Wednesday, April 6, 2016

What Do You Want To Do? Want Do You Want To Be?

I felt that after a visit to Google and Facebook (thank you Patrick and Jarred) that I should write something about my daughters comments about their future career plans. Not that Kathy or I expect either of our daughters to have the slightest clue what they want to be, nor should we expect them to have any idea what they want to be or do. However it got us all talking.

Now of course when we were visiting the head quarters two of the best know companies in the world where meals are all free, laundry is free, gym facilities are free, and there are free bikes for anyone to use when ever they want, it's hard for a visitor not to say, "I want to work here!" (For the record John and Gary, I personally never said out loud that I wanted to work at either Google or Facebook. Kathy will attest to this. Not that any jobs were offered...). However, when we got back to where we were staying for the night I asked both girls to talk about all the different jobs we've seen that people do during this trip. The first words out of their mouth were, "We don't have to write a paper about this, do we dad?" I said they didn't if we could have a good discussion.

We talked about all the different jobs that we've seen people do on this trip: Clem and his winery in Maine, Sophia and her pop up kitchen's in Tennessee, Martha at Mockingbird Hill Farm in Georgia, Chaz on the ranch in Texas, Bob the water source expert in Utah, and of course Patrick at Google and Jarred at Facebook (along with many, many others). When they considered everything they had seen and experienced their opinions changed a bit. Siena said she wants to be just like Bob, exploring the mountains and rivers around Salt Lake City and testing the water quality. Nadia said she wants to be just like Sophia, a cook! (Sophia does a lot more than just cook, but if you check out her Instagram  account, you'll see why Nadia wants to be a cook like Sophia. Granted, by later in the night, both of their future career goals had completely changed again.
Clem giving the girls a tour of his winery in Maine
Sophia teaching the girls about essential oils (Sophia does more than cook)
Siena feeding the goats on Mockingbird Hill Farm
Chaz showing the girls how to feed each cow by hand, which he does every day
Nadia learning how they take naps at Google
The girls updating THE Facebook Wall
One part of why I wanted to do this trip was to show the girls a wide sampling of the sort of things people do for a living across America. I personally had no idea of the vast different career choices there were out there when I finished college. I had great plans for how we would try and see as many different sorts of jobs that people do across the country. In the end, I was never organized enough to put together a proper educational tour of careers across America. However, we have met lots of interesting people and saw lots of different ways of making a living. Perhaps the girls will look back on this trip some day in the future and be able to use the memories of this experience to open up possibilities that they might not have otherwise considered. For right now at least, I'm just happy that Siena is open to ideas other than moving to Hawaii and becoming an shark trainer, and Nadia is no longer dead set on being Taylor Swift when she grows up.

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