Dialogue: False dreams block way to honest buck

By SANDY BURGHAM

Walking through a back street in the city, I was drawn to a quaint, hand-drawn sign in a mechanic's workshop window, reading: "Youth wanted to learn how to repair cylinder heads. Apply within."

It was not so much that I had dreamed of reconditioning engines myself but I was curious to know if youth had responded.

Not only was the marketing strategy a little understated but also the message was one that would not necessarily appeal to a vast majority of the young.

While many of our school-leavers are in search of fame and fortune, starting off by making a good honest buck learning a trade just isn't an option.

Living in a world of flashy overpromises and dream lives as sold through the media means that doing a trade just doesn't have the cachet it once had; they have been made to feel that doing a course is a smarter option.

I instantly linked this to another recruitment advertisement I had seen on television, featuring a wistful young lad escaping a blue-collar future by turning in his paint-roller to run off and join some largely unknown film school.

I was a little put out by the depiction of white v blue collar. It all serves to feed our high and often false expectations, which can so often lead unnecessarily to a sense of loss and frustration.

How loudly Hollywood seems to be calling, now that Russell Crowe and Peter Jackson have blazed the trail. Have you noticed the increase in bright young things dreaming of a life in the fickle world of film-making? Indeed, on the surface it's far more inviting than a life of painting rooms, fixing someone else's motor or fighting crime in the streets. Yet only a few will ever attain the security and cashflow needed to operate a life through this channel.

Much as we love New Zealanders' new-found vocation as jet-setting international film-makers, some people are just not cut out for this sort of industry. And besides, when our young all want to be in films, who is going to do all the dirty work, which, incidentally, provides a steady pay cheque and opportunity to run one's own small business?

Judging from the number of calls from mysterious friends of friends, I have become a punter many young and confused feel they can ring for free career advice. As with others in the situation, it is a way of returning the favours bestowed on me years ago by helpful strangers, so I get something out of it, too. But I am somewhat saddened by the number of vague and directionless youth who are full of "I want to do this" or "maybe I could do that" but simply don't do anything much at all because their expectations far outweigh their ability to deliver or commit to anything that isn't their life's passion.

It seems the young have been sold a couple of bad lines. And the first is that you can do anything. I don't want to put a dampener on enthusiasm, but if they simply have a belief rather than the backbone and life skills to survive the rat-race, such an adage can be unhelpful.

It also leaves them in a state of flux as they let days pass, hoping their life's passion will come knocking at the door. Doing anything else seems like a waste.

The other bad line that they are feeding off is that doing a course must mean that you are qualified or even talented in your chosen area. But it doesn't take long for this expectation to prove false.

While some see it as a way of getting a foot in the door, it still remains that who you know, not what you know and being at the right place at the right time are, in reality, as effective career starters as doing a course. That, in itself, is no guarantee of anything.

And doing a course doesn't mean you can miss the bottom couple of rungs. Starting at the bottom, making tea, has its merits - you can watch and absorb without making expensive mistakes and you get promoted at the same rate as your maturity.

"But there are no jobs," I hear people cry. Well, there's one that I knew of, repairing cylinder heads in a city workshop. But that was taken not by a youth but by a chap in his early 30s.

A mechanic speculated that, while some youths wandered in, those they interviewed might not have wanted to get their hands dirty.