Whatever It Is That You Do... Do It Well, Or Not At All

Wouldn’t you love having a job designing toilets? Not installing them, not creating them really, just deciding which one should go where in a bathroom with tons of regulations. Then, after that, wouldn’t you like to design the floor? No? Yes? If I got paid enough?

Well, a young lady I met yesterday (I know I said young lady… I don’t have anything to say for myself) has her masters in architecture and that is what she does five days a week. It’s tedious and she doesn’t have a chance to be creative in designing what she wants to design. She doesn’t have her license yet, but she does have a master’s degree and yet she is not making enough money for the education she has.

I asked her what it was about architecture that she loved so much to decide to put herself through this agony of having all this education and no money. She said, “I just decided right out of high school to do it and I didn’t think about it again, but now I’m questioning why I did all of this.” She claimed that the teachers warned her about not being able to pay for anything once you are an architect.

You see, architects know a little bit of information about everything that has to do with building. The problem with today’s society is that the specialists are the ones that make all the money. There are only a few people who know everything about only one thing (or nothing as many doctorate students like to put it) and they must be paid a lot to stay in their field.

Of course the other kinds of people are the people who know a little about everything in life and a little more about one thing or profession. They don’t want to learn anymore about that profession so they become the worker bees or if they have a natural talent (or are in it long enough) they become a manager of the worker bees.

Then there are the people who know a medium amount of information about mostly everything and are continuing to learn more. These people get too distracted by the next interesting thing to concentrate on one profession. That’s the problem architects have. They know a medium amount about every type of engineering job, but they aren’t an expert in anything, and they work so hard for many hours. Eventually you must burn out, start actually making money, or find that you have a love for design and design on your own in addition to that full time job.

So, there you go.

There are down sides to every single career. Do it for love? Do it for money? Do it for security? I have no idea.

Architects can make money if they become artists, but if they don’t… well, that’s it.

Why can’t society learn how to deal with the creative people? The creative people are the ones we want to keep around for relief from the daily grind of life.

I guess all I have to say to this girl is good luck and I hope you love what you do because then you will be good at it. But isn’t that what everyone should say to everyone.

LOVE WHAT YOU DO