Know Yourself
The Importance of Self-Awareness
There is an underlying myth in contemporary Canadian society that the only way to achieve financial and social success is with at least one university degree. Whether you’re a teen about to graduate from high school or a young adult looking to improve your current situation, you undoubtedly have heard endless talk about the importance of going on to university. Studies show that the vast majority of Canadian parents want their children (that’s you) to get a degree and to get one of the middle-class careers that you supposedly deserve. When researchers ask high school students what they plan and want to do, the majority say the same thing — go to university. For some of you, this is an ideal choice; for others, it will be a costly and demoralizing mistake — you may hate it, and you may well not succeed.
If we have learned nothing else from our years of experience with our students and with our children, it’s this: the best possible decisions in planning for their futures are made by people who take the time to carefully and honestly know themselves. Let’s start with the most basic question: how do you know if you are one of the people who would enjoy and benefit from a university education? To give an honest and useful answer, you have to know yourself. You must have a frank conversation with yourself about what you like and dislike, your strengths and weaknesses, your values, and your aspirations. This is not easy, especially for seventeen-year-olds. It’s sad but unfortunately true that Canadian society has avoided asking you these questions. Many of you have been told, repeatedly, that you can be anything you want to be — a dangerously misleading piece of advice which, in most cases, is simply not true.
In this chapter, we are going to ask you why, in light in all of the other excellent direct-from-high-school options worth considering, you think that you want to go to university. Getting into a Canadian university is surprisingly simple; getting out with a degree, on the other hand, can be quite difficult. So we’ll lead you through a process of self-evaluation designed to show you whether you are ready to go to university and, equally important, whether you are likely to succeed. We want to make sure that you understand the issues, challenges, and possibilities — and that you make good decisions based on a full awareness of your skills, abilities, and motivation. You are likely to find this a bit unnerving, and you might not like what we have to say. Please remember that we have no vested interest in your final decision. But we strongly believe that making informed decisions about your post–high school career will stand you in good stead for the rest of your life.
Wishing Doesn’t Make It So
Thousands of Canadian high school graduates go to university intending to be medical doctors. They pick their high school courses accordingly and study hard to get high grades. Filled with optimism and dreams of a rewarding medical career and an impressive income, they submit their applications for university, planning to get a degree and then move on to medical school. Of these hopefuls, some drop out of university, while quite a few do not get grades high enough to make applying to medical school worthwhile. One of us served for several years on the admissions panel for a Canadian medical school. The students who made the shortlist (about a quarter to a third of those who applied) were amazing — brilliant marks, volunteer activities that would have overwhelmed Albert Schweitzer, a strong character, and a killer work ethic. Only one in four of the short-listed candidates was accepted; for the rest, the dream of being a doctor turned to disappointment.
Do You Really Want to Go to University?
First question, and we ask it again: why are you considering university? Have your parents talked about it for years, and have always assumed that you’d go? Did they make annual contributions to a Registered Education Savings Plan and use this as a regular occasion to remind you of your already-paid-for destiny? Do your teachers and guidance counsellors (if you meet with them) tell you that you are university material? Are your friends all going? Or is it just the background noise of the modern world — from TV shows and movies, from politicians’ speeches, newspaper stories, and hallway conversations? Did the university recruiters descend on your high school with tales of an exciting social life, enthusiastic teachers, great programs, excellent career opportunities, and, of course, the highly deceptive statistic that university graduates make $1 million in a career more than college graduates and $1.3 million more than high school graduates?
Regardless of where the pressure comes from — and it comes from all these places and more — the reality is that the importance of going to university is probably hardwired in your brain. At no time in our history have so many Canadian young adults gone to university (over a million undergraduates now, representing roughly a third of all high school graduates), so the decision you are making is a very common one. In Ontario, the largest province, about 130,000 students applied to enter first year of one (or more than one) of the provincial universities in 2012.[1]
Back to the main question: do you really want to go to university? University studies are difficult. If you do attend university, you will be committing yourself to an additional four years of schooling — and that is the minimum, since many students take more time than that. Four or more extra years of being the classroom for eight months of the year with four-month breaks to try to raise enough money to keep going. It is a major commitment of time, money, and effort. Have you really given careful thought to whether or not you are ready for this substantial challenge?
There are some very good reasons for going to university. Note that we do not list among them such socially important things as “because my friends are going,” “because I don’t know what to do with my life and I need time to think about it,” “because I want to make lots of money,” or “because my parents want me to go.” These actually factor prominently into students’ decisions, but have to be considered separately. Your parents may well be right, and you should give careful thought to their ideas and rationale. There will be more about this later.
University is an expensive place to get your head together and, while it works for some young people, most find it difficult to resolve their career and life ambitions while writing essays and cramming for examinations. Your friends, on the other hand, could easily lead you astray. Not many high school friendships — romantic or otherwise — survive the undergraduate years. To put it more gently, they are likely to be replaced by new friendships and partnerships. For now, here are our top four reasons why you should consider going to university, in no particular order of importance:
• Because you are curious about the world and you love learning. This is the traditional reason, the one university professors like to think motivates most of their students. Those who approach university from this perspective and who have the requisite skills make the best university students and typically do well after their degree is finished.
• Because you are academically well prepared and talented, and you wish to test yourself, intellectually and skill-wise, at a higher level. There is nothing wrong with being competitive and wanting to find out just how good you can be. The greatest benefits from a university education typically go to the best students; if you think you are one of these, then heading to campus can be a fine idea.
• Because you are truly interested in making the world a better place. In the 1960s and 1970s, many students who attended university gave up decent job opportunities because they were idealistic and hopeful about creating an improved world. University is a great place to find similar thinkers and to confront the ideas and realities that have shaped the human condition over time.
• Because you want to pursue a very specific professional career — engineering, medicine, and the like — and you need a university degree to do so. We have a strong caveat here: a large number of students change their plans mid-degree, based on weaker-than-expected performance or the discovery of new academic and career possibilities. But, if you have a firm sense that you want to try a specific occupational path, university may well be the only way to go.
This list is not long — and it may well be incomplete — but it is a good place to start your self-evaluation. Do you fit into one of these categories? If not, ask yourself the same question we started with: why do you want to go to university? If you do not have a clear and decisive answer to this question, you really would be well advised to give careful thought to alternatives. The happy news, as you will see later, is that there are plenty of good ones. Remember that the number one predictor of young people’s likelihood of going to university is whether their parents have university degrees. The second predictor is family income. There is not a lot of “you” in either of these criteria — yet you are the one who is going to have to attend classes, study hard, and complete all of the assignments.
Human Curiosity
As you make your plans for going forward, one question hangs over everything else: Are you curious? This seems like an odd question. University, like high school, is a technical and academic challenge. It is supposed to be about study habits, proofreading essays, concentrating on examinations, meeting deadlines, and avoiding long hours at the student pub. And yes, it’s about all of those things, and more, but it’s much more fundamental — namely, it’s about human curiosity.
Well yes, you say, of course I’m curious. Isn’t everyone? What we mean by this question, though, is not whether you are curious about Toronto’s chances of winning the Stanley Cup in your lifetime (not good) or whether the next version of Starcraft Warrior will be as challenging as the last one (who cares, really), but whether you are curious about intellectual questions — the things of the mind. Do you care about the science and politics of climate change? Feminist interpretations of the writings of Margaret Atwood? The history of Middle Eastern conflicts? The potential of quantum computing? Best practices in Aboriginal self-government? Universities have courses and experts in all of these areas and many others. Look at the course calendar. There are hundreds of faculty members, each with his or her area of interest and expertise. Check them out. This one is an expert on particle physics, that one on Etruscan tomb paintings, the other one on the diseases of fresh-water fish. Do any of them make your intellectual heart beat faster? Do you say “boooooring?” Remember, you will be studying this stuff. Do you really want to? Be honest.
You should be excited about the prospect of venturing into this environment. You should be keen to learn more about subjects you have sampled in high school and intrigued with areas of study that you have never attempted. University is a place tailor-made for intellectual discovery, for chasing down pathways of deep personal interest and for finding academic fields, thinkers, methods, and concepts that you have never even considered.
Many university students — more than in the past, we think, though it’s impossible to prove — are not very curious. Influenced by the over-selling of a university education, they march directly from high school to university, having no clear idea why are they are doing so. In this book, we call these students — those who aren’t much interested in reading, aren’t intellectually curious, and don’t engage with what the university has to offer — the swarm. They don’t find the fact that synchrotron science is unlocking the mysteries of the building blocks of nature very interesting. They are not really keen to learn about the economic foundations of the American Civil War or the religious roots of contemporary terrorism. Very few of them find the nuances of advanced calculus riveting. University professors are deeply — sometimes bizarrely — fascinated by the ins and outs of scholarship, but all too often find themselves staring at students, members of the dreaded swarm, who make no effort to mask their indifference to book learning and to the specifics of a particular course.
Identifying Your Interests
Do you know what interests you? This is more than a scholarly question. We live in an age of mass information — with more informed analysis, factual information, inaccurate data, and partisan commentary available than at any previous time in human history. It dismays us to say so, but a great many students show no interest in any of this information. As a group, university-aged students rarely read newspapers. They dropped reading the paper edition long ago (so did we); but few of them even read the digital editions available on their computers, cellphones, or tablets. Book sales among young people have dropped precipitously — where would youth publishers be without the Twilight series?
There is a great debate about what has happened to your generation. Don Tapscott, a Canadian digital guru, argues in Grown Up Digital: How the Net Generation Is Changing Your World that the Internet age has made young people smarter, more critical, and better with information. You would like him. On the other hand there is Mark Bauerlein, whose wonderfully named book says it all: The Dumbest Generation: How the Digital Age Stupefies Young Americans and Jeopardizes Our Future (Or, Don’t Trust Anyone Under 30). He’s not your pal. We want Tapscott to be right — and there are sure signs of growing youth confidence. Still, it’s not a matter of your intelligence — it’s about your approach to learning. You don’t need to be Einstein, but you do need to be curious.
The problem is that too large a percentage of the students in most programs and at most universities are not much interested in the world and, therefore, not very inspired by their studies. If you don’t follow politics on a regular basis, it’s hard to find political science exciting. If you are not genuinely interested in the ordering of the natural world, then biology and geography will simply be abstractions — as bewildering as scientifically illiterate young people find theoretical physics. Ultimately, if you do not enjoy intellectual discovery and enlightenment, then university will be a tedious and completely unsatisfying place.
Our Curiosity Test
All young people thinking of going to university should give themselves this simple five-point test. It’s easy — the easiest of your post-secondary career, with no studying, no pain, and no wrong answers. It is also one of the most important that you will ever take — and we won’t be looking over your shoulder. Be honest with yourself (and with your parents who, after all, you are probably counting on to help fund your university studies).
The point of this test is this: if you don’t find learning about the physical world, the past and present of humanity, politics, the environment, and the arts interesting when you are in high school, why do you think you would find them interesting in university, which is all about these sorts of things?
Curiosity Test
1. Do I like to read? More precisely, have I read many works of serious fiction other than what some teacher has forced me to read as a course requirement in high school? Everyone who graduates from high school can read and write, more or less, but many have not read anything serious beyond course requirements. By “serious,” we mean nothing with zombies in it or crazy nonsense about the Catholic Church (we’re looking at you, Dan Brown), and at least something about the human condition past Oprah’s self-help books.
2. Do I read high quality non-fiction? Not a biography of the boys of One Direction, but at least Malcolm Gladwell if not Andrew Nikiforuk or Naomi Klein or Jeff Rubin or Linda McQuaig. Do I read the newspaper or major magazines (Maclean’s, Harpers, The Walrus) on a regular basis? It is okay to include the online versions of these publications or even exclusively online news sources, like the Huffington Post.
3. Do I watch foreign films, art films, CBC documentaries, or thoughtful PBS programs or series? If I watch horror films or films starring Adam Sandler, that doesn’t make me a bad person (well, perhaps Sandler is going a bit too far). No one can deal with important and serious stuff all the time. But if I watch reality TV regularly and have never watched a PBS program or a film in a language other than English, then my answer to this question will be “no.”
4. Am I troubled or excited about world affairs? Tensions in the Middle East, American presidential elections, developments in stem cell technologies, or the economic rise of China. When a question arises about some aspect of these issues, do I seek out specific information online or in the library? Does it bother me when I know next to nothing about a country, personality, issue, or debate that has burst into prominence? When I heard about the bombing in Boston, did I know where Chechnya was? If not, did I look it up?
5. Do I enjoy learning? Do I go to museums and art galleries, go to public lectures, listen to readings at the library, and otherwise engage with the world of ideas? Would I go to listen to a speech by David Suzuki or Stephen Harper (you don’t have to like either of them) or Elizabeth May? Do I know who Elizabeth May is? Am I interested in the physical world — astronomy, the exploration of space, the Higgs boson, the evolution of species? Do I watch Nova on the American Public Broadcasting System?
So, how did you do? If you answered yes to most, if not all, of these, there is an above-average chance that you will enjoy university and do well. Curious students succeed in university, assuming that their basic skills (writing, reading, and math) are up to university standards and that they avoid the social pitfalls of university life.
Curiosity is the rocket fuel of the academy. If you arrive with the tank fully topped up, you will likely find the experience exciting, demanding, and eye-opening. You will be one of the students who ask spontaneous questions in class, come to a professor’s office with questions before the assignment is due (and not just to ask for an extension), attend extra-curricular lectures, and have trouble picking courses because there are too many interesting things to study. We love having you in class. You make universities dynamic and exciting places.
We know that many of you will have looked at the questions and wondered why they are relevant. They actually tell us almost everything we need to know about you. If you answered them all in the negative but still have great high school grades, you can probably survive university, but it may seem like a four-year stint in a dentist’s chair — unless someone lights an intellectual fire under you. You will be clever but disengaged; not a happy state in a university.
If you answered negatively but have average grades (80 percent or less in most provinces), then you might be able to complete university — maybe — but your experience will be a tough slog. You will probably struggle with basic assignments and will have trouble figuring out all the fuss about the university experience. If you answered negatively and have poor grades (anything under 75 percent, a figure we will discuss later), you probably should not be in university. The combination of limited interest in the world and poor basic skills puts you at risk from the beginning. Find something else to do, because your university time (likely to be limited to one or two painful years) will be boring, unsatisfying, and a waste of everyone’s time.
If you are in the final group, by the way, do not feel bad. About one-third of university students are in this category, and they often leave without a degree. It doesn’t mean that they are bad people, nor that they are necessarily unintelligent. It just means that they, like you, are not interested in what university has to offer, and don’t have the skills to compensate for this lack of interest. They like other things, and they will be happier and probably more prosperous doing what they like rather than what parents and society think they ought to do. They should instead do what they love and what they are good at, with a firm eye on finding something that will provide a decent income.
Think of it this way. A person who doesn’t like music or is not interested in how it is composed and performed is not likely to attend music school. Someone who hates competitive athletics does not go to a month-long sports camp. People who find politics boring and unimportant rarely volunteer for election campaigns. Sending an uncurious young person to university is cruel and wrong, for the student and for the institution. University professors may try to inspire these students, but that’s like casting seed on stony ground, and it will not produce many flowers. Test yourself. If you cannot pass the curiosity test, university is probably not for you — or at least it won’t be a pleasant experience for you.
Success: Personal Qualities that Make a Difference
There are many ways to succeed in life, depending on how you define success. A rich family or a large inheritance can help — and family income and social position still constitute the single most important determinant of financial well-being in Canada. But this country has considerable mobility, both upward and downward. No one is guaranteed success in life, nor are young people necessarily defined by family circumstances. Canadians have more social mobility — and remember that this means both up and down the social and financial scale — than people in the United States, long celebrated as the land of opportunity. So don’t be discouraged if you don’t come from a rich family. Many of this country’s wealthiest and most powerful people came from families of modest means, working their way up the social, financial, and career ladders.
What personal qualities, then, are most likely to produce the kind of future that young adults want? Unfortunately, luck has a lot to do with it. Being in the right place at the right time, getting a unique job opportunity, buying the right stock or piece of real estate, or making a random choice that works out well are probably as important as some of the more classic characteristics in determining life prospects. But smart people capitalize on luck and do not turn their backs on chances. Thousands of people had the opportunity to purchase ocean-front property in British Columbia in the 1970s, when a few thousand dollars would have been enough to get a nice view lot. Not many people leaped at the chance. Those who did were likely to see their purchases turn into half a million dollars in a couple of decades, finding themselves set for life by a fairly simple — and, in retrospect obvious — decision made thirty years ago. The same is true of buying Apple or Microsoft stock.
Researchers have been trying for years to unlock the secret to human success, without a great deal of consensus on the matter. For decades, people were focused on IQ (Intelligence Quotient), believing, reasonably it seemed, that smart people would do better in life than not-so-smart people. That turns out not to be entirely the case. There are a lot of very smart, high-IQ people, often with impressive academic records, who have had quite average lives in terms of income and career opportunities. Philosophy professors are usually highly intelligent, but they don’t make millions — though at least they can be philosophical about it. Analysts also consider a new quantitative measure, Emotional Intelligence (EQ), which determines people’s ability to understand, control, and direct their emotions. In our child-obsessed world, the emphasis on IQ and EQ proved very attractive to parents, who directed their children toward expensive IQ- and EQ-enhancing experiences (Mozart music in the crib, and so on), believing that they could, in the process, produce better career and life outcomes for their boys and girls.
We will leave the debate on fundamental brain or intellectual characteristics that determine personal success to the next generation or two of psychologists and neuro-scientists. This does not, however, mean that we do not have strong ideas about the personal qualities that separate those who will succeed in life from those who will struggle (absent great luck or a wealthy family) to get ahead. Paul Tough’s insightful book How Children Succeed is important in understanding the conditions that produce young people likely to have solid skills and the abilities necessary to make the most of their circumstances. In the sombre opening to his book, Tough documents how early-life trauma — in the form of violence, conflict, severe crisis, or poverty — can stifle individual potential, to the point where recovery is extremely difficult. If anyone ever needs a motivation for early childhood interventions (birth to kindergarten), How Children Succeed provides it in spades. If you have made it to the point of high school graduation, there is a strong likelihood that you did not experience early childhood trauma or, if you did, you have one of the other qualities that underlie individual opportunity.
Paul Tough argues that there are three characteristics that determine the chances an individual has to succeed:
• Grit: The path through life is littered with trials, crises, and failures. There is nothing about life in the modern world that is easy, obvious, or automatic. Successful people possess real grit — the ability to push through obstacles, respond to challenges, and dust themselves off even after major failures. The drive to succeed is strong in such individuals. They typically take a major set-back as a learning opportunity rather than as a sign of fundamental weakness or shortcoming. Hardship provides important learning opportunities. Demonstrating the ability to work through crises is one of the most important illustrations of a person’s capacity for personal growth, adaptation, and simple drive.
• Curiosity: Successful people are curious about pretty much everything. They tend to read a great deal and are constantly learning. They love to explore, experiment, discover, and understand. Teachers know the difference between someone who truly wants to learn and one who studies for a good grade. The former are treasures; the latter tend to whine a lot. The will to learn and the desire to discover sit at the core of all truly successful people.
• Character: Much as schools and society at large would like to reduce the requirements for success to a series of teachable moments or easily transmitted characteristics, there is, according to Tough, a great deal more at play. Personal qualities (that is, character) matter a great deal — trumping IQ and many other characteristics in determining the likelihood of success. A person of strong character has easily observable and highly desirable qualities: the ability to respond to adversity; real and sustained persistence; life focus, reliability, and trustworthiness; and an overwhelming work ethic. People with good character do not blame others for their shortcomings; instead, they grasp opportunities to learn and develop, and do not let life’s misfortunes deter them from their long-term goals.
It’s important to note that self-esteem is missing from Tough’s description. For the past generation, schools and parents have been preoccupied with ensuring that children feel good about themselves — even if this means moving away from competition (too much losing), not holding children responsible for meeting standards (too much reliance on arbitrary educational goals), and not drawing attention to differences in performance and ability (creating divisions within social groups). Self-esteem, it turns out, is not well connected to academic performance or career outcomes.
A Personal SWOT Analysis
Here, perhaps, is the hardest bit. You are graduating from high school with decent grades. Your grades probably average over 80 percent — you are an A student! Alas, this is not nearly the achievement that it was two generations ago. In 1960, fewer than 5 percent of all university applicants had grades that high. Now, over two-thirds of all young adults attending university do. The reason for this is mostly grade inflation in the high schools. If you are right at 80 you are just below the average among students considering university — hardly a sign of a world-beater! You want to make the right choice, and you are considering your options.
We have already given you a series of tests that should give you a bit of a sense about how you might fit at university. Here’s another one:
Given that professional economists, demographers, and others have serious difficulties anticipating market and social trends, do not be surprised if you find forecasting the next year, let alone the next decade, to be extremely hard. The baby boomers are holding on to their jobs, sometimes because they are paying for their children’s education! Restructuring inside companies and governments has eliminated thousands of middle-class jobs, just as closing manufacturing plants has removed thousands more (and unions, eager to protect existing workers, have increasingly turned to two-tier contracts to protect benefits for the older employees at the cost of new workers). Underemployment — getting a job that requires far fewer skills and less education than an individual has — has become widespread. In the United States, 25 percent of all retail workers have university degrees, as do 15 percent of all taxi drivers[2] and 15 percent of all firefighters.[3]
Following your dream …
A friend’s daughter had tons of academic and professional skills — but she really loved to cook. She cooked when she was a pre-teen, when she babysat, and all through high school. It finally dawned on her that she really, really wanted to cook. So she went to cooking school, got a diploma, and now, in high demand as a pastry chef, makes a decent living doing precisely what she loves to do.
The most important part of this story is that her parents let her follow her passion and did not, as so many parents do these days, insist on her pursuing a more standard academic path.
SWOT Test
1. What are your strengths? As with the other questions in this test, compiling a list — in this case of your strengths — can be difficult. You have to be brutally honest. A strength might not simply be the courses where you had the highest grades (you might have had an easy marker for a teacher), but rather a field that you enjoyed and had decent grades in.
2. What are your weaknesses? Weaknesses require introspection. How hard do you work? Are you really prepared to make major sacrifices in order to get ahead?
3. What opportunities are available to support your success? The real challenges rest with identifying opportunities and threats. When it comes to opportunities, most students rely on parents, teachers, government, and the general “buzz” about the economy and about career possibilities. This advice is notoriously unreliable, offered by people who will not be living your life. There are opportunities in emerging fields, like nanotechnology. And, of course, there always will be jobs in the service and retail sectors.
4. What threats could thwart your plans for success? There are threats from Chinese and South Asian manufacturers and competition from professionals in India. There will be jobs in the western Canadian resource sector, but many fewer if pipelines and transportation links to markets are not developed.
Why? First, there are so many applicants with higher-education credentials that university graduates are getting jobs that used to go to high school graduates. Second, there are so many more people with undergraduate degrees than there are jobs that require degrees that many have to take work that does not require a degree — notably in the retail sector.[4] Many university graduates are working alongside young adults who did not go to university at all, have four more years of experience and earnings, and, in many cases, higher pay and several steps forward on the promotion ladder.
This situation should all be part of your SWOT analysis. Determining where you will fit in a rapidly evolving society and economy is no mean feat. We will come back to this over and over again: there is no substitute for real excellence — the top opportunities typically go to the very best — and hard work and good character will carry you much further than a basic credential any day. The top students in every field — including ones that seem devoid of career opportunities — will find meaningful and interesting work, although not without some difficulty.
Beyond SWOT: Knowing Where You Stand
This leads to another series of questions that you have to ask about yourself as you make your plans for the next and crucial stage in your life:
• How good are you at academics? Forget your grades. Do a realistic assessment of your classmates. Are you the top student in the school? In the top ten? Here is your first wake-up call. There are hundreds of high schools in Ontario. New Brunswick has dozens of them. Each of these has a graduating class. Assume you are one of the top ten students in your school. This means that there are thousands of students in the country’s high schools of the same calibre and general ability as you. Are you ready to compete with the very best?
• How hard do you work? This is not a question just about academics. It relates to how you do your homework, to be sure, but also how you do with household chores, volunteer activities, and your part-time job. Do you tackle assignments — regardless of the nature of the work — with enthusiasm and efficiency? Or do you take your time or complain about what you have been asked to do? Which kind of person, by the way, would you hire if you were doing the hiring?
• What do you do really well? Think about your real interests in life. Make a list of the areas where you excel. These can be academic, physical, musical, artistic, or practical. Note if you are great at physics or English, but also if you are top-notch at carpentry or art. Give a lot of thought to this list, for it is going to be extremely important in defining your post–high school options. If, for example, you are not good at mathematics and you got your grades up to a competitive level only by taking the same course three times, you probably should not pursue a math-based college or university program. If, on the other hand, you are naturally gifted at mechanical or technical work to the exclusion of other more traditional academic skills, surely this should factor into your decision-making.
• What do you do badly? Make a second list — and be really honest with yourself here — about the kind of things that you do badly. For the purposes of this exercise, define “badly” as being those things where you are in the bottom half of your peer group. If half of your high school classmates do something significantly better than you, whether it is writing, understanding world affairs, working with computers, grasping science, or fixing a bicycle or car, then you need to put this down. In some instances, these areas of weakness can be overcome. If you really want to pursue work in a field related to computers and you have minimal skills, challenge yourself. Take extra courses, outside of high school if necessary, to upgrade. A weakness need not be permanent, but a key weakness unaddressed can cause real difficulties down the road.
• What do you really love doing? This is where the difficulty starts, particularly if your parents have different ambitions for you. Many parents have dreams of their children becoming a doctor, lawyer, accountant, or engineer. Very few, it seems, fantasize about their children working at a day-care centre, working in a pulp mill, getting a clerk’s job in a provincial government office, or becoming a carpenter’s apprentice. Dealing with your parents’ hopes for your future can be a real problem — and it often starts here. You need to make a clear list about the things you really and truly love to do. What gets you excited in terms of study, work, and recreation? What kinds of activities make a real difference to your life and bring you simple and unadulterated joy? How much does money matter to you? You need to be completely honest with yourself and with your parents about this one. There are great jobs out there — social worker, musician, youth counsellor, minister, pre-school teacher, gardener — that offer full and fulfilling lives. But the pay is low, and working conditions often can be very difficult. If money is a prime motivating factor in your life, then you had best take this into account. Many jobs simply will not provide the $100,000 a year salary, suburban house, holidays in the Caribbean, and two cars in the garage that many of you aspire to. If you want to earn a lot of money, there are ways of doing so: entrepreneurship (high risk, high potential return), medicine, accounting, some parts of the law, or real estate speculation. There are even a few places — out west and in the North for the most part — where it is possible to combine high wages and low skills. See what heavy-duty mechanics make at the diamond mine at Ekati — you will be impressed — and they generally have not gone to university or, if they have, they don’t use their training on the job. If money is the object, you had better have a prodigious work ethic, have a specialized skill, or be willing to follow the cash across the country.
• How much do you know about the world of work? You are facing one of the most important decisions in your life — preparing yourself for the workforce — when you know, typically, very little about career options. We know that high schools offer courses in career planning, but — based on the experiences of our children — we sense that most teenagers don’t take them very seriously. This is a serious question. There are thousands of careers available, from cat skinner (not what you think) to archivist. You could be a genetics counsellor or a nanotechnologist. There is a large need for power engineers and millwrights, occupational therapists, glaziers, epidemiologists, diagnostic medical sonographers, speech pathologists, cost estimators, audit clerks, and a great many more.
• Are you willing to relocate for work? In your grandparents’ days, there was no question — they would move to wherever there was a job. Canadians used to move a great deal, following their dreams and job opportunities across the country and even around the world. This is still true for many Canadians, which is why there are so many Newfoundlanders in Fort McMurray these days. It turns out, however, that many of you are not very mobile. Torontonians have trouble imagining life outside the city. (Trust us, it can be great.) Young adults from Vancouver and Victoria (a.k.a. paradise) are notorious for refusing to leave. Highly motivated young people in the Maritimes have historically been willing, even eager, to relocate to other parts of the country, but others have trouble leaving St. John’s, Saint John, Charlottetown, or Halifax. Ask yourself this question: Would you, Toronto person, once you finish your schooling, happily relocate to Fort McMurray, a dynamic city at the heart of the oil sands? Would you consider a job in an isolated Aboriginal community, where there is often an urgent need for professionals? Would you consider Saskatchewan — yes, it is cold, but any place that is home to the Roughriders is pretty neat — where the economy is booming? How about Whitehorse in the Yukon or Yellowknife in the Northwest Territories, two of the most fascinating communities in the country? Mobility has always been the great equalizer in Canada, creating career and life opportunities for individuals. Look deep inside yourself. Will you move to opportunity or do you expect opportunity to find you? (Subtle hint here: Mobility is one of the greatest keys to full career development, while staying put can lock you in a career and income box for life, even if it makes your mother happy.) Spread your wings: you might like the place, and you don’t have to live there forever.
• Are you willing to create your own job? We will come back to this point later, but entrepreneurship and self-employment are critical components of the modern economy. We have many self-employed people — taxi drivers in some cities, convenience-store owners, tax specialists and the like — but far too few entrepreneurs — the people who create companies, products, services, and jobs. Do you really want to work for someone else, or are you willing to set out on your own? Self-employment is growing rapidly — along with all of its freedoms and risks. Where do you fit in the spectrum from risk taking to excessive caution?
Peer Pressure: Resisting the Swarm
One of the greatest challenges facing young adults is breaking away from the group. Much as everyone likes to believe that he or she is an original, a true individual, the reality is that we are shaped and defined by our genetics, environment, and social relations. Students from schools in wealthy areas are more likely to go to university than are those from poor districts. If you hang around with the swarm, your chances of doing well in high school decline and your post-secondary prospects get dimmer. We are conditioned by popular culture, peer attitudes, and a desire to fit in. This is simply the truth.
Ironically, one of the most significant outcomes of contemporary peer pressure has been the routine migration from high school to university. Everyone — from parents to friends — talks incessantly about university. In the best public schools, “where are you applying?” and “where are you going?” are the main questions. At elite American private secondary schools — which often advertise the success of their graduates in terms of numbers being accepted with scholarships into the best universities — the pressure to write the SAT (Scholastic Aptitude Test, required for admission to most U.S. colleges and universities) and prepare dynamite application letters is intense.
There is a certain lemming-like character to this movement toward universities, for it is simply assumed that all right-minded young people will move from high school to campus, joining the mass competition to get a cubicle job (read Dilbert if you don’t already do so: it’s a fascinating and hilarious window on the world you have been trained for) and an entry ticket to the middle class. There is not a lot of “U” in university but rather a great deal of “US,” as in “we are all going to university.” Politicians have picked up on this, of course, which is why they talk about university so much — and why Dalton McGuinty, former premier of Ontario, federal Liberal leader Justin Trudeau, and U.S. President Barack Obama have hinted that every young person should have the chance to go, or should actually go (they were vague about which it should be) to university.
Overcoming peer pressure is not easy. We appreciate that. University recruiters learned many years ago that one of the best ways of increasing applications from a specific high school was to convince a handful of popular kids to attend their institution. Once they had locked in these leaders — the captain of the basketball team and the head cheerleader were, stereotypically, the targets — many others followed more or less automatically. There will be a very strong desire to follow your friends, both in the decision to attend university and then in the collective choice of campus, typically the one closest to your high school. Everything is familiar then, isn’t it? You can take your social circle with you, stay in familiar territory, probably live at home. All very comfy — but not a very adventurous leap into adulthood.
Be Yourself
Our advice, avuncular as always, is simple: be yourself; and, if you don’t know who you are, find out. When the swarm forms up, make your own judgments about whether or not you want to join. Stand aside, look far afield, re-evaluate your SWOT analysis, and contemplate your future — for yourself and by yourself. Live your own life — not the one that your friends have outlined for you. It’s easier to give this advice than to follow it, but the results will justify the effort.