Sometime ago, I posted on my Facebook status asking my friends whether they remembered what they listed as their ambition, the one they wrote in their school’s confidential files. I did this after an old friend asked if I had always wanted to be a journalist. Some of them did reply and I found their answers quite hilarious.
Of course, we were kids and were easily influenced by the things around us when we were small. I think our class teachers must have had a good laugh reading what we listed out.
I had wanted to be a police detective when I was in Form 1 to Form 4. I attributed this career choice to watching too many Hollywood police serials on television.
In fact, a study was carried out by a team of students from Rutger University-New Brunswick on how television influences the way youth are socialised into potential careers.
“These days if you talk to a teenager or even a college student, many will tell you they got interested in a career from a TV show they watched,” said Bernadette Gailliard, an assistant professor of communication at the School of Communication and Information, who led the recent study.
The Rutgers team analysed 27 scripted and 29 reality shows from the 2012-2014 seasons. They picked the top-rated shows from those two seasons, but excluded competition shows such as Project Runway or Survivor, in which cast members are eliminated weekly. They dissected every scene’s dialogue for references to the character’s job. They found that the characters on top-rated scripted shows tend to be in one of three professions: law, medicine or the police force.
“I think they are more represented because they are careers that are highly valued in American society and, in many ways, are particularly central to various parts of American life,” Gailliard observed. They also found that characters on scripted shows are more diverse and they tend to be more career-orientated than on reality TV. Scripted shows do well in depicting the day-to-day responsibilities of characters with jobs, but there is not much information on the character’s career history.
“The career trajectory is missing on scripted TV,” Gailliard said. “If you’re interested in this career at 15 or 18, what does it take to get there? How much training do you need? How many years of school do you need? You won’t find out from TV.”
Toni Moletteri, a communications major on Gailliard’s research team, said television is not a great source of information to learn about careers. “It’s unrealistic. It doesn’t show all the hard work that they have to do, especially doctors. You’re in school for 12 years. They hardly talk about that on TV shows.”
But in Form Five, with a break from television as it was exam year, I changed my career choice to “wartawan”. I made this change after my language teachers made the Bahasa Malaysia and English classes interesting. I could have listed “auditor” (I was in a Commerce class in Form 4 but was “promoted” to a Science Class three months after the start of the school year) but I didn’t want to end up crunching numbers like my late father.
Two friends on Facebook said they listed their ambition as archaeologist. One turned out to be a teacher and later a journalist, while the other trained as an astronomer but is now in the construction business.
A good friend of my late brother, Johari, wanted to be the country’s first nuclear physicist. Well, someone had already beaten him to it. When I was told that Tan Sri Dr Ahmad Tajuddin Ali, who is now the chairman of UEM Group Bhd, is the country’s first nuclear physicist, I was reminded of Johari. I don’t know if he actually became a nuclear physicist.
A colleague said he wrote “askar” as he was influenced by the Combat television series. He also wrote “nelayan” after his fisherman father.
A former schoolmate wanted to be a flight stewardess and she got what she wanted. She told me she liked travelling, and back then, she also thought it was a glamorous job. But, when she joined the airline, she found out how “hard it was to be on a flight for hours on end meeting to passengers’ needs”. She’s now in human resource, which she describes as “not an easy job” as well, as she has to “suffer heartache and headache all in one”.
Another journalist friend had a long list of ambitions: teacher, journalist, lawyer, archaeologist, soldier and finally a rock singer (influenced by the singers of Led Zeppelin, Uriah Heep and Manfred Mann’s Earth Band). He achieved the first two.
One of my editors wanted to be a sailor while another friend, who now holds a PhD, wanted to be a newsreader.
Now, I seriously wonder what our children are listing as their ambition. If indeed, television influences our career choices, are any of them listing pilot as a chosen career, following the successful airing of Malay drama series Suri Hati Mr Pilot on local direct broadcast satellite pay television service.
Or would the girls harbour hopes of marrying a pilot instead?
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