Gen Y Gives Thanks: Career fluidity because of opportunity

Gen Y has the courage to change careers because
they are aware of ad grateful for opportunities.
(Photo: Photoxpress.com)

Long gone are the days where a profession or a trade is chosen at a young age and worked diligently until retirement. Career changes happen. Frequently.

Generation Y already has a bad reputation for frequently skipping around jobs and careers. This isn’t a bad thing or necessarily an indicator of flakiness. Rather, it is a manifestation that Gen Y has already figured out evolution is going to happen, change is going to be necessary and they aren’t afraid to take a leap.

Rebecca Vandiver, a 30-year old lawyer and career coach in Atlanta, came to this realization this year and is thankful she courageously followed it.

“I am most grateful to have learned this year there isn't one occupation I was destined to do and that I'm not a failure for not knowing since the age of 5 what that is. It can be paralyzing to think that you can't make a move until you figure that out.  We are all evolving, so what's right for someone now is different than what was right for that person five years ago or will be right for him or her in the future. I'm grateful to have taken the pressure off and accept that my career is still a work in progress. I'm excited to see where it goes! I now enjoy my job as a lawyer a lot more and have helped other lawyers and recent law school graduates figure out what they want to do with their law degrees.”

Garnering the courage to take a leap partially takes being aware of and grateful for opportunities. Natalie MacNeil, 23, co-founder of GarageEntrepreneurs.com of Waterloo, Ontario, realizes the abundance of opportunities makes change and control of her own destiny possible. She knows this is a reason to be grateful.

“I find myself especially thankful for opportunity this year. I had the chance to travel to more than 50 countries and it really opened my eyes to how fortunate we are to have opportunities that people elsewhere in the world can only dream about. We can attend school, go to college, rise to the top of our field, start a business- -the sky is the limit. Without opportunity, even the most brilliant and hard working people are limited in what they can achieve. There is no limit to what you can achieve when you pair hard work with opportunity. Opportunities allow us to completely control our destinies and that is something I am extremely grateful for.”

Read more about Vandiver and MacNeil’s journey on their blogs: www.rebeccavandiver.com/blog and www.SheTakesOnTheWorld.com

Note: The Bureau of Labor Statistics does not issue statistics about career changes because the definition of career change is rather ambiguous. 

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