Few of us set our sights on a certain profession while still very young, and lived to realize the ambition. More often than not, we embark on career paths that diverge with our previous goal and when we immerse ourselves in the new area of pursuit, we even feel that this after all is what we were meant to do…..

Doctor or Lawyer? Neither!

While in Addis, I have had the pleasure of sharing ideas and discussing with a number of students and young professionals. I've got to say that many of the people I get a chance to talk to have rich life experiences and so much to tell. I honestly think that they should be the ones writing for this column and many other columns in all the papers published in our country. There is so much we can learn from each other's experiences and I feel that this is one resource we haven't tapped yet. As a student, one of the first questions people ask is what am I studying. A lot of them pause for a while and wonder when I answer "Government."
Government? Why? What to do with? What career am I going to pursue by studying government? Is that a field people study? Or even better, am I interested in pursuing a political career? These questions brought my attention to very fundamental educational beliefs and perceptions we have in our society and many other societies, which I will attempt to address it this article.
When I was growing up, there were times I wanted to be a doctor, another time a lawyer, and sometimes a pilot. All these great professions were so attractive, and they were 'the thing to be' by default. When educating ourselves, we often pay so much attention on the profession we want to pursue, and try to formulate an education path to take us there. We study law with the aim to be lawyers, we study accounting thinking it can make us accountants, we get into business administration believing that it is the best path for business. Thinking ahead is something we all ought to do, and planning out our education is going to be rewarding in the long run. But what I have a slight problem with is when we perceive that there is a specific education path for every career option, when we think that our degrees define our professions, and what I completely disagree with is when, as students and young professionals, we give ourselves the so cold "fields" and we try to stick to it.
I am studying Government, but my degree choice isn't necessarily going to define my career, it isn't going to narrow my job options, and certainly it is not going to bestow upon me a field that I will stick with until the end of time. I chose to study Government because I enjoy it and even though the readings for that class can get intense, it still gets me very excited. I chose my degree because of my interest, not to pursue any specific career. So what on earth am I going to do with a Government degree? Well, honestly speaking, almost anything I want. Of course, we will have to rule out certain skill-based professions like becoming a certified lawyer or a doctor. I can become a consultant, an investment banker, an entrepreneur, an author, a journalist, a reporter, I can work in development organizations, and many other more. How can I possibly do almost anything? One of my professors, Steven Levisky, said that we are in university to learn to think and write. I agree with this view. If I can think, if I can be creative, if I can nurture my analytical skills, and if I can talk, I can pursue different kinds of short-term and long-term careers. Does it still sound a bit unrealistic?
I don't think we are robots, where we learn one method and three years later we perform the tasks we are taught to perform. Instead, we are human beings, with big brains that receive information, mould it and modify it, and we use it to solve our everyday problems. In my view, by getting a degree we are not necessarily getting skills A and B for tasks C and D, we don't get a piece that fits only on one puzzle board. Instead, we mould that missing piece. Learning accounting gives us the knowledge and the mentality of an accountant. But that doesn't mean that we are destined to be accountants; we can do so much more.
If this view sounds too ridiculous, I will share with you some personal experience concerning this. After secondary school, when I didn't even know what degree to pursue, I took a year off and worked for an education NGO. During that year, to my huge amazement, I was offered full-time positions in the following firms: an aviation company, an advertisement agency, a media company, and an oil drilling company. Of course, the jobs didn't show up on my door step, and had to do a lot of networking and impressing, but the fact that one could work in such different fields proved to me that a degree is very meaningful, but whatever course one does isn't necessarily the deciding factor for his/her career options. Now, studying Government, I don't see my career options being narrowed down or defined. The world is full of opportunities and gaps to fill, and I think that each of us have the potential to fill many of those gaps.

Yoseph can be reached at askyoseph@gmail.com