Contradictions

I first saw him through his mother. She came with his father, a very quiet man. And she told me to pay special attention to her son, a guy suffering from – yes, one more! – ADD. After a couple of days, I finally met him. A handsome teenager who, after a dozen of words or so, told me, of course, that he suffered from ADD. Time passed and I began wondering why such a friendly and charming young man was only described as having ADD, if he was so much more than that. There seemed to be plenty of adjectives one could use to talk about him, so why look exclusively at the ADD?

By the way, does he really have ADD?

In our second or third meeting, he told me his classmates probably though he was crazy. “Why?” – I asked. He didn’t know what to answer. “What is a crazy person for you?” – I helped him define the situation. He spoke all kinds of things – except those which could describe him. “Do you think you’re crazy?” He didn’t. “Do your friends have any reason to think you’re crazy?” They don’t.

Finding out what to do with his life was the matter. “Choosing always leads me to make the wrong decision,” he wrote. “What is the right decision? When to recognize it?” From his point of view, “when something gathers all of your attention.” Speaking of attention, and having in mind his case of ADD, I questioned him: “Is it possible that something will ever gather all of your attention?” He laughed: “No.”

He also wrote that he’s always wanted to be the favourite (being the favourite means having all the attention – maybe even too much, an amount of attention he will never have towards anything). Other of his beliefs are: “If I studied, I could be the best.” Then, why doesn’t you study? While he doesn’t study, he can keep being a promise and depend on this illusion of success. What if he studies and ends up not being the best? What is, for him, to be the best?

It would also be interesting to note that, specifically when it comes to the choice of a career, he tells: “When I am between two things, a third one always ends up coming to confuse me even more.” And what do their parents think about it? His (quiet) father accepts all his choices… his mother, however, doesn’t want him to study Business (his preferred choice). “She says that based on the example of a cousin of mine who studied that and didn’t succeed.” An invasive mother always thinks she knows everything about her son, as if he was her object, her toy, part of her instead of another individual. Toys can be reduced to tags and can have their destiny traced by us. As for people, they’re much more than that. Much more complicated and less predictable than that.

Rewards

I guess being a teacher is one of the most rewarding careers, because in the hands of a teacher lies the power of making a difference, making a change in other people’s lives.

I myself have been a teacher both of free courses (TEFL) and university courses (writing and interviewing), and I know you really have to put yourself on stage in this position, meaning you really have to do your job with passion. If you want to gather an audience, you really have to be there and believe in what you’re doing. As a teacher of English, I really did. Teaching journalism, not really often, since I would always suspect that there was little a teacher could do for a student in this field. Besides belief, maybe I lacked passion, too? I don’t know.

What I know is that when a teacher speaks with passion, it’s impossible for the students not to be touched. If a teacher is passionate, we could think that he/she perhaps wouldn’t care about his students’ feedback, since working with passion is satisfying enough. That’s where the rewards come in, in two ways. First, when a teacher feels he has played a role for a student to suceed, he/she wins a internal gold medal saying that his/her efforts were not wasted. I remember having students who thought they would never learn how to speak English. They indeed have difficulties, but it was a challenge for me to help them overcome their failures. And, many times, I could get to know that I did a good job. Another rewarding moment is when a student simply comes to you and says: “Thank you.”

Last week, I could experience simple rewarding moments like those from different sides. I had to thank a wonderful professor whose classes were over, and I was thanked by two teenagers for my counselling job at the school. It wasn’t even a formal counselling, just an approach – but it had an effect. Listening to someone, for my surprise, sometimes has quite an effect. But when I do it I always have in mind some of the lessons of the professor I thanked: we have to listen to someone and understand in which position this person puts him/herself in. Our lives are, for ourselves, fictions that we build, stories that we tell, and the change comes not from changing reality, but from changing the fiction and the role we play in it. This was a precious lesson and I couldn’t help but praising the teacher who made psychology seem so simple and fascinating at the same time. If I hadn’t thanked him, he would never know he had made a difference. If we have the opportunity of letting someone know he/she has made a difference, we should feel rewarded, too, because we may be making a difference in this person’s life as well. What’s this world about, if not making a difference in other people’s lives?

Self-concept and the choice of a career

The most relevant question is: who I am? After that, in order to know in what occupation I would fit best, I also have to have a fair knowledge of the available occupations. But how does one know who he is? It will depend on the concept he has of himself, that is, his self-concept.

When we are very young, we learn what is good and what isn’t by punishment and gratifications. We also learn what works out in certain situations by observing and imitating people around us. As we grow older, we start practicing such behaviors in social life. Depending on the kind of family we have and on the kind of environment where we grew up, some of our usual behaviors won’t prove themselves useful. We either won’t be praised so often, or won’t be punished so often. Our self-concepts suffer a change, various changes, until we are what we are. We keep changing along life, but we usually keep a rather stable personality after adolescence.

During our teen years, we’re still experiencing the world and exploring society and culture. Many times, we have an idea of how we would like to be, but we end up not having resources to change so much as to live up to our models. It doesn’t mean we are not as good as them; it means we are different. We’ll have to adjust to the world, either changing to achieve a certain position, either finding a position or an occupation that makes us feel comfortable. Consequently, choosing a career is adjusting our self-concept to a profession. It’s knowing who we are and where we can find satisfaction. Perhaps we should sometimes sit a little far from ourselves and examine, from that distance, what kind of person we are and what kind of person we can or cannot be.

What to take into accout…

Today I had two clients (students) debate what they thought was more important when choosing a career: money or love. Should one choose what he thinks has more chances of making him a wealthy person, or should one choose by what he loves to do, regardless of the money that may come -or not- in the future? Clearly, it’s impossible to predict how the market will behave: software engineers are doing well today, but who’s to say this will last? Who’s to say a lawyer makes more money than a teacher? It all depends, and I still vote for the love. But, also, who’s to say that people see life through the same glasses? They just don’t, and some of them may indeed be able to work with something they don’t truly love, go home at night and have a beer. What called my attention was that although one of the guys was so inclined to study something like Design that his eyes would even bright when he talked about it, he might end up studying Law. He’s a smart guy, which means he can become either a good lawyer or a designer, but the way he talks about Law shows no passion, no true interest, except the money. I can’t help but wonder: will he be happy with his choice?