 |
| [dog with bone in mouth*] |
My introduction to the occupational importance of basic instincts was through
accompanying a housemate as he looked to purchase a dog for duck hunting, a
popular pastime in the Pacific northwest, when I lived in Oregon many years
ago. Curiously, he brought the bone of a duck wing with him as he checked out
three small puppies from the same litter. He placed the bone a few meters from them and their mother
and watched their reaction. One looked at the bone and at his mother and could
not decide what to do; the second approached the bone and then raced back to
his mother; the third then ran to the bone, put it in his mouth and proudly
brought it back to his mother. My housemate then declared of the third: “Now
that one is a hunting dog”.
I am one of many in many of my generation that had full choice of
profession but found it very difficult to decide “what I want to do when I grow
up”. I tried many professions but found myself somehow incapable of succeeding in them even though I did learn something from each of my assays. I
took many assessment tests in any attempt to help identify my path to greatness
or at least to financial independence but the results were irrelevant, if not
completely strange. One test even suggested that I become a nurse, completely
ignoring my sensitivity to suffering and lack of ability to multitask. Eventually,
after a valuable period in sales, I became a teacher and then a translator and
editor.
Looking back, I now view the issue of career selection is much less related
to specific skills, which are attainable, but instead to basic tendencies to
achieve certain goals even without the actual knowledge of how to do so. In
other words, each profession requires its practitioners to strive for a
difficult, sometimes even impossible, goal. People with the specific ambition find
it natural to invest time and effort to reach that goal while those lacking it
cannot excel in the long term.
To demonstrate, I will make some blanket statements about several
professions that I attempted as well as those in which I succeeded. While my
sample basis may be too small, I met sufficient numbers of people practicing
these jobs to reach these conclusions, allowing for exceptions of course.
First, attorneys, or advocates as they say in the UK, have an unusually strong
push to win. The payoff may be money, status or fame but in my experience with attorneys both from working
in a law firm and in the court, they have an ever-present, however expressed,
desire to come out on top. This tendency generally has a far less positive
impact on their marriages but that is another story. By contrast, top
salespeople are addicted to the adrenaline of getting a person to buy something
and receiving money for it. They go hand in hand as either one by itself
generally does not provide a sufficient thrill. Health care professionals must
have the emotional need to help people. The stress involved in healing people
is so high that, without it, it would be impossible to survive long in the
profession. Academic researchers, a group I met later in
life, seem to seek systematic order. They want to believe in and understand how
everything is connected, even if they are not. In my mind, their ideas are
fascinating but not always practical. Lacking the proper attitudes, I did not fully
stick to any of these professions but admire those that are good at them.
I did become first a teacher and then a translator and editor and now
fully understand why. Regardless of the age of the student, teaching above all involves
the mission of sharing knowledge. All dedicated teachers want their students to
understand and learn. Teachers identify success as the grasp, however
imperfect, of the material they are attempting to teach while failure is when
it appears that nothing “got in”, regardless of the cause. As in healthcare,
without the strong internal need, it is impossible to survive the tribulations
of teaching in the long term. As for translation, as compared to writing, which
involves creating an idea, and editing, which involves polishing the form,
translators get their high from faithfully and almost magically transferring
ideas from one language to another. We receive an immense, even exaggerated,
feeling of joy from “I got it”, namely achieving a seamless representation of
the original text. Professional translators almost cannot help spending ridiculous
amounts of time trying to understand the original and find an equivalent word
or phrase in the second language even when they know that the customers will
not appreciate the effort either in words or money. Such insistence is second,
almost first, nature for them. In contrast, editors love perfection in language
far more than in content. OCD and perfectionism are not impediments for editors
but instead advantages. Time and effort are not inputs to be balanced with only
the result being of importance. I admire that approach even thought I recognize
its dangers. As I possess these tendencies to one degree or another, I can
succeed in these fields.
I realize that my “conclusions” are not academically proved or even
provable. They may be based on an overly limited sample or incorrect assumptions.
Yet, I sense common patterns of basic instincts that quite often reflect
professional stereotypes. In other words, a person seeking to identify a top
professional should seek signs of such an instinct in addition to the formal
criteria. More importantly, a person trying to pick a career to enter should
ask what situations have provided motivation to go above and beyond standard
effort. The answer is the basic instinct and a requirement for being an
outstanding professional in a field.
* Picture captions help the blind fully access the Internet.
No comments:
Post a Comment