0Some of you have finished your year 12 exams now, and the rest of you are hot on their heels. Mazal tov on finishing an incredible chapter of your lives, and on surviving one of the most difficult and intense environments you’ll ever experience.
But shedding those pangs of late-night cramming, textbooks and memorising essays may also come with a realisation that now is the time to decide what you’ll be doing with yourself in the next few decades. Deciding what university course to pursue, or what apprenticeship to apply for may seem imminent and the decisions may even seem permanent, but rest assured it isn’t so.
It’s great if you have a good inkling for what you want to be when you grow up – a doctor, a lawyer, a teacher, an engineer or a nurse – but if you have no idea, don’t think it’s the end the world. In fact, not knowing what you want your future to hold is a great thing. It means you can use the next few years of your life to experience the world, take different opportunities and see where all of them lead.
If you’re not even sure you want to jump straight in to the rest of your life, you can take the opportunity to travel and see where you end up. You can take a grant of up to US$10,000 from MASA, an Israeli government initiative, to study, learn or volunteer in Israel for a year. Or, take off and backpack through South America, wait tables in Europe or run a camp in America.
The people you’ll meet and the places you’ll go will give you plenty of ideas about the future in ways you can’t even imagine. Finding your calling to be a chef, or a social activist or a teacher could all come in some obscure, out there location.
If uni is something you do want to get into, you have much more to look forward to than just PowerPoint slides and uncomfortable seats. You’ll probably have an eye for your strengths from the subjects you enjoyed at school, and you can look to continue them. Because of the plethora of options available at university you can dabble in different subjects until you find out what really, truly excites you.
Do a general degree, like Arts, Science or Commerce and take a subject you might otherwise not have the chance to learn about. If you think Law & Order is cool, take criminology and explore that, or if you’ve always wondered what’s above, take a class in astronomy.
But sometimes you just fall into things. In my first week of university I wound up in the wrong lecture theatre and took my first sociology class by accident. There were words, concepts and ideas I’d always been interested in but didn’t quite know how to dive in and learn more. I changed some subjects around and wound up doing more sociology than the economics I’d originally planned to study. My interest had been spiked and I was hooked.
Also take the chance to meet new people. I don’t know about you, but as much as I loved the learning atmosphere of my Jewish day school I always felt it lacking. There was a whole world outside that’s there to be explored; it’s something I never went about doing. After school you’re afforded the time and the opportunities to get to know people from all different backgrounds and from all around the world.
Embrace it – take the time to get to know how they got to where they are and the details of their life and their path; it might inspire you, or give you an idea of something that you can pursue yourself.
And that’s the lesson in all of this. If there’s the glimmer of an open door, run towards and through it and see where it leads. If the world presents you with a choice you’ve always wanted, don’t be scared to take a chance on learning something new and embrace it. As the rest of your world opens up you’ll get a great sense of where your future can lead.
Finally, take some advice from Baz Luhrmann: “Don’t feel guilty if you don’t know what you want to do with your life. The most interesting people I know didn’t know at 22 what they wanted to do with their lives. Some of the most interesting 40 year olds I know, still don’t.”
Good luck, and I’m sure our paths will cross soon.
This column was originally published in the Australian Jewish News.
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