The first time there was anything like a career talk in my life was when I was graduating from nursery school. I can still clearly remember how my mom got me a white dress, the kind nurses wear in hospitals. She even stuck this little white cap to my hair, just the way I see nurses wear them, and made sure I had pens of different colours on my uniform.
Of course, they made me memorize a few lines, as much as my little head could carry, and I was supposed to say it out loud in front of the audience alongside my classmates, who were all dressed up in different professions. It kind of felt good having people call me "little nurse" that day, though honestly, I didn’t know what nurses really did besides giving injections. At least that’s what the one who took care of us did whenever we were sick. I don’t even know if I actually liked the idea of being a nurse, but I was just going along with the flow.
At some point while growing up, I thought I’d become a hairstylist because of how good I was at doing people’s hair. People were already telling me things like, "Oh, you’ll do so well as a hairstylist!" So I took it seriously and decided to learn more. I even worked as an apprentice for about a year. But along the line, I realized I didn’t want to do it full-time. I enjoyed it, yes, but it didn’t feel like the thing I wanted to commit my entire life to.
Fast forward to secondary school, I became really interested in science, mostly biology and how the human body worked. So if you asked me then what I wanted to be, I’d say I wanted to be a doctor. A surgeon precisely. Just because I had watched too many episodes of Grey’s Anatomy. I felt like I could do what those surgeons in the movie were doing. In my head, I was already saving lives in the operating room. But in reality? I can’t even stand the sight of blood. So how on earth was I going to become a surgeon?
I know most of us can relate. You look back at what you said you wanted to be as a child and just shake your head. The thing about kids is that, one moment the want to be a certain thing in the future and the next moment they chang their minds. As we grow grow, our interests changes and sometimes life happens. The choices we make regarding our career paths may be influenced by a lot things and since life is really about survival. We may tend to do whatever we can survive now, whether it’s our dream or not. Not everyone ends up where they thought they would. Sometimes, things don’t go as planned. But most importantly is that we're not just existing, we are living actually and in the end we might end up becoming successful and even making an impact from paths we didn't know we'd ever take.
