If you’re anything like me, the title of
this blog post induced thoughts of career aspirations and the age old question
of what do I want to be? However, you might have read this another way. You
might have read: Life is calling. Hopefully, you will find that this post
addresses both interpretations.
Having been to Los Angeles in the past with
my family and spent a gap year travelling, I applied for this program with the
characteristically pragmatic objective of narrowing down my future career
options. Now, following a brief stint in Texas with a friend from Sydney and
New Year’s Eve with fellow Industry Placement Program (IPP) students in San Francisco, it was time to start
this journey. The journey towards my life’s calling. A little melodramatic, I know,
but I am in Hollywood after all.
Things started innocuously enough. We, the
LA IPP students, met for dinner at a local pizza place and bonded over our
travel experiences so far in the states. It was the following day when things
got interesting. After a campus tour of UCLA, which is remarkable by the way,
we had our orientation dinner. This was of a much more formal nature with our
new teachers and many of our soon to be employers. During the dinner we were
asked to stand up and briefly introduce ourselves. The tone of these
introductions was set when the first speaker stated what had led him to apply
for the program.
To my surprise, as we moved from table to table, it became
apparent that just about everyone had applied for the same reason: to figure out
what they wanted to do. This is not to say that other aspects of the program
were overlooked – studying at UCLA, cross-country road trips, and experiencing
American culture – but it was clear what was front and centre (not center!) in
everyone’s mind.
It was this realisation that caused me to
wonder, is our unanimous concern for finding that perfect career simply a
by-product of our demography. I think it is fair to say that our generation,
Gen Y or Millennials as we have come to be known, feel that we are entitled to
a career that we love. I apologise for generalising a bit here, but it seems to
me that millennials yearn for a career that not only causes us to get out of
bed in the morning, but do so bright-eyed and bushy tailed.
This is in stark contrast to as little as
two generations ago, when concerns revolved largely around job stability,
leading people to choose their careers early and stick to them.
Perhaps we millennials are naïve to expect
to work in jobs that we love or even like for that matter. However, I’m not
quite convinced that this is the case. The very fact that a bunch of teenagers
and twenty-somethings are spending the next two months working in Los Angeles goes
to show the extent of the opportunities available.
This brings me back to my musings on the
title of this blog post. With so many opportunities out there, it seems
ridiculous to think that there’s just one right direction to head in. So maybe
our unswerving focus on working out exactly what we want to do is unreasonable.
Maybe there is some middle ground to be gained between how older generations
viewed their career choices and how we have come to view them. If there is, I
can’t help but think that the best way to find it is by embracing life as it
comes. By all means, head in a particular direction, but do so with a
willingness to jump at opportunities as they arise.
With that said, I hope that over the next
couple of months myself and my peers are able to stop agonising over finding
our life’s calling, recognising that we’re only in LA a short while and life is
calling.
Jackson Dibble
Current student at the University of Sydney Business School and participant in the Industry Placement Program in Los Angeles
Current student at the University of Sydney Business School and participant in the Industry Placement Program in Los Angeles
