Cool Careers

I was thinking…  if we are going to be able to study further – then we have to know what to study. Right?  In order to know what to study – we need to know what type of career or job we want to do. We only have one life and a lot of it is spent at work – so it’s important that we like what we are doing.

Some people figure this out early in life – they love animals and want to be a vet. Or they have a passion for planes and want to be a pilot. Some kids are hell-bent on becoming a world renown surfer or soccer player or rugby player.  I know one kid who is only 6 and can tell you without a shadow of doubt he wants to be a palaeontologist. Most people can’t even say the word – let alone know what it means.

However, many of us don’t have a cooking clue what we want to do when we are big. This isn’t a bad thing. It’s also okay to change your mind from time to time when you learn new exciting stuff and realise there are different opportunities attached that could form potential career choices.

The main thing is to be careful that you make sure you have the right subjects at school.

How? I hear you howl. How do we take the right subjects if we don’t know what they are?

True – it’s tricky!

A safe bet is to always take maths as one of your subjects. Maths is one of those things that one sometimes feels like dropping because it seems a bit hard or not really necessary. In fact – it’s very necessary for lots of careers. If you don’t have matric maths there are some doors that are so firmly shut there is no easy way to open them again.

I found out the other day that science centres can help with career guidance. Sci-Bono Discovery Centre in Jozi has a very awesome career guidance centre and it’s free. You can just walk-in and find out about jobs and careers that you never even dreamed of. However, for career assessments and career counselling they do prefer if you make an appointment. It’s a professional service and they don’t want to you to be disappointed if you arrive at the centre and all the staff are already busy. adminofficecareer@sci-bono.co.za  or call (011) 639 8450/8476/8479.

Check it out.

Sibo

Career of the week: palaeontologist

Meaning: a scientist who learns about the forms of life that existed in previous geologic periods, mainly by studying fossils.

Example: My friend James wants to dig up dinosaur bones and find out more about them.

James

People Protesting

Sjoe! There was fun and games on the TV last week.

Well, I know it was not really on the TV but that was as close as I came to it.

All those people protesting about University fees going up so much that they would not be able to afford them. But it seemed to me that they behaved in a very calm and controlled way instead of burning and destroying things. That always makes me mad. What’s the point?

Hope it gets sorted out soon.

I’m just a little kid – but it makes sense to me that the Government should invest in their youth. Just because you don’t have the money to study further does not mean that you should not be able to do it.

It excludes people from reaching their full potential.

Somebody might be really clever and be able to come up with an innovative idea or plan that helps save the country somehow, but instead they never get to even try. That would be really sad.

I keep wondering why nobody has come up with a plan for solar-powered traffic lights. Or if they have – where ever are they hiding it? Especially in Gauteng where the traffic is busy and the sun shines brightly most days.

Those suckers would just keep on working – never mind whether Eskom was alive or dead.

Then we would not have traffic jams and we would not be late for school. It always feels like such a silly reason to be late for school… Sorry I’m tardy Miss but the robots were not working! She always looks at me like I’m fibbing when I’m really not.

But I was thinking… if we are all going to have an opportunity to study further one day and learn lots of lovely new and exciting things, then we should better pull up our socks and start working really hard to get good grades. Probably Universities and Technicon’s will be full and so they are going to choose people with good grades first because it shows that they want to learn.

No more chatting, I’m off to do some revision now.

Good luck to all the matrics who are about to start writing exams soon.

Sibo

Cool word of the week: gripe
Meaning: protest, grumble, moan
Example: The students were all having a serious gripe about the hike in university fees.

Sibo standingMe with my socks pulled up!