- When I was 17, I was faced
with the biggest decision of my life.
What did I want to do for, well, the rest of my life?
Nevermind I was probably
only in the first quarter of my life,
still didn't know how to drive,
still had to ask my parents for permission to go the movies,
hadn't done this, hadn't done that,
and yet, this was the moment that I sealed my fate forever.
Or so it seems.
For anyone who's applying to universities,
it's just so daunting the weight that one decision bears.
What if you make a mistake?
What if you're not sure what you want to do?
- So basically, when I was in Year 12,
I wasn't really sure what I wanted to study.
So it was kind of like I wanted to do marketing,
I wanted to a bit of something artsy
like design or something.
And then when it came to my ENTER score,
I accidentally got high enough to do law
so that's kind of where law came in.
So I was like, okay,
I'll do a commerce and a law double degree
and then if I don't like law, then I can drop it.
- Keeping her options open by choosing law and commerce
shows us how so many of us
are uncertain of our career choice
when we're choosing our university preferences.
According to Future Leaders Index,
only 29% of young adults were sure about their career path.
Perhaps this is because of the external pressures
that are set upon us that would get us
to consider career choices that we otherwise wouldn't have.
For Connie, her parents also played a big role.
- They really wanted me to study medicine or law.
Medicine wasn't happening
because if I see blood, I'm gonna faint (chuckles).
So I think that influenced me to pick up law.
- [Lisa] Like Connie, Estelle also considered law.
- It sounds bad but I think
just because it sounds like a prestigious kind of career.
Other people were talking about studying it,
it had a really high score that you needed to get into it
so I thought it would be a good thing to get into,
but deep down, I probably didn't really
have that interest in law.
It was more just it sounded good.
- While it might sound bad, it's true.
Many of us fall into the prestige career trap.
I know even for myself,
and I've spoken about this many times on my channel
that I chose the pharmacy profession
because I saw it as something
that was a well-respected profession
and something that was high-paying.
He's Josh.
He shares with us how this type of attitude
will only stretch our happiness so far.
- For me, when I was at university,
my expectation was go to a degree
that means I can get a job in the future.
And so when I got there, I was like, sweet, I can do that.
This is easy.
And then I went up probably the hierarchy of needs to go,
okay, well, now that I have some security in my life,
what else is there?
And the answer was very obviously not financial.
I'm a big believer that if your expectation
of what you need to be happy in life
is different from the reality of your life,
if there's a delta there,
if you view that delta as a goal
and something to be a challenge
that you wanna take on willingly, that's a positive.
But if you think I need this much money to be happy
and I'm only earning this much, you'd be miserable.
- [Lisa] It makes sense why we have such a hard time
deciding our university choice
with all these different factors playing at our ear.
While it can be easy
to look at the external pressures set upon us,
I think there's a deeper reason for the difficulty.
This is nowhere better summed up
than in Michelle Obama's "Becoming".
- [Michelle] It's one of the most useless questions
an adult can ask a child,
what do you wanna be when you grow up?
As if growing up is finite,
as if at some point,
you become something and that's the end.
- See, that's the issue.
We're always being asked what do you want to be
when you grow up?
But growing up is a lifelong journey in itself.
You're always growing, always learning,
always discovering more about the world,
which will, in turn, change your perspective on you,
your life, and what you want to do.
And that's the conflict with writing down
a university-first preference.
There's a sense of concreteness as though what you choose
will determine your life pathway indefinitely.
- [Michelle] So far in my life, I've been a lawyer,
I've been a vice president at a hospital,
and the director of a nonprofit
that helps young people build meaningful careers,
and until recently,
I was the First Lady of The United States of America,
a job that's not officially a job
but that nonetheless has given me a platform
like nothing I could have imagined.
- [James And Michelle] Holla!
- [Lisa] According to Foundation for Young Australians,
15-year-olds will likely navigate 17 different jobs
across different careers in their lifetime.
Finding out that your first career choice
might not be the one you stick with
in five or 10 years can be a bit frightening.
So what advice did Josh have
to get us at least one step closer to the career choice
that we would be more likely to stick to?
- I would encourage them to taste before picking a degree,
something that's really practical.
If you're going to be an x,
you're gonna be a lawyer, a doctor, an engineer,
an anthropologist, sociologist, biochemical scientist,
go and speak to five people who are actually in that job.
Save yourself five years,
figure out what they actually do in their day-to-day life,
and if they like it.
And if you don't speak to five people
and all of them are like, I hate my job,
I work 90 hours a week, I don't like the environment,
maybe that's not a good career path
versus, if you don't speak to people
and they're really excited and they love their work
and you can attach to that,
you might just score a mentor in the process,
you also get a bit of a sense of what's out there.
- So if you're unsure about your career choice, it's okay.
Careers are a journey, and as you get older,
your interest will naturally change
and what you once found fulfilling
might not just give you that same spark anymore.
You never reach a pinnacle when you finally say
I've grown up now and this is me forever.
At the end of the day, it seems that that lifelong decision
doesn't have to be so concrete at all.
None of these people regret their initial career decisions
and all are in a career they currently love.
Whether they'll be there in 10 years' time,
we'll have to see.
(lighthearted music)
I wanted to thank you for watching
if you're all the way at the end of this video.
As you can tell,
I'm trying something different on my channel.
I think that recently, I've really thought deeply about
what is meaningful to me in my career and what I do
and the value that I give to the world.
And doing videos like this that are more topic-based,
that are relevant to Millennials like yourself and I,
I think is something that I really wanna work towards
on this YouTube channel.
So you're going to see some changes coming up now
and in the near future.
And especially if you're in Year 12
moving on into university,
I'm gonna change up this YouTube channel a bit
so that it stays relevant for you
and we're not so English-focused.
If you have anything constructive to say about this video,
then leave it in the comments,
and I'll see you guys next time.
Bye!
(smooth synth music)