Sharing my 2 cents of the age old concept of the career ladder!
Traditionally, we were “told” to pick a ladder and then climb to the top.
I feel 1) that this puts a lot of unnecessary pressure on people to decide immediately upon graduation what we want to do.
2) It leads people to think there’s only 1 right “ladder” to pick. Also, after trying out a job (for a few years or more) and realising this is not the job we envisioned
3) Many feel paralysed to make the next step when they realized they have been “climbing up the wrong ladder”.
I don’t believe there is only 1 right path for us. We have the time to explore and change direction if need be. We don’t have to conform to norms and make ourselves unhappy. Ain’t nobody got time for that! We don’t have to worry about what naysayers think because it’s not their life.
A book I read recently aptly said: “There are multiple great lives within us and we get to choose which one to build our way forward”.
Note to self and friends: Sometimes the fun in life is the exploring itself, we don’t have to constantly have it figured out all the time!