Many of us are guilty of categorizing and placing importance on various fields that we fail to see their beauty and relevance to the society. The resultant of this is that we persistently lose the next Celine Dion who makes millions of babies leap for joy while in the wombs of their mothers. Often at times, parents and guidance alike are guilty of inculcating ideas of what they fill we should be which I personally think is wrong.
Recently, I still heard the default advice for the smart students in junior secondary school is to go to science class. Just imagine if Picasso ended up as a scientist and Einstein as an artist. They probably wouldn’t be celebrated as much as they are even after their deaths. Not too long ago during my one-year mandatory service to the country, I was opportune to volunteer for a Leadership program targeted at teens. I am really tempted to delve into the nitty gritty of the program but I’ll stay focused here. Anyways, I was a Lead “facilitator” in the learning and development unit, this meant that I, alongside the myriad of volunteer facilitators could not think for the teenagers, we could only guide them, we allowed them to make mistakes as there is always something to learn from making a mistake. Trust me, this wasn’t an easy task for a great many. Some facilitators were not used to this that they started telling the kids what to do and how to go about what to do. But of course they had me to contend with and in no time the status quo was restored.
From that exercise alone, I was fascinated about how creative these young minds could be when left to captain their ship. We had a competition where we had to raise some money by creating and selling what we produce. You would not believe me when I tell you some kids made an electric bulb lantern with coconuts, this idea came from them without any assistance. Needless to say, that team won. I really hope my little foray into my volunteer experience got you to be on the same frequency with me. I don’t believe there is a particular rule of thumb that prepares the next generation to enter the workplace, as it involves a plethora of questions and considerations which I would share a bit of. However, I do strongly feel deciding for them is not an option that should be considered.
The top ranking question for me is: What problem(s) do you want to solve?
Don’t ask kids what they want to be when they grow up rather ask them a more stimulating and open-ended question like what problems they want to solve. This changes the conversation from who do I want to work for, to what do I need to learn to be able to do that. I personally like this because it changes the perspective. Like Mark Twain said “the public is the only critic whose opinion is worth anything at all”, so feel free to comment your opinions/ thoughts.

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