... The trouble is, when you're young you're often not aware of all the possibilities the world offers. If I ever had any Careers Guidance it was probably "This is how you apply for a University place..."!
That's another thing that's become all too difficult for young people today - having the time to sort out what one really wants to do with his / her life. I'm appalled at the way young folks are now being shunted through secondary and collegiate programs with the prime objective being their expeditious insertion into a job (merely a job - not a vocation, not a career ...).
I recognized I wasn't ready to commit to any specific lifelong trajectory in my teens. Around the time I went off to college, I informally laid out a sort of life plan. The central tenet in this plan was that I had to commit to some sort of long-term (not necessarily lifelong ... ) vocational / career path no later than age 30. Until that deadline, I was free to try out / sample / explore anything I wanted, so long as I remained nominally self-supporting and hence independent.
At first this vague plan was something of a running joke among my circles. In the end, it turned out to be exactly what I did.
After 4 years of liberal arts education I had greatly expanded the list of possibilities without narrowing my set of choices, so I let the exploratory phase continue. Once I got to 26 I made an interim commitment to a civil service job offering a doubling of salary during the 3-year training and certification phase and a clear upward career ladder thereafter. This was not the long-awaited career choice per se - it was the establishment of a solid and profitable platform upon which I could prepare myself for the anticipated career election and whatever it entailed.
As I approached my 30th birthday, I'd narrowed my long-term options to either law or information technology. I chose computers over courtrooms and returned to college as a freshman in computer science. Eleven years later I became 'Herr Doktor' and began the interesting and comfortable career that's served me well for about a quarter century now.
It wasn't easy. During that 11 year period I was self-supporting (4 years of progressively successful employment on the civil service job platform; 3 years of fully funded fellowship; and another 4 years of full-time employment as a senior analyst and research professor).
We all are likely to burn our candles at both ends during our lives. I made a point to burn a younger candle at both ends so I'd not have to dually light an older version that was less likely to endure the load.
Most of my surviving friends who'd ribbed me about my sketchy life plan 40-some years ago are themselves approaching or entering full retirement. The main difference among us relates to what shape we found ourselves in as we approached the finish line. Most of my friends' progress to the finish line involved at least 4 decades of patiently 'working for The Man' in The Man's designated office space and on The Man's schedule. A lot of stress, and not much 'slack'.
My approach left me relatively 'behind' (in terms of overall / demonstrable progress) until I emerged as a fully-equipped and highly motivated professional whose 'work' was also his 'game' (area of personal interest). I'm approaching the finish line at my own pace, having already enjoyed over 15 years of being formally authorized to work from home, adhere to my own schedule, and 'mail it in'. My path has involved a lot of slack and not many of the external stressors that have plagued my pals.
Here's another aspect of the difference(s) ... I'm content to milk my situation for so long as clients want my services rather than feeling pressed to finally escape once and for all.
To the extent this constitutes 'success', I'd attribute the bulk of that success to having waited until my preferred vocational path became apparent to me before binding myself with long-term commitments.
I'm
not recommending that everyone follow my model. Mine is an admittedly extreme counter-example to the mainstream folly of time-pressured slot-insertion, but it at least demonstrates there are alternatives to getting stampeded in one's teens.
I keep telling young folks the most valuable objective isn't 'wealth' or 'fame', but 'slack'. I can't say any of them seem to have grasped what I was talking about. I fear that (like a few of my old friends) they won't understand my point until it's too late for them to do anything about it.