The High School Boy and His Problems/Choosing a Profession
I suppose that at one time or another in his life, every boy plans to be a street car conductor or a railroad engineer, or at least to follow some pursuit of an active mechanical nature. Most boys like to see the wheels go round. As for me, I was determined to be a doctor. I imagine I was led to this conclusion through watching Doctor Triplett who visited the sick in our country community in his two wheeled sulky drawn by a rangy spirited gray horse. It seemed to me there would be more pleasure and less hard work in such a vocation than in any other with which I was familiar. I did not take into account the long dreary rides through the bitter cold of winter or the bottomless mud of early spring to visit people who never paid, perhaps. I saw only the pleasant side of it.
As society is run now it is essential that every one have some business or profession by means of which he may eat and be clothed and have some recreation. Excepting that we are healthier and happier as a result of regular work, and that for most of us it is necessary to existence, I imagine that most of us would not concern ourselves as much with work as we now do. I have never believed, and a long experience has not tended to change my opinion, that every young fellow is cut out for so definite and specific a job that if he does not hit upon this particular position, he is ruined for life. No more do I think that there is in the world somewhere for every man a particular woman, whom he must meet and win or be forever unhappy. Men are for the most part adaptable; they can as often as otherwise fit equally well into various positions or professions, and can find happiness with many sorts of people. A good lawyer might very easily have made an equally successful physician if he had gone into the latter profession with earnestness.
There are in some people, however, peculiar weaknesses which are difficult to strengthen; peculiar talents which fit them for particular work. Some people could be musicians or plumbers and little else. Such people should choose a profession thoughtfully and carefully. The less balanced and normal the brain, the less evenly developed one's powers are, the more one is a genius, the more necessary it is that one should get into the kind of work to which he is particularly adapted, or evade that which he would find impossible. If a boy is intending to study engineering he should have special ability and interest in mathematics; if he is to be a clergyman, he ought to have some leanings toward religion. A prospective surgeon should be adept in the use of his fingers, and anyone proposing to study law should be capable of logical reasoning.
One can not always with certainty decide whether or not he has special fitness in one profession or another. A boy's father assured me not long since that he was convinced his son would make an excellent lawyer because he was such a ready talker. If the ability to talk readily fitted one for the practice of law, women, some people think, would have a distressing handicap over men. Fluent speech is, of course, often a help to a lawyer if it is accompanied by other talents, but fluent speech which is not induced by logical reasoning and an accurate knowledge of law may as likely as not be a handicap instead of an asset to a man attempting to practice law. Lawyers have been known to lose their cases by not knowing when to stop talking. Again parents frequently assure me that their young sons have unusual fitness for engineering work because, perhaps, they have constructed an electric motor, or made a water wheel, or fixed a refractory lawn mower. Such mechanical ability is often an aid to engineering work, but it is in no way an absolute necessity or a manifestation of engineering genius. It suggests the mechanic rather than the engineer.
So far as it is possible, however, one should find out whatever special fitness he may have for any one work and devote himself to that. Teachers can help in this decision; parents should recognize the talents of their children and try to make the most of them; the boy himself should analyze his own special fitness. I have never been sure as to just how accurately the average man can judge of his own individual ability. A shrewd executive whom I once knew used to say that when a young man confessed to more than ordinary skill in any one direction or thought himself especially fitted for a particular type of work, it was rather conclusive evidence that he might better take up some other. However that may be, I have seldom in teaching English composition, found that the man who laid claim to any particular skill in writing actually possessed much. Accurate self-judgment is difficult, but too much self-assurance is often an evidence of weakness.
Granted that a boy has unusual mental gifts; a peculiar danger often confronts him—the danger of depending upon his unusual ability to carry him through without work. It is an old saying that the only genius worth much is the genius for hard work. I have known a few geniuses, but I do not now recall more than one or two who got far in the professions which they adopted, because very few of them were willing to work regularly or seriously. Knowing their ability, they grew to depend upon it to carry them through at the last moment without any regular hard labor on their part; not willing to work hard and regularly, they did not increase their power; they were no more able to accomplish results at the end of ten years of practice than at the beginning of their careers.
"Can't I come back next September," a freshman who had failed asked me, "and start all over again as if nothing had happened?"
It was hard for him to see that a year of loafing had had an effect on him which could not be eliminated by forgetting the past. Powers that are not increased wane; the mind will not stand still in its development.
If you are taking up any work or profession it is wisest to understand beforehand what it involves. Read books on the subject; if you are thinking of engineering or medicine or law, get hold of some successful engineer or doctor or lawyer and ask him about the training necessary to success in his profession and the difficulties incident to it. He will probably advise you to try some other profession. He will enlarge on the difficulties, no doubt, of his own particular calling, but this fact need not serve to discourage you. You will find often that what on the surface seemed easy sailing has been a hazardous voyage full of storms and often suggestive of shipwreck. Men will advise you to keep out of the profession which they are following, because knowing as intimately as they do the hardships of their own calling, and being acquainted only with the externals of others, they imagine their own to be the most difficult and wearing and unsatisfactory of all. Fathers especially are loath to seeing their sons take up the line of work in which they themselves have become established and have succeeded.
"I don't want my son to take up my profession," I hear scores of fathers say. "There is nothing in it but hard work."
So, too, men who have come up to affluence through sacrifice and toil, say, "I never want my son to go through what I have gone through," not realizing that what they went through gave them the strength and the success which they attained.
There is always the misleading suggestion by these men that in any other profession but their own efficiency and success are attained without labor, and that hard labor is if possible to be avoided, while the truth of the matter is that no one is likely to get far in any sort of business without persistent, steady, hard work. Don't be discouraged because your proposed profession involves hard work.
There is often a considerable advantage to a boy in choosing to carry on the business which his father has followed. His unconscious observation of the details of his father's business gives him a handicap over another man going into the same business wholly without experience. He is likely to know more about his father's business than any other. The counsel and advice which the older man could give the younger should never be disregarded, and the ready opening which the younger man might find in his father's profession or establishment when his education is completed should not be undervalued. The fact that such a man will be prepared for the difficulties and the discouragements of his profession, and will not be surprised or caught unawares by them will contribute somewhat to his success. There is more independence, of course, in starting out alone, and most boys like so far as possible to feel that they are under obligation to no one, and have been the cause of their own success. It is better, however, to be a good farmer on the old home place than it is to be a second-rate engineer on your own account.
It is usually a mistake to let some one else make the choice for you, even if the person who offers to do so or who insists upon doing so is your father or mother. I know parents who select the professions for their children and map out in minute detail the line of education each one is to follow, and who have everything all settled, perhaps, even before the child is born. It is a process which more often than otherwise results in a lack of enthusiasm if not in failure on the part of the child. I can at this time recall only one young fellow whose father, contrary to the boy's own desires, picked out a profession for his son, who ever accomplished much that was worth while in the work he undertook. It is about as safe to allow some one else to select for you the girl you are to marry as it is to let him, without regard to your interests and desires, pick out for you your life work. The choice ought to be your own.
Chilton, stumbling through his sophomore year in college, had been making a sad failure; he showed no enthusiasm, no interest, no energy in the work for which he was registered.
"Why are you taking engineering?" I asked. "You don't like mathematics, and mechanics is a closed book to you."
"Well, I never wanted to do it," he replied. "I really wanted to go into business, but father insisted on my studying engineering because he thought it offered the best opportunities to a young fellow of anything going, and because Uncle John is in a position to give me a job and a good start when I have graduated."
Chilton will never make an engineer no matter how hard his father sets his jaw and no matter how good a job his Uncle John has waiting for him, because he hasn't a mathematical brain, he doesn't like engineering, and he has not learned to do anything well which he doesn't like.
This leads me to say that there is probably no more foolish practice than to choose a business or a profession purely because in itself it seems to offer peculiar opportunities or attractions. All through the summer following their graduation from high school, boys come to see me or write to me concerning their entrance to college.
"What do you think is a good course for a fellow to take up?" they ask me, with the idea in mind that there must be some work par excellence in itself, regardless of the individual or of his attitude toward his work. They do not see that it is the man and not the profession that brings about success. They argue that because electricity is the coming motive power, electrical engineering is really the only course to pursue if they are going to college, or possibly that because chemistry has played such a wonderful part in the war and will play an even more wonderful part in the reconstruction which follows the war, chemistry is an unusually good field for a boy to enter. They are, no doubt, correct in supposing that chemistry and electricity will be more generally than ever put to practical use in the coming years, but no course is in itself a good course, and no line of work offers special opportunities unless the men who pursue them show special fitness.
There was a letter in my mail only a few days ago from a young fellow just graduated from high school, who, without money, was considering the possibility of going to college.
"I should like to know," he wrote, "just what special inducements your University will offer me in the way of a chance to earn my living. I want to go to college, and I am intending to choose the college which will make me the most attractive offer and the course which suggests the greatest future." He mentioned no special fitness, no talents or training or experience which should give bim preference or precedence over other boys.
I replied that he was looking at the matter from the wrong angle. The college welcomes the boy who has most ability, who can do something better than common, who has special fitness for a definite job, and such a boy can get a job almost anywhere he goes. It is in such a way as this young fellow was looking at his job in college that some men regard a profession. They are willing to sell themselves to the profession which bids the highest, not realizing that it is their own personal qualities and interest which determine whether or not the job is worth while. I am convinced that many of the failures which young fellows meet in all lines of business and especially in technical courses in college come largely from the fact that men have gone into them not because of any special fitness or of any special interest in the work or liking for it, but because they felt that the particular business or profession which they were taking up offered an easy and sure approach to success.
In choosing a profession one ought to be willing to reach success slowly and by reasonable stages.
Cowan did well in high school and college. He was not afraid of work, he showed enthusiasm, and he was dependable. His character was above reproach, and his personality was unusually attractive. I used often to marvel at the ease with which he met people, the rapidity with which he made friends, and the facility with which he dispatched business; but yet he did not get on. He tried life insurance but gave it up at the end of a few months; he took up the real estate business; he was a traveling salesman for a tractor company; he went in with a reputable manufacturing concern; but he did not stick long. He drifted from one thing to another, and at the end of ten years he had got nowhere; yet everyone admitted his ability.
The real cause of his failure was that Cowan wanted to succeed at a bound; he was looking for something that would make him rich or famous or independent in a short time. He was not willing to go through the long period of servitude and drudgery that practically every successful or professional or business man has found necessary before he reached the goal of his ambitions. So he rushed from one rainbow end to another in a vain endeavor to find the pot of gold without digging for it.
Two friends of mine, a steady, successful, middle-aged eouple, were stopping for a time at a high-priced hotel in the Allegheny mountains.
"Isn't it strange," Mrs. Granger said to her husband, "how few young people there are here. Almost everyone is middle-aged or past it."
"That's easy," her husband responded. "A man has to be forty-five before he has made enough money to afford to come here."
It is a hard lesson for a boy to learn that in any profession or business that is worth while success comes slowly. Persistence is necessary; faithfulness, courage and willingness to wait for results. It is the hardest, after all, for a boy to learn to wait, for him to realize that the profession or business that promises immediate success is frequently, like the skilfully gilded brick, a thing to be wary of.
One should not choose a profession in which he has no special interest and for the work of which he has no liking. A month or two ago a high school senior from a neighboring state brought to me a letter of introduction from a former student of mine with the request that I should give the boy advice as to the choice of his profession. The young fellow seemed normal in every way. His course in high school had been well balanced and was made up of mathematics, and language, and science varied enough to test his ability. He had done one thing about as well as another. It did seem, however, that he had rather unusual talents in music. The history of his family on both his father's and mother's side showed musical appreciation and technical skill. He was himself a more than ordinarily skilful pianist. It was my friend's opinion that the boy ought to study music and prepare himself to become a professional musician rather than to take scientific or technical work. I talked with him for some time to get his reactions.
"What do you want to do?" I finally asked him.
"I'd rather be a chemical engineer than anything else in the world," was his reply. "l'd be willing to work my head off, if I could get a chance to study chemistry."
His point of view is the only safe guide to the solution of the problem of choosing a profession. Interest, desire, the willingness to work at a thing because one likes it—that is the test which every boy should apply to himself when he is making the choice of the work which he is to take up for life. Every business, every profession is full of men who are working because they have to do so and not because they want to do sof who drag themselves to their tasks with lagging steps and unenthusiastic spirits. The most favored positions in life are full of difficulties. Every position and every profession has its trials and its hard problems that will test the courage and try the temper of the best of men. Unless one likes his work, unless he can show interest and enthusiasm in it, his lot is a sad one. One should choose for his life work something in which he will find pleasure, he should go to it every morning with delight and should leave it with something like regret. Otherwise there will be for him constant grumbling, unrest and discontent.
It is easy to find illustrations of the fact that interest and enthusiasm will work wonders. Not many years ago a young fellow from a country town in the middle west applied for admission to one of our middle west educational institutions. He had had no high school training, and the admission requirements of the institution were severe. He was past twenty-one years of age, however, so that he was admitted on trial as a special student and allowed to attempt to carry the regular work of the freshman year of the course in which he was interested. It was his greatest pleasure to have a chance to study the subjects which he liked, and he carried that same interest and enthusiasm to all other subjects which he attempted or which he was required to take. During his leisure hours he devoted himself to the high school work which he had missed as a boy, passed it off by examination, and at the end of four years and a half he graduated as an honor student.
No one ever thought that he had a brilliant mind; he had interest and he was willing to work. If such a man as he without adequate preparation, and with only average brains, could through desire and interest mainly, accomplish such gratifying results, what could a thoroughly well-prepared man not do? And what is true of one sort of work is true of another. It is the man who is working because he enjoys it who throws his whole soul into what he is doing and who can not be excelled or defeated. It is the men who have no enthusiasms, and who can't get down to work, who are always in doubt as to whether or not they have chosen correctly, and who seldom succeed. The young fellow who knows what he wants to do and is willing and eager to do whatever is necessary to accomplish his purposes is a long way toward success. The man who doesn't know his own mind, who is waiting for someone to pick out for him a good job, or to set him up in a successful business, has little chance of getting anywhere.
Men say sometimes that the thing they would like most to do requires so much preparation before they are ready to go on with it, that they can not afford the time or the money required to fit them to begin. They would like to be lawyers or physicians or preachers or architects or whatever it may be, but to be a well-prepared physician requires seven or eight years of study and preparation not to speak of the sum of money to be expended, and they feel that they will be half through life before they are ready to take up its duties. Men excuse themselves for not finishing a college course which they have begun, on the ground that they have found a good opening or have been offered an unusually attractive position and they fear that if they wait to complete their education all the good jobs will be gone. Opportunity knocks but once, they say, and they are convinced that he is now at their door.
Over against these facts, however, are others. Noone has ever been heard to regret, no matter what sort of business or profession he is in, that his preparation was too carefully made, that he put in too much time or too much money on his preliminary education, or did too much studying before he began. On the other hand, there are illustrations without number of men who bemoan the fact all their lives that they gave too little time to preparation and that they made their greatest mistake in not finishing their education. Illustrations innumerable can be found, also, of men who even in middle life got into the professions for which a delayed preparation had been made and who have more than made good.
The boy or the young man, therefore, who hesitates about taking up the profession or the business which he likes best because of the time or the money necessary to prepare for it, or the man who rushes into work ill prepared because he is afraid all the good jobs will be gone if he waits, is making a serious mistake. It is far better to take up a profession we like even late in life than it is to drag out a dull existence in doing the things mechanically which fail to bring out our best efforts. It is better to finish one's preparations as thoroughly as possible and trust to the fact that there are always good jobs for the man who is fitted to hold them.
Fitness, interest, enthusiasm, willingness to work, thorough preparation—these are the vital things to be considered by any young fellow in the choice of a profession.