Being 16

I recently met with a lady who the VP of Resource Development for Junior Achievement in Southern Alberta. We are looking at ways we can partner the company I work for with their organization. Junior Achievement has been around for almost 100 years and focuses on teaching kids and teens about financial literary, work readiness, and entrepreneurship. Given what we do where I work, and our company's roots, it makes sense to explore the partnership as a community initiative.

Anyway, after our initial meeting, she emailed me and asked if I wanted to be a mentor at an upcoming event they were having for high school girls called "World of Choices". It's a half day event that has a keynote speaker, a panel discussion followed by round table sessions. The sessions are 20 minutes long. Each round table represents a career, from fitness instructor to nurse to lawyer to police officer. The ladies pick two they really want to go to, and then the other three are first come first serve - if the table of 8 is full, they have to find another table. This exposes them to careers they may never have thought of. I looked at the list of mentors (60 or so - wow!) - there were some jobs I hadn't even hear of. Where the heck was this when I was in high school?

I signed up to be the marketing mentor. The event was pretty awesome. SO many things went through my head. There was a girl with green hair and another with a cool half shaved head. It kind of made me wish I had had that phase before I entered the corporate world. I saw a lot of bad pancake make-up jobs and remembered being that girl (putting a whole bottle of concealer on a pimple does not really hide a pimple - this lesson takes time to learn).

A graduating Lauren
(with eyebrows - not sure
where mine went)

Just like what I remember from high school, all the "cliques" were well represented. There were several really bright, outgoing, keener teens I talked to that I have no doubt will be really successful. I was really excited for them. There were some quiet, really eloquent young ladies that took awhile to warm up but really had a positive attitude towards their futures and asked great questions. There were a few who looked bored out of their minds everywhere they went (lol) and others who followed their friends around, not making their own choices. There were athletes, preppy girls, rocker girls and divas. The loud groups, the shy, artsy groups, the ethnic or cultural groups (this seemed to happen more at lunch when they had more of a choice where to sit).

Some were so sure what they wanted to do with their lives. Most had no clue though. Which is totally fine. It made me think about what I was like at that age (the average age was about 16 or so). At that point, I had been pretty sure what path my life was going to take. I was going to get a undergrad in political science and then go to law school. I was going to marry at 24, start having kids at 28 (all while being a new lawyer???). By 36 I was going to be a judge and by 40, Prime Minister. No really. All of that. And if you and asked me on an ambitious day I would have added book author in there as well. Where am I with that list? Exactly. I haven't done a single one of those things. Although I guess I could maybe work on the Prime Minister thing and roughly squeak in under the deadline.

One of the five tables of ladies I saw seemed to have more girls who were seeming a bit stressed about not knowing what they wanted to do. I think it was the third or fourth table I met with and no doubt the ladies had already been at a couple of sessions with people who were more sure or seemed to have more direction. So for that table I changed my talk up a bit.

I told them about lawyer Lauren and my lofty 16 year old goals (they laughed). How I had missed hitting every single one of them (they laughed). How I did a lot of things backwards along the way, how I fell into marketing as a career. I told them how nothing in my adult life turned out the way I thought it would. But that I was happy, successful and completely okay with the path my life took. I may never win a big court case or rule the country, however I have done some pretty interesting things I wouldn't trade for the world.

It's good to have dreams when you are 16 but what you learn as you get into your 20's and beyond, sometimes its just as good to let those dreams go and take on new ones, or simply sit back, put the seatbelt on and see where the zig zagging road takes you.