Back when I was studying in the specialized English class, I complained to my father asking what one could do by specializing in languages. He said: “Mr. Nguyen Manh Cam went from being an interpreter to becoming the Minister of Foreign Affairs, after all.” I studied, hoping that one day I would become a good diplomat.
At the age of 17, I changed my mind, wanting only to become a philosopher and literary critic, so I read all kinds of philosophy books, scriptures, and literature. During my first year of university, obsessed with the character Sherlock Holmes, I was determined to become a criminologist and psychologist. By the end of my first year, because of basic survival needs, I switched to studying commerce to easily find a job. By the end of my third year, impressed by a friend pursuing a PhD in artificial intelligence, I wanted to become a scientist. And so I spent 7 years researching economics.
At the age of 28, upon completing my PhD, I thought I finally knew what I wanted to do. But no, after three years of doing research, I only then realized that I truly did not want (and could not) do science. I transitioned to mergers and acquisitions (M&A) consulting, a profession in the finance industry that requires a personality vastly different from teaching and research. My entering business was something unthinkable to my old friends, who always thought of me as a bookworm.
A friend of mine graduated from Hanoi Medical University, completed a master’s degree at a very famous university in the US, and is now very happy working as a professional photographer and teaching part-time. Another female friend studied diplomacy, and now practices golf all day to become one of the top female golfers in Vietnam.
Before every university entrance exam, the thing parents and administrators talk about the most is career orientation for their children. Identifying passion, career orientation, and forecasting job demand trends are considered very important things for young people. Failing to get into the school or major of their choice is viewed as a source of suffering for them and their families, as well as a failure of the state.
However, I think differently.
I am certain that most of us will change careers at least once in our lives, and the first job is usually never the last, especially in this 21st century. Passion and career orientation will change very quickly for young people. Just like us, when first stepping into life, 12 years of K-12 schooling is far too little for young people to experience life, to truly know what they like, what they do, and what they are capable of doing. How can we tell young people to orient their careers and passions when there is so little information?
Therefore, I do not highly value the need to orient or forecast careers for young people. Career awareness can only come through actually experiencing and interacting with the world that is far larger outside of school. The path to discovering one’s life passion is rarely a straight line. It is full of obstacles and will change over time, often very randomly. A nudge of fate can also transform you from a resigned housewife into a fiery entrepreneur, and vice versa.
Furthermore, career choice also depends heavily on another extremely important factor: The future is uncertain. Vietnam in 10–20 years will be far different from what is in our imagination.
There are hundreds of thousands of factors influencing the future that no one can control or forecast. Every single experience, an external impact, a piece of good luck or misfortune, also significantly affects the future.
More than 11 years ago, no one predicted that one day, the “largest newspaper in the world” would be the social networking site Facebook and would cause thousands of journalists to lose their jobs. The unexpected collapse of the financial and real estate markets in Vietnam recently has made studying finance and banking run the risk of going out of style. Ten years ago, who would have thought that one day agriculture, services, tourism, restaurants, and hotels would become very “fashionable” industries and professions in Vietnam today.
The uncertainty of the future in a dizzyingly changing world will make most of the orientations and plans of young people and parents no longer accurate.
So if the future is uncertain, what must we do? Since we cannot control the future, the most important thing is to prepare well to adapt well. We need to be comprehensively educated so that we can cope with all changes, rather than knowing only one trade. To do so, open-mindedness, creativity, critical thinking ability, a learning mindset, foreign languages, and a multidisciplinary approach are the most important skills.
One of the most progressive points of modern higher education is the philosophy of liberal arts education. This philosophy holds that students need to be comprehensively trained across multiple fields such as: social sciences, humanities, natural sciences, and basic sciences. Community colleges, liberal arts colleges, and the first two years at major universities in the US usually train according to this philosophy. Students will specialize more deeply in their 3rd and 4th years. I hope universities in Vietnam and young people can follow that path of comprehensive development during the first years of university instead of trying to learn just one trade that later on most of you will not work in. And if post-secondary education in Vietnam cannot yet accomplish this, young people themselves should equip themselves by self-studying, working early, accumulating experience, and experiencing as much as possible.
Later on, even if working in finance, knowledge of literature will help you a lot when writing and communicating; if working in medicine, an understanding of psychology will also help doctors empathize more with patients. An engineer who knows about art will also produce more beautiful designs (Steve Jobs’s designs for Apple were heavily influenced by his years studying calligraphy). The more you experience and gain exposure to multiple disciplines, the better prepared you will be for an uncertain future.
Do not think that entering life means immediately determining what career you will pursue. At some point, you will discover what you truly like, what you want to do, and what you are capable of doing.
And the future will always be uncertain. Equip your luggage well and do not box your life into just one direction.
Nguyen Quoc Toan
