Renaissance Man.
Or, alternatively, Jack of All Trades.
I'd like to think that this will be because of the depth and breadth of my intellect and of my skill set, but the truth is that we all will experienced in many fields. We'll have to be, or else we probably won't survive. You may call me hyperbolic, and to an extent you would be justified in doing so. However, based on a recent video put together by Scott McLeod, Jeff Bronman, and Karl Fish, researchers estimate that today's learner, the younger half of Generation Y, will have held 10-14 different jobs by the age of 38. If one assumes that they refer only to legally-held jobs with taxable income (the kind of job you can't get until you're at least 16 in most states), that means the longest (on average) any of us will be able to hold a job is a little more than two years.
I didn't get my first real job until the summer after I graduated from high school. In the (almost) 5 years since then, I've held three other jobs, each for no longer than a year. That would seem to agree with the findings put forth in the video. But I've been in college this whole time. In a few months, I will graduate and enter a job market that simply isn't hiring, and I am absolutely terrified. The best case scenario, so it would seem, is that in the next 15 years, I will hold another 6-10 jobs.
But maybe that's not really so bad. We Gen-Yers were born into the economic boom of the 80s, were too young to really be affected by the hiccup of the early 90s, and then grew up during one of the most prosperous times in recent history. Our parents may not have had it easy growing up, but I think everyone would agree that they were better off than our grandparents who were either born into or lived through the Great Depression. Both of my grandfathers ended their careers in incredibly different fields than where they began, and went through innumerable changes in between, often holding more than one job at a time.
I joked above that 10 jobs in the next 15 years was the best case scenario, but I'm not so sure I have to say that facetiously. We've all heard our grandparents tell us that we don't understand the value of a dollar, or of hard work, or of experience; and inevitably we've all laughed it off as just old person crazy-talk, but I think that maybe they were right. I do honestly believe that we are a generation of positive change, but in order for us to achieve that goal, first we need to understand hardship like our grandparents did, and to embrace it for the experience it will bring us. Perhaps these things have changed and they don't understand where we're at either, but we're not going to figure it all out by bitching about our lot in life.
So I say, bring it on. 10 jobs in 15 years? Absolutely. I hope they range from rodeo clown to electrician, from teacher to yoga instructor. Bring. It. On.
For anyone interested in the video I mentioned, it can be found here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UIDLIwlzkgY
