Recently, we had a hiring session at Pion Media (for those who don’t know, Pion Media is one of my projects, a branding & digital marketing agency where we work daily with and for brands).

Several times during the interviews, I encountered the following situation:

“I’ve always been creative and wanted to study digital marketing, but my parents wanted me to go to the Faculty of Midwifery and Nursing.”

“I’ve been drawing, writing, and dancing since I was little. I went to study economics because that’s what my parents wanted.”

“If you loved writing so much as a child, with competition entries, poems, and so on, why did you go to law school? Because my parents guided me to.”

It’s an old topic, as old as time itself. I keep encountering it, again and again and again. When will we stop?

Other famous quotes!

Here are a few more quotes, heard here and there, sometimes even within my own “clan”:

“Leave it, honey, become an accountant; it’s a stable job!”

“Become an engineer, just like your father, grandfather, and great-grandfather!”

“IT is the future—become a programmer; there’s a lot of money in IT!”

“Translator of foreign languages, but not English because everyone knows English nowadays.”

“Become a doctor, like your grandfather, to carry on the family name.”

“What, did your dad and I work for nothing to build this company? You should come here and take over.”

Dear Parents,

Yes, we know what’s best for our children. What they should eat, which college to attend, and the path they should take in life. But do we really know?

If my daughter has artistic inclinations and I keep pushing her to become a lawyer, will she be truly happy? Will she achieve the “success” she desires?

If my son wants to be a doctor, but I want him to become an entrepreneur and take over his father’s business, is that the right choice?

We are supposed to guide them in life up to a certain age—that’s what the books say. But what does it mean to “guide” them? How much, in what way, and until when?

Dear Children,

I want you to ask yourselves one question: who will be working in your future, the one you are waiting for? You or your parents? You or your friends? You or your “life neighbors”? Ask questions, be curious. Talk to parents, teachers, friends, colleagues. Find out what options are available, what the pros and cons of each are. The training you do in high school and college will follow you for life. It can either be thorough training that prepares you and helps you reach the “success” you desire, or it can be a simple stroll in the park—you’ve seen a few things, tried a few paths, and returned to the same entrance you came through.

Maybe this is a wake-up call. And maybe at the next hiring session, we’ll hear candidates confidently say, “Yes, I studied this because I enjoy it and want to pursue it. And besides college, I also taught myself because this is what I want!”

Photo credit: George Bakos