Job VS Career
Many people believe that choosing a job and choosing a career are the same; however they are different. A job is employment in which we work to get paid with no interest in furthering us in any particular field. A career is the pursuit of a lifelong ambition or calling.
Think of your dream job, the one thing you would like to do more than anything else in the world. Now think about your major — are they at all the same?
I went on a retreat this past weekend with people who most would say “have it all together,” but by the end of the weekend many of us found ourselves thinking that our majors had nothing to do with what we were truly passionate about. Our dream job was just that, a dream.
We were engineers who really wanted to be musicians, pre-med students who really wanted to teach mountain climbing and pre-law students who really wanted to be social workers. The list went on, but the one common denominator was that all of our majors guaranteed a “comfortable” lifestyle, not necessarily a happy one.
According to Paul Powers, a management psychologist, about 80 to 95 percent of Americans are dissatisfied with their jobs. This starts in undergraduate studies. Most of us start out with a major that we are semi-interested in, but we know will prepare us for a high-paying job. So, we spend four years working toward this degree, graduate and get that “good” job. However, once we get that job we still aren’t fulfilled. We may be making six figures, have the corner cubicle and the respect of our colleagues, but we are uninspired, unhappy and living unproductive lives.
Why? We have a job and not a career, a place to work but not a place that cultivates our passion.
A professor asked another question: what is the one thing in this world that you love doing so much you would do it for free? My answer was not building circuits or writing code as my major would imply. It was writing. So, obviously my passion and my major were not necessarily aligned and herein lies the problem.
Societal norms, fear and expectation have forced many of us to stray from that which we love to do, to what we will do just to make a living. Don’t settle for that life. Do something you love, but do it so well that people pay you to do it. That is the difference between a “job” and a career.
My dad works seven days a week most of the time, but he loves it. I don’t know how anyone could love being outside in the rain, sleet or snow for 10 hours a day waterproofing houses, but he loves what he does. According to Roper Starch Worldwide, only 56 percent of people considered their job a “career,” the other 44 percent thought of their job as “what they do for a living.”
Many of us hear our parents moan and groan about going to work in the morning, come home and complain about how work was, then go to sleep and do it all over again the next day. Is that the type of life you want for yourself? I know for myself that no amount of zeros on the end of my salary is worth my sanity nor is it worth my happiness. If you are doing something that you have a passion for, it is not only easier to have a “career,” but you are more creative, more willing to “work” and overall more satisfied.
I apologize if I wrote this article too late for some of you seniors who are realizing you have just wasted four years and over forty thousand dollars working toward something that you really don’t have a passion for. At least you found out now while you’re still young and have control over your professional destiny and not years down the road when you’re fifty years old, stuck in a dead-end job trying to make it to retirement.
Instead of just trying to make your next move your best move, make your next move your favorite one. If you look at many of the world’s most successful people, their success stems from the fact that they created a career for themselves centered around their passion. They love what they do so much that they once did it for free, but they worked and worked until people recognized their talent and began to invest in them. Dare to be different, step out of the cubicle and get to work.