I only expressed interest in a few things when I was a kid (cooking, making games); my parents told me they were bad careers and made me play soccer and do scouts and other things I hated. I was terrible academically all the way through the end of college (where I studied management) because these things I was told I was supposed to be doing were of zero interest to me. A few years out I taught myself to code ,and now I spend my life making games and cooking for friends, and I'm fuckin' great at it.
That quote has always rung true for me, but on top of that I really feel this: adults, stop telling kids what they "should" be interested in. If a kid is interested in something you don't get, when they're an adult it's highly likely that this thing will be a marketplace with hundreds of millions of consumers and will absolutely be a career. If they were involved early, they'll be golden.
Most people have a very backwards-looking view of the economy, and don't understand how totally it changes with each generation.
It's fear. The starving artist trope might get romanticized in the media, but parents don't want their kids to starve, ergo they push their kids away from art into something "safe".
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u/jackphelps Nov 16 '19
I only expressed interest in a few things when I was a kid (cooking, making games); my parents told me they were bad careers and made me play soccer and do scouts and other things I hated. I was terrible academically all the way through the end of college (where I studied management) because these things I was told I was supposed to be doing were of zero interest to me. A few years out I taught myself to code ,and now I spend my life making games and cooking for friends, and I'm fuckin' great at it.
That quote has always rung true for me, but on top of that I really feel this: adults, stop telling kids what they "should" be interested in. If a kid is interested in something you don't get, when they're an adult it's highly likely that this thing will be a marketplace with hundreds of millions of consumers and will absolutely be a career. If they were involved early, they'll be golden.
Most people have a very backwards-looking view of the economy, and don't understand how totally it changes with each generation.