I saw your picture on your blog. You do have beautiful teeth.
Slight over-exaggeration on my behalf – being a journalist is OK, but the pay sucks and I have to work half my weekends, with no time off in lieu. The actual journalism is good fun though.
I’m still working on becoming qualified to do the job that I would like to do. As long as the crappy job I may or may not end up with pays more than an average student loan, I’m happy. That’s the thought right now, anyway. It’ll all change when I become more spoiled. That’s how these things work, I guess.
Find something you love. Make sure you get paid well for it.-N
Oh Phil, I’ll bet you say that to all the girls. Well, at least the ones with teeth.
yeah – um – that is why my school has 3 counselors who do everything BUT provide guidance or counseling… those kids who need counseling have to be refered to the behavioral health mentor and if their parents wont sign off of the BHM paper work, the kid is SOL
Because its the fastest way to travel the world, and be able to have a job anywhere I go.
Yeah, i agree with Jock, i reckon they’re useless. I don’t know anyone who has actually gone on to do what the HSGC has remotely suggested.
I hated my high school guidance counselor. Then again, I usually hated any athority figure associated with school. I always get the “you wanna do what”??! but I look at it as I would rather do what I want then be stuck in misery for half of my time. PS – my high school counselor said I should be an elementary school teacher – rubbish!
My High School Guidance Counsellor got it totally wrong … said I was going to be a teacher … nope, just a computer nerd !!Have a great week.Take care, Meow