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.