Careers Advice

"I wanted to be a photographer, so I made do with radiology instead. Look here are my favourite snaps! Mrs Leung's colon, beautiful"

Today my brother said something unremarkable. It’s unremarkable because I’ve heard it from the mouths of hundreds of my Asian friends. I use the term ‘Asian’ fairly loosely and somewhat in the more American sense, in that it refers to Chinese, Korean, Indians, and most of South-East Asia. I also use the term ‘hundreds’ loosely, but that’s another matter of grandiose delusions.

He said, with a note of resignation, “There are only 5 career choices for Asians. Doctor, Lawyer, Finance/Businessman, Engineer and erm…wait forget that there’s only 4”. This was during yet another discussion in which my parents pined and moaned, questioning him relentlessly on what he’s ‘going to do with his life’. A reasonable question from parents perhaps, one that’s not particularly race-specific, until you register how old my brother is. He’s 12. He’s been answering the question of ‘what do you want to do with your life?’ for at least 5 years already.

He understands the primary outcome of the Asian Equation, which is of course to produce a highly successful professional, capable of earning enough money to comfortably provide for a dear mother’s fetish for Karen Millen everything and a dear father’s dreams of starting a Why-the-Chinese-Way-of-Parenting-is-the-Only-Way School. The problem is, whilst he may fully comprehend what is required from him, he has yet to select from the narrow pool of careers which will get him there.

My grandiose delusions would have me believe I am partly to blame for the demands from him for a choice at such an early age. I, being child number 1, have a certain amount of stubborn conviction. I decided age 7 that I wanted to be, and I quote from a piece of homework written circa 1996: ‘either a doctor or a singer or an artist’. In that same homework, it transpired very quickly that I had little to no artistic ability (my illustrations included stick figures). Not that any ability would really have mattered in the choice, seeing as how ‘music and art are hobbies-NOT careers’. My parents saw only ‘doctor’ in bright Crayola-yellow stars. That stubborn conviction has held out pretty well; I’m about to start my penultimate year of Medical School.

So, from my parent’s point of view, 12 is far too late to still not know where your life is headed. However, perhaps I am not as much to blame as I think, maybe the question is posed to all Asian children as soon as possible as a segue (wow never had to spell that word before) into which careers are ACCEPTABLE. I imagine many first ‘career talks’ in Asian families go a little like this: (feel free to read with whichever accent is most appropriate to you)

Child: Look mum! LOOK! I found a SNAIL! I’m going to keep it on my hand allllllllllll day.

Mum: OH MY GOD. Why have you been in the garden? You should be reading/solving simultaneous 

equations/playing the piano!! When are you going to start concentrating? Have you decided what you want to be when you grow up?

Child: Yes. I’m going to be a ROCK ST-

Mum: Let me stop you right there. I think it’s time we had ‘the talk’. What I hoped you would say was a doctor, a lawyer, an engineer, maybe a businessperson. Something ‘Respectable’, something that can make you money. But what I think you were about to say was rock star. What have I told you about rock stars? They are all crazy and take DRUGS- what a waste of money! How you going to look after your Daddy and Mummy when all your money is wasted? So what do you want to be when you grow up?

Child: *sigh*…an engineer.

So. When Baz Luhrmann (or the woman who actually wrote the article) claims that some of the most interesting people he knows didn’t know what they wanted to do at 22, he’s basically saying that Asian people are boring.