- Perceptions of the term 'career'
- Understanding Job/Work/Career
“Paycheck.”
Participant:
- Online
- white
- male
- 15-22
- lower income
Welcome to the Striving to Thriving Youth Quote Library. Here you’ll find a curated collection of more than 5,700 quotes from young people ages 15-22 living in communities across the United States. In the library you can see how young people describe their multifaceted identities, how they understand and apply meaning to language around job, work and career, how they think about and assign value to relationships, networking and connections, and their future goals and the education and career choices they believe will lead them there. Additional notes on curation, categories and filters can be found here.
“Paycheck.”
“At the age of 25 I will be living in a nice apartment. So I want to work but also own my own apartment. I would be a criminologist. The important people in my life would be my family. I would also like to travel and party responsibly…There is a nice balance. [The most important people are] My parents, my sisters. Yeah, my immediate family and my dog. I want to have 2 bull dogs. At the age of 45 I would like to be living in a 6 bedroom house, a huge house. I want to have nice cars. I want to travel a lot. I am still going to be a criminologist, and I want to own multiple homes in different countries or states.”
[Career] “For me, I put endgame, lifestyle, money, life, college, and in it for the long run. Like it shouldn’t be like the first thing you do. It’s the last stop on the train. You get it like it’s nowhere else. It’s not a job. It’s not work. It’s what you’re going to do for the rest of your life.”
“At 45 I want my kids getting out of the house or already out, like go so I can start my new life over. My mom always said wishing all the kids out of her house. That was her time to do what she wanted, so that is what I want to do. I want to be traveling. Maybe I will own a couple vacation homes or something. I love to travel, so I definitely would like to have my kids out of the house. Maybe close to retiring or have enough money saved up to where I don’t have to work a lot. I don’t really know. That is a long time away, so I am not planning for 45 yet, but hopefully living a good life.”
“I hope by that time I am working for a law firm, and then by my 40s will become my turning point of whether or not I want to run for public office. There has always been something I have been pretty interested in, but I will see as time goes by how my opinion changes, how college changes my opinion, how my career changes my opinion. If I decide the best way to make change is to stay as an attorney, or if it is to do something totally different from that, etc. I will have a direction for where my career is going. I want to be married and have kids by then. I probably want to adopt a couple kids. I want to continue to travel and definitely have traveled as well. I really hope to by that time speak all of the Latin-base languages. I’ve got a couple under my belt right now, but I want to learn the rest of them. Then also stay in touch with my most important friend and continue to dance as much as possible.”
“[For “career”] I think the way the words are phrased, so like the way they were used in a sentence. So if you were to say you work a job or you work, you are probably not referring to something you love doing, or you worked hard to get there. I would say my career is or something, it would be something that you’ve got a degree for or something that you went to college for, something you really enjoy doing.”
“Greek Orthodox slash not really because like my family is religious, so like I’m not really. I don’t go to church, but don’t identify as like an atheist, so…“
“Money…Money for school. If I don’t have enough money to afford my tuition, then you know.”
[On why to be an entrepreneur] “People cross you over all the time. If you are your own boss, you don’t have to worry about that. My brother had a hard time with jobs because his boss could snap at him, and he will snap back and get fired. Yeah, I don’t want that to happen to me because I will snap back. If I know I need the job, I am not going to snap, but it would be better if I just had my own business because then I couldn’t get fired.”
“Because it takes time, you have to work hard for. Something you go to school for.”