Among the most powerful forces limiting our choices in career, it is sad to say, is our education - the way it influenced us, the level of education we have, and the level we do not have.
First, let's look at a few considerations on how education influenced us from kindergarten through high school. There seems to be the general message for all students that, to be anything at all, it is necessary for each to go on to college. This message swells to a crescendo in the third and fourth year of high school when career planning courses intensify, vocational preference tests are administered, "college days" are held, aptitude tests are administered, and students' mail boxes are filled with mailings from colleges around the country.
All of this implies that without college, the student will have difficulty getting and holding a job and making good money. As a result, many students go to college who would be better advised to get some work experience immediately.
Students who, for one reason or another, cannot go directly on to college are made to feel ignored, diminished and of less value, and are more likely to fail. Few in the system seem to know how to teach a high school student to make a living without a bachelor's degree.
College students will be encouraged to take some vocational preference tests to determine what course of studies might be most appropriate. Unfortunately, since the preference tests com pare students' input with those of people in given occupational fields, entering one of the indicated fields will bring about a strong likelihood that the choice will be unsatisfying.
The reason: About 90 percent of the workforce in any field are themselves not satisfied with their careers. At the very least, the use of such tests creates a dependency on their results and does not foment individual, independent decision making.
Oftentimes, there is the chance remark by a professor which persuades the impressionable student to pursue a certain course of study. An advisor may note the student is good at physics and suggest physics and engineering go well together. The student may jump at engineering simply because there are no other possibilities in mind.
That brings us to the level and kind of education we have and what it does to us. If, through questionable decision-making processes, you become a doctor, lawyer, dentist, educator, engineer, physician, etc., then it can become embarrassing to entertain the thought that perhaps you would rather do something else. Our degrees, our years in school, the grades we earned, all become part of that battery of credentials which form our ego foundation: As we were formed in school, so are we now, and so must we remain forevermore.
The higher the educational degree, the more entrapped the person who has earned it becomes. The person with a degree has an ego foundation so powerful that it might be perceived as more painful to leave the now undesirable field than to live with it. Employers will not give credit for anything beyond the scope of the degree. (What else could a lawyer or a minister do?) Often, people with degrees in, say, history, English, or the humanities, feel that their schooling was impractical. Perhaps it wasn't even worth the effort. What they have, they feel, is not "marketable."
There looms in the minds of all of us the question whether at any given moment we have either enough education or the right kind of education to promote our own causes.
A person without a college degree generally feels that he or she can have no real future beyond humdrum tasks which are relatively low paying. There is an internal, pervasive question: "Why try? They (employers) won't want me anyhow."
People with a master's degree, and particularly with a doctorate, can feel almost encased in concrete in their field of concentration. In some unspoken way they, too, become victims of the "just-a" syndrome. We've heard it from everyone: I'm just a housewife, what else can I do? I'm just a lawyer... I'm just a broadcaster... I'm just a teacher... I'm just an engineer... I'm just a school administrator... and on and on and on.
The automatic reaction, inculcated in school, when a person feels driven out of a field either by personal dissatisfaction or by external circumstances, is to go back to school "to learn another skill." Therefore many people in their 30s, 40s and 50s, not knowing what else to do, will immediately go to school, pick a course of study, and then find that the standard job-hunt methodology works against them: They are too old to be considered for a trainee position (and frequently the pay would not support them) and they are too inexperienced to be considered for any other position. It's a classic Catch-22.
The only way out of this, of course, is for all of us to realize that we are a great deal more than the sum of our academic years and credentials. In some cases we may be something entirely different than our credentials might suggest. We are in fact, a composite of internal talents and abilities which are both inborn and developed over the years.
The self-esteem and self confidence required to act on that realization can only be developed when we openly perceive the limitations placed upon us and achieve the freedom to make our own personal decisions relating to life and career.
