My perspective - What the future holds

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Published on Friday, June 19, 2015

By Kate Jackman-Atkinson

The Neepawa Banner

This is always an exciting week at the paper.  In Neepawa this week, we publish our annual feature celebrating this year’s graduating class.  I always enjoy looking through the pictures and seeing the students I know. Some live near me, some work in local businesses and some I have met while covering events throughout their school years. It’s interesting to hear their plans for the future and their excitement at beginning a new chapter.

Some know exactly where they want to be in five or 10 years and they are setting out from high school with a definite plan. Other aren’t so sure, they are setting out in a direction and hoping that they will find their calling there.

As a kid delivering papers, my dad knew that he wanted to be a reporter. Starting in the press room, he worked his way up and ultimately covered a range of beats for the Ottawa Journal.

I, on the other hand, fell into this second category. When I graduated high school, I had no idea what I wanted to do. I just picked something. 

There’s so much pressure to decide what you want to do, what you want to be. There’s pressure that this one decision will dictate your happiness for the rest of your life. I have discovered something interesting in the years since graduation– few of us end up where we thought we would. In fact, many of us would never have imagined where we have ended up. 

While the path we chose from high school does impact our future, the expectation that at 18 we can decide what we will do for the next 40, or 50, or 60 years is unrealistic.  To even know what’s out there isn’t possible at that age. Every week, I get to talk to people doing interesting things with their careers and lives. Jobs and activities I often know nothing about and sometimes, ones I didn’t even know existed.

For most of us, our experience is too narrow.  We may know what our parents, or family friends do for a living or we may be interested in a career we have read about or seen on TV.  But being on the inside is very different from looking in from the outside.  

A lot can happen over a few decades and new jobs are created that were unimaginable a few years before.

Even my dad’s career path ultimately veered away from journalism. 

I look around our office and we have all come here from fairly diverse backgrounds. I’m sure that at grad, few of us thought that we would be here. I certainly didn’t. I look a friends from high school and while many of them have followed the path they set out upon at graduation, many of them have not. I am sure that few are doing exactly what they thought they would be doing.

As this year’s grads walk across the stage and pick up their diplomas, they head off into an unknown future.  The important thing to remember is that opportunities are all around, you just have to keep your eyes open for them.

Come fall, some of our grads will stay in the area, some will leave, some will come back. Regardless of where they end up or what they are doing, I look forward to covering their triumphs and tribulations in the years to come.