Get a job! Just as soon as it’s invented, that is….

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March 15, 2013 by readlisaread

The lifespan of the average human– let’s say 75 years in North America–has traditionally been enough time to experience vast change.  My grandmother, for example, was born in the late 1800’s, and lived to the astounding age of 102, passing away in the early 1990’s.  She was born in Arkansas and her family traveled by covered wagon to Oklahoma and Texas around the turn of the 19th Century. She and her husband, my grandpa, emigrated to Canada before the second world war, living life in the North, hunting, trapping and homesteading.  Grandma progressed with the times, and experienced jet travel, colour television, and instant photographs.  Could she, as a little girl in that dusty wagon trek across the American Southwest have pictured what her future would hold?

It doesn’t seem like we see that kind of sweeping change and innovation in our lifetimes anymore (though it could be that we are jaded to it).  But here is question that demands even more vision and creativity in its answer than ever before: “What do you want to be when you grow up?”

In my youth, that question was still loaded with a bit more gender bias than now, female police officers and male nurses were still the rarity, but there was definitely a feeling that a girl – or a boy – could do any job out there, if they wanted to.It was just a matter of figuring out what you wanted to do, and getting the required education, skills or experience.

While that is as true now as ever, there is one hitch for the upcoming generations: All the options are still open…. unfortunately, no one actually knows what those options are.

Take a look at “Shift Happens”  (now up to its 5th version).  You think it was tough plotting a post-secondary path in the ’80s or ’90s?  You have no idea what today’s youth is up against.  Worse, they don’t even know.

On the plus side, what if you didn’t have to chose from the available “What will you be when you grow up?” costumes and could design your own…..?


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