Transcriber: Vivian Chen Reviewer: Irina Zayats
So,
we've been made a lot of promises as a generation.
One of the very first promises we hear, and for many of us,
the very first experience we have with the idea of career planning,
is the promise that you can be anything that you want to be when you grow up.
We hear this early on and we hold on to this.
This is deeply rooted in our society and our culture.
We call it the American dream.
And we love it because it sounds awesome, right?
Anything you want to be, anyone that you want to be,
it's out there.
All you have to do is go get it.
And when you ask kindergarteners what they plan to do when they grow up,
you will get a creative and widely varied set of answers.
They seem to have absolutely no idea of whether a job would be possible
or if it exists.
No consideration for how much money they would make.
And then we start to grow up, and the roles change,
the message we hear changes.
You can still be anything you want to be,
as long as you follow our roles,
as long as you well in school, you pass the right test,
as long as you meet our expectations.
And as children, we're okay with this.
We're used to playing games that have roles
and that have one clear winner.
So we accept this,
but for the first time, the idea of scarcity comes in.
The promise is now that some people can be anything,
but not everyone.
And then they add on.
So now it is not enough to do well in school,
but you also have to go to college.
And at this point, some of us start to question.
Right?
You might have noticed that not everyone goes to college
and they seem to be doing okay.
In fact, the 10 most common jobs in the United States
include things like, retail, cashier, janitorial staff,
maintenance, transportation, office manager,
things that don't actually require a college degree.
Although they also don't make more than the national average salary.
But there are wildly successful people out there, too,
who have skipped past college.
For example, Bill Gates or Mark Zuckerberg,
tech giants who have never actually graduated.
Or celebrities, like Taylor Swift,
who is about my age and has more famous friends,
more money, and more houses than I will ever see in my life.
But if you tell people that you plan to skip college
and instead be a full-time yoga instructor or write that novel,
you'll normally hear some variation of the same comment,
"You have to get a real job."
So, you can be anything you want to be as long as it's a real job.
And I hear this term so frequently when I work with students,
when I talk to their parents at orientation.
I hear it in conversations with my own friends and family
that I thought I should figure out what it means.
What do we mean when we say "a real job"?
So I asked the smartest person I know.
I asked Google.
(Laughter)
What is a real job?
And I was surprised I didn't get a clear answer.
I did find a definition from Urban Dictionary,
which contains words I cannot share with you today.
(Laughter)
But aside from that,
what I found were articles, blog posts, podcasts,
all made by people who didn't have a real job
or have been told to get a real job or had decided they never want a real job.
And what surprised me about that is those authors had job titles,
like entrepreneur or marketing specialist,
but to me, sound real.
So I was in this weird predicament.
Google didn't know the answer.
I have not been in this situation many times in my life.
So if Google doesn't know the answer, what am I supposed to think?
(Laughter)
But we still talk about it,
so I try to piece together what we mean when we discuss a real job.
And I was able to come up with these 5 characteristics.
If you have 4 out of the 5 of these,
congratulations, your job is probably real!
(Laughter)
If you have less than 4,
unfortunately, your job might be imaginary.
I'm sorry about that.
(Laughter)
So normally what we look for is some sort of required education,
college generally or some other expensive certification program.
For example, to be a nurse, you do need to go to a nursing school,
but you don't necessarily actually need a bachelor's degree.
You have to be paid well and that one is the magical requirement.
It can actually make all of the other ones irrelevant.
If you get paid well enough, any job is a real job,
which is why, for Brad Pitt, acting is a real job.
But if you tell your parents that is what you want to do,
that's really a hobby, right?
So that's where we get that disconnect.
So once again that idea is scarcity.
Some people can do anything that they want to do,
be anything that they want to be,
but not everyone, and certainly not you.
Right?
Now, I'm not saying that college isn't important
and I'm not just not saying that because I work at a college
and need them to continue paying me.
I do truly feel that college is important because if what you do want to do
lines up in any way with one of those real jobs,
chances are you do actually need to be in college.
Also, college is one of the first chances we get in an educational environment
to explore our creativity, to develop critical thinking skills,
and to really explore options that we've never seen before.
This is your chance to open your horizons,
to meet new interesting and diverse other people
and to find out what your passion is.
But, it's become not enough just to go to college.
So they keep adding on, right?
The economy is not what it used to be and we've become really scared.
It's not enough anymore to get a college degree.
It doesn't guarantee you a job.
And so now you have to pick the right major.
And if you do pick the right major, you're set.
You know, you're gonna go off, you're gonna make lots of money,
you're gonna have a great life.
If you pick the wrong major, you're doomed to a life of underemployment
and jobs that don't necessarily require a degree anyway.
And that's why some of you may be contemplating your new and exciting career
as a Starbucks Barista.
Whom I love, by the way. They keep me in caffeine.
But this promise, for me, feels so far removed from what we started with.
Right?
We've started to subscribe to this idea
that your major leads to a particular job or a set of jobs,
and from there on out to success and a happy life.
So now, you can be anything you want to be
as long as it's one of these 3 or 4 specific professions.
Right?
So that doesn't seem like the same promise.
Where did our promise go?
I was promised anything. No questions asked.
And so what we tell kindergarteners and what we tell 18-year-olds
is so wildly different
that I decided that I needed to look into it.
Luckily, a lot of other people already have.
So the American Association of Colleges and Universities
have polled employers, the people who hire you for those real jobs.
And less than one quarter of them
actually looked for a specific college major.
More than 75% of employers will hire any college major
as long as you have the skills to do the job.
And overwhelmingly,
employers value critical thinking, creativity, and problem-solving skills
above any major that you could use in college;
which is crazy, right?
When you think about it, creativity, critical thinking, problem solving
are things that we are naturally inclined to as children.
We naturally have that.
And that's why you ask kindergarteners what they want to do,
and you get answers that you would never have thought of
because they are creative, they're creatively solving problems.
And that's something that we stopped doing as we come up through school.
And if you do college right, you can get some of that back, right?
So, "If your major doesn't matter, what does?"
is the obvious question.
And I figured this answer out by looking around at the change makers,
the big names, the people who really make an impact on our world.
And if you look at those people, they did not get where they are
by listening to what other people told them they should be doing.
They just didn't.
In a lot of cases,
they fought very, very hard against those outside voices.
So what does matter is you and what you know to be true,
disregarding what other people tell you about whether it's real,
or about whether it exists, or about whether you're good at it.
Walt Disney was fired from his first job at a newspaper
because he lacked imagination.
Oprah Winfrey was fired as a newscaster because she was unfit for television.
But they kept going.
Right?
And they made connections.
If you are true to your authentic self, if you do what you're passionate about,
so if you choose the major that you're in love with,
even though it might not lead to a stable career path right now,
you're gonna connect with people, who share your ideas,
who share your passions, and you can start a business,
or you can start a movement, or you can change the world.
So let's hold on to that first promise: You can be anything that you want to be.
And ignore all the people who tell you that you can't,
that it's not valid, or that it's not real.
And when you go home tonight,
I want you to take just 5 minutes for yourself.
Turn off all the voices that are coming in at you from the outside,
so turn off your cellphone.
It's okay, you can call your mom back.
(Laughter)
Turn off the internet.
Get away from friends or roommates, any other voices that are coming in:
what other people are thinking or what they're saying,
and listen to your own voice.
What do you love? What do you want to do?
And then tomorrow, do it. Just a little bit.
I mean you don't have to be hired at a magazine to write something.
Just write it.
And you don't have to be a doctor to help someone who is in need.
You don't have to be a CEO to start a company or a business.
When you do what truly makes you passionate and excited,
it's practicing listening to your own voice.
And just like anything, with practice it becomes easier.
And if you are living true to yourself, to your own voice,
then you will have much more to offer any possible employer.
But more importantly, you have more to offer the world.
Thank you.
(Applause)