Certainty is overrated

Director of Tertiary Pathways

‘Career uncertainty is normal and healthy.’

This is an oft-spoken line in my profession as a careers counsellor, and while I too say it, and say it with confidence, I wonder how truly helpful it is to my audience of young people when, particularly as they approach their final year of schooling, adults around them fire the question: ‘What do you want to do when you leave school?’ It’s a question that most young people dislike, some hate and others dread (Booth, 2019). The question raises confusion, fear and anxiety for the young person as it is not generally perceived as a ‘what’s next’ question, rather a more daunting equivalent: ‘What are they going to do with the rest of their life—as a career?’.

Many parents would agree with the premise that career uncertainty is normal, but the reality is that they want their child to have certainty and predictability. Their child probably wants that stability too, and perhaps because of that desire for certainty in the face of relentless questions about the future from those in their orbit, they become anxious. However, if breakthroughs in neuroscience have taught us anything, it’s that the developing adolescent brain isn’t so good at making high-stakes decisions. What’s more, a constant, stable idea of what they want to do is markedly less common than ideas that change often and quickly (Booth, 2019). Neuroscience tells us that a teenager spends 90 per cent of the time using the limbic system—the emotional engine room. The prefrontal cortex, responsible for important executive functions like planning ahead, recognising what information is relevant, making decisions, and remembering details, doesn’t develop completely until early adulthood (18 to 25 years) and possibly into later adulthood (mid-20s onwards) (Booth, 2019). The situation for school leavers is made more complex by other contextual factors beyond students’ control. The current economic and labour market context is made up of precarious employment markets, the rise of the gig economy or short-term contractual employment, inflationary pressures, and rising costs of tertiary education, to name a few. Add this current context to what neuroscience teaches us about adolescents’ emotional brains, and it’s understandable that many start to feel apprehensive about the future.

The pressure on young people to make the ‘right’ decision is palpable. As organisational psychologist and co-author of The Chaos Theory of Careers: A New Perspective on Working in the Twenty-First Century (2011), Jim Bright, said: ‘People create jails for themselves by obsessing with certainty.’ Yet certainty is illusory. It doesn’t account for the realities of an authentic life—personal growth, change and chance events. In moving from a rigid mindset of control (certainty) to controlled flexibility, we will be better placed to deal with what’s possible now and work out our next move, step by step. Curiosity and exploration are key, alongside a commitment to being open to and embracing opportunities as they emerge.

My dilemma as a careers counsellor in a secondary school setting, preparing young women to transition to the next step in their career journey, is not dissimilar to the paradox insightfully identified by Mrs Kristine Cooke in her reflection on libraries and chaos (Chaos Theory, 2019). Alongside the more traditional view of what librarians do—providing quiet effective spaces to work—Mrs Cooke acknowledged her responsibility to transport ‘students beyond the known, the safe and the expected’. While adults, of course, wish to ease a student’s discomfort around decision-making, we too want to challenge them to take risks, to step bravely and boldly into an exciting, unknown future.

If we can make a shift from what might almost be regarded as a preoccupation with certainty and predictability, to a focus on openness and living with emergence, not only will anxiety be minimised, but enriching opportunities are more likely to appear. If we—teachers, counsellors, parents—can encourage our young people to see that no single decision is necessarily ‘right’, they may feel better placed to make the best possible decision they can for now and move, with trust and purpose, to the next step.