What do you want to be when you grow up?

Looking back, we rarely find our current paths to be in line with previous dreams. Why?

Hello guys,

Hope you had a good week. I’m doing good, Alhamdulillah.

I have had virtually my entire weekend free, which is pretty amazing. The flipside is that I have entered a lazy mode and am also fairly scatterbrained right now, so putting words together is paraps more difficult than usual. Anyhoo, we move.

When I was in Primary 6, I wanted to be a doctor ‘when I grew up’. Surgeon to be exact, even though I’m not sure I knew what being a surgeon actually entailed. It just sounded nice. And I was not alone. Of the eleven students in my graduating class, ten of us wanted to be doctors. The exception was Muhammad - a young man who wanted to be an Engineer (I think).

Muhammad was (is?) an interesting fellow. I thought he was the coolest kid ever. The things I remember most vividly were his red ‘Fly Emirates’ school bag and his love for Manchester United. We bonded over it, and I grew (even more) attached to the team. If I saw Muhammad today, the first thing I would do is blame him for the years of heartbreak his club put me through.

Ah, I digress.

The question ‘what do you want to be when you grow up?’ is one virtually every child has been asked at some point. Sometimes it comes from uncles and aunties who want to ‘bond’, forgetting that all kids want to do is play games on their phones.

Other times, it comes from genuinely curious teachers want to build mental models of their pupils’ interests. As people of my generation become the uncles and aunties, we still can’t help ourselves from disturbing these poor kids.

But you can’t blame us. You see, society finds new ways to ask all of us this same question at different stages of our lives.

Primary school: What do you want to be when you grow up?

Secondary school: What do you want to study at university?

Uni: What are your long term goals?

Job: Where do you see yourself in 5 years?

So what do you want to be when you grow up?

I think the people who answer this question generally fall into three buckets. The ‘excellence signallers’, the ‘virtue signallers’, and the ‘Al-ameens’.

** Haha regular caveat: Many of the things I publish on my newsletter are random thoughts and should not be taken as factual. There are some people who have had the same dreams since childhood, but I suspect they are the exception, not the rule.

Excellence signallers

This is perhaps the most common pool. When asked about future plans, they give a respectable answer. In primary school, they want to be Doctors, Lawyers, or Engineers. The more prestigious, the better. As they grow older and become more refined, they want to find a cure for cancer or become SANs. Since many actually have no such plans, very few go on to do anything in line with their ‘goals’.

Virtue signallers

While excellence signallers give the answer most likely to intellectually or socio-economically impress the person on the other side, virtue signallers play an entirely different game. They give the answers most likely to gain respect for their ‘humanity’. Everybody knows someone in primary school that wanted to be a farmer. Why? They wanted to ‘feed the world’. When asked at job interviews where they want to be in 5 years, they will respond with things like ‘I just want to help and learn as much as possible. I am not bothered about the work or position, I just want to contribute’.

Erm, I don’t think so.

Al-ameens

The Al-ameens I believe, are the only ones who say the truth. And what is this truth?

For most people, it is I don’t know.

‘I don’t know’ is such a powerful statement. Not only is it (mostly) true, it takes a level of courage to actually say it. Many of us think showing our lack of knowledge signals ignorance x weakness, but the opposite is the case.

If someone asked what my future plans were some 30 months ago, I was clear in my head that I wanted to be in the US for grad school. During lunch time at work, I spent most of my break looking at requirements for the Masters programs I was potentially interested in. I took notes for about 29 schools, and was slowly working my way through reducing them to the 3 or 4 I would eventually apply to.

Fast forward to today - I never put in those applications and have zero interest in moving to the US in the near future. This is exactly the way of the world.

Looking forward, it is easy to project our future wants and needs, dreaming what will be most suitable at different stages of life. But looking back, we rarely find our current paths to be in line with previous dreams. Why?

1. Lack of self awareness - Very few people have a genuine understanding of their personality, skills, and interests. So when pressured to make a decision (or to answer such a question), they follow the well-worn path. In the 1970s, Tech leaders used to say ‘no one ever got fired for buying IBM’. Similarly, no gifted secondary student gets bashed for wanting to be a doctor, and no undergraduate student of Accounting gets bashed for saying they want to do ICAN, ACCA, and CFA in 5 years. In summary, a general lack of self awareness pushes many of us to give the easy x respectable answer.

2. Opportunity/Lack of opportunity - When I get asked what I want to do in x amount of time these days, whatever answer I give has a caveat - depending on opportunity. Or better still, in sha Allah. The truth is that many of the opportunities of the future will likely be unforeseeable today, no matter how hard we try. And sometimes, it is the lack of opportunity. Someone may get a job offer in Germany but not get work sponsorship/visa because of Hanty MK. Many Nigerian students are currently at the mercy of ASUU, regardless of whatever plans they made last year or might attempt to make now.

I am sure there are many more reasons.

So what is the point of this newsletter? Am I trying to say that our answer to every question, essay, or interview about future plans should be ‘I don’t know’?

No. Not unless you like rejections. 😂

I’m making an argument for the internal answer. The answer you tell yourself, and perhaps family and loved ones. I don’t know what that answer is, and you might not either, and that’s okay.

But if you are going to give an answer - and it is very important to genuinely think about these things - then help yourself by avoiding excellence or virtue signalling. The respect x goodwill you get from being in these buckets is short-lived, and there is a real possibility you get boxed into a life choice that is difficult to undo.

My advice (to myself first and foremost) is to start with a self awareness journey - developing a true understanding of your personality, skills, and interests, and then take decisions based on what is best for you.

*By the way, to the best of my knowledge, nobody in my primary school graduating class ended up studying Medicine. I have lost contact with Muhammad, but I do hope he somehow ended up as an Engineer.

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Completely unrelated to everything above, I was mindlessly scrolling through WhatsApp two days ago and saw something interesting on SA’s status. It was a short clip of a commencement speech by John G. Roberts, Chief Justice of the United States. A big fan of commencement speeches, I looked up the complete video and have watched it three times. The most important takeaway for me is below.

“From time to time, in the years to come, I hope you will be treated unfairly, so that you will come to know the value of justice. I hope that you will suffer betrayal, because that will teach you the importance of loyalty. Sorry to say, but I hope you will be lonely from time to time, so that you don’t take friends for granted. I wish you bad luck from time to time, so that you will be conscious of the role of chance in life, and understand that your success is not completely deserved, and the failure of others is not completely deserved either. And when you lose as you will from time to time, I hope that your opponent will gloat over your failure. It is a way for you to understand the importance of sportsmanship. I hope you’ll be ignored, so you know the importance of listening to others. And I hope you will have just enough pain to learn compassion.”

What excellent words to think about as we begin a new week.

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Gracias, and see you around.

Hameed

** Author’s note: I was overwhelmed by the support my last newsletter received. I genuinely appreciate all the comments, social media shares, email responses, and people who reached out privately. Our community had about 114 new subscribers in the past week, which brings us to 768 people who receive this newsletter. We are still on course to reach 1000 by the end of the year! Please subscribe and share with your family and friends.

Merci beaucoup! 😀