Never Too Late: Deciding What You Want to Be When You Grow Up

My 17-year-old daughter is looking at colleges, trying to decide what she wants to do for the rest of her life and where she'd like to do it. I am sympathetic to being young and having the dual-edged sword of more opportunity than you've ever experienced before while friends and family verbalize the question you already are asking yourself constantly: What are you going to do next year? It's a lot — too much, even — for many teenagers, and I've advised my daughter that the decisions she is making are neither irreversible nor tightly linked to the future she will create for herself. I remind her that she can launch herself into an amazing life from many different colleges and environments, so her choice should feel important but not paramount.

I recently made a big professional move— not only leaving an executive leadership position to return to full-time clinical medicine but also leaving my health system for another one where I am literally starting all over. The parallels between being a popular senior who is on top of her game as captain of the soccer team and editor of the yearbook leaving for college to start over as a freshman who has difficulty finding the dining hall and thinks her roommate is weird are not lost on me. As I am coaching my daughter about her decisions, I am trying to absorb some wisdom for myself.

The truth is, well into my fifth decade, I am still not sure exactly what I want to do with my life. At this point, I'm pretty sold on the whole "doctor" thing, but what type of doctor — pure clinician, entrepreneur, physician leader, educator — is still under consideration. I do suspect there's a point in life when you finally realize who you are, but it's likely a retrospective moment rather than the recognition that you've arrived. It may be my midlife crisis talking, but I still have hope that my professional journey has some unexpected twists and turns up ahead and that I'm still not expected to have it all figured out.

Our lives are continuous evolving stories. Sometimes we have big and exciting new chapters – going to college or changing careers. More often, one chapter slides quietly into the next without us always noticing.

As Søren Kierkegaard said, "Life is to be lived forward, but it is to be understood backwards." Fortunately, we don't have to wait solely for the deathbed reflective summary, as we experience sequential moments of reflection in which we see parts of our stories retrospectively and understand, at least part of, the meaning and significance of both choice and chance. This is essential feedback for ourselves as we make the next choice in light of what has come before. Nevertheless, our experiences only hint at what our next move will produce in our lives.

I caution my daughter that she doesn't need to have it all figured out. After all, she's 17 and has experienced such a small slice of the world. I caution myself too. I am many years away from 17 but I too have only experienced a small slice of the world. So much of my story — which I live going forward turning page after page — is both unwritten and not yet understood. It's okay if I don't yet know what I want to be when I grow up — or, more aptly, what I want my remaining chapters to hold. Time and opportunity combined with choice and chance will reveal my daughter's future as surely as it will reveal mine.

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Cite this: Jennifer Frank. Never Too Late: Deciding What You Want to Be When You Grow Up - Medscape - Mar 25, 2022.