Big Life Decisions

There is a wonderful scene in Dispatches from Elsewhere where the character, Simone, goes back to her former college professor for help with something. He tells her he was hoping she was coming to re-enroll. Simone responds that she feels she's not in a position to make big life decisions. He points out that it's not a big life decision, it's just a decision for now and she's allowed to change her mind. He himself had started in Marine Biology before deciding he was passionate about art. "We make a decision and then if we need to, we make another decision".

With kids at school, they fall into a path or hobby (or parental pressure) and it grows, and they're pushed along, forgetting that at any point they can decide to follow another interest. They need to pick subjects to carry them through the last years of school, with limited experience in any of them. They need to pick University courses or jobs with a long career in mind, more or less when they're fifteen years old.

But it's not really how life works, so why do we set them up with this expectation placed upon them?

At a talk at one of the Universities, they asked everyone over 35 to put their hand up if they were still doing the thing they started when they left school. Not a single hand went up, including lecturer's. The conversations framed around the HSC are completely unrealistic.

I think we'd take a lot of pressure off school leavers if we made them understand this. The next step after the HSC means very little, in the grand scheme of thing.  Perhaps better advice for these kids, pressured into deciding their future at 18 is, as the art  professor says "Find something that makes you feel good, try it out. You're allowed to be wrong".

It doesn't matter if you don't know what you want to do next, just do whatever is in front of you, but do it with purpose and dedication, and to the best of your abilities.

We have mistakenly somehow turned the HSC into some sort of achievement in itself, and done a disservice to the students in the process. Rather than preparing for a new beginning, the focus is too sharp on marking the end of school. The students feel enormous (and unnecessary) pressure for the HSC exams, but as we see with the University drop out rates, they also aren't prepared for the expectations of what lies beyond the school gate.  We have failed them in their final year of school and their readiness for their choices afterwards.

There is a new push in schools to make pupils see that year 12 is actually a transitional preparation year, preparing the pupil for work or study after the completion of their school years. We need to remember the HSC is merely the starting point of adulthood, not a destination in itself and in no way should it be viewed with the importance of a 'Big Life Decision'.

Linking with #MLSTL as a reminder that in life there are really very few Big Life Decisions.