TRUTH BE TOLD
OH, THE PLACES YOU’LL GO!
Image credit: HARSH GUPTA on Unsplash.
By DR VICKI BISMILLA
I read about a career recently that I had never heard of before – that of a financial trauma researcher.
It was a story about a woman who fled an abusive childhood in Saskatoon and hiked to Toronto where she lived on the streets for several years until she found a room in a home for homeless people.
She worked several low-paying jobs, often concurrently, and married a singer-songwriter who made no money and refused to find a job. She supported him and their children until their divorce and then continued to give money to her grown kids by working multiple jobs.
Through therapy she was made to understand that her kids are okay and she need not give them money. She and her grown children now maintain a close, healthy relationship. Her overextending, enabling behaviour was a trauma-response which often happens to people who have suffered trauma that made them feel unsafe, unloved and unworthy so they overcompensate by doing things that they think will keep them loved. In addition to feeling empathy for the woman, what interested me is the career in this kind of financial trauma research and therapy.
When I led teams in school boards and college I used to say to curriculum leaders that children in kindergarten today will graduate high school and potentially enter careers for which we do not yet have names. While many current jobs will endure the test of time, they will evolve and new fields will emerge so we must teach not only skills needed in today’s world but skills that children must be able to navigate in the future. In our own lifetimes we have seen jobs emerge that we had not imagined in the fields of cellular technology, surgery, robotics, internet prowess and even films and movies. Through rapidly growing technology, automation and artificial intelligence, jobs are evolving.
With drones being more and more used, air traffic control will grow exponentially and be more complicated. While doctors and nurses will continue being critical to healthcare, support careers in healthcare are growing, like medical mentors who liaise between hospitals and patients recovering at home after surgery or other health crises. Even medical interpreters are emerging in the new fields of genetic medicine and genetic editing. Today’s IT specialists will need to be a lot nimbler in meeting human technology needs. With the world now being more chaotic and technology outwitting us as we age, careers are sprouting in the area of tech-mentoring and coaching. So technology, mathematics, chemistry, healthcare support, information and data security, building and construction trades, financial planning all seem to be growing and evolving careers.
Engineering is changing and growing incredibly fast. With artificial intelligence, the once sci-fi movie imaginings are becoming reality. Engineers are using algorithms to create face and touch-recognition technology even on cell phones. Cloud-architects and cloud based in-home voice services like Alexa were unheard of until very recently. Millions of job possibilities are emerging in software engineering. The scary thought of driverless cars is here, while we are still dealing with unfit, frightening drivers. Data scientists are storing, harvesting and analyzing unimaginable loads of information. And space and civil engineering jobs are emerging in the vast unexplored areas of space, ocean and ice-cap exploration and possible colonization.
I can see us needing community counsellors and psychologists to help people whose minds are being bombarded by a world that is fast becoming incomprehensible.
The World Economic Forum in their Future of Jobs report maintains that, “Disruptive changes to business models will have a profound impact on the employment landscape over the coming years. Many of the major drivers of transformation currently affecting global industries are expected to have a significant impact on jobs. In such a rapidly evolving employment landscape, the ability to anticipate and prepare for future skills requirements, job content and the aggregate effect on employment is increasingly critical for businesses, governments and individuals in order to fully seize the opportunities presented by these trends – and to mitigate undesirable outcomes.”
I would love to hear how readers are preparing their school-age children for their foray into careers to come.
Dr Vicki Bismilla is a retired Superintendent of Schools and retired college Vice-President, Academic, and Chief Learning Officer. She has authored two books.