The Evolution of Work and Career Goals: Insights from Generational Differences

All the activities we engage ourselves in nowadays are activities our parents, grandparents, and others that may have come from the current generation we are used to practicing in their times but through traditional channels. The jobs my grandparents used to do were mainly done in that there were no technical tools to help them perform their daily tasks. Their work environments were not good enough to maintain a healthy life, but they used to take precautions to ensure that they mitigated the impacts of the adverse environmental conditions they were exposed to. They lived in the United States of America, where my parents grew up, and that is where I was born and grew up too. The lifestyle my family and I live is a result of the efforts and hard work our grandfathers did during their time. My grandparents had worked initially as supervisors at construction sites for several years before they were employed in white-collar jobs where the living conditions were fair and conducive. The jobs they did were flexible and helpful in their communities in that they used to join volunteer programs to renovate and construct a structure within communities for better living standards among the members of the community.

The jobs were controlled by outside forces. The local authorities and the government agents were the ones who used to monitor their daily operations to ensure that their daily operations were within the set of rules and regulations. These outside forces had a positive impact in that they were also concerned with employee welfare and took the constitution stipulates legal actions against employers who did not comply with employee's rights. Compared to today, during their times, there were laws enacted to take care of the safety, health, and welfare of a worker; thus, there was a conducive and safe environment for health personnel. My grandparents used to live on the construction sites before they got promoted to office work from being construction supervisors. It necessitated that they moved into cooperating houses that had no dangerous environmental effects, but before that, they were exposed to unhealthy air and dirty water, and the housing was in bad shape. They were aware of these conditions, and thus, they took precautions to treat the water, ensure that their houses were well-ventilated, and renovate and clean within their surroundings. Through the efforts of my grandparents, my parents were able to go to school and clear without any challenges. After school, they got white-collar jobs that enabled them to live better lives than their parents.

Based on the education, occupations, and workplaces of the generations before me, I have seen that life is all about hard work. It made me concentrate on my career path with the objective of achieving the best that my parent, grandparents, and the generations before me did not. Class heritage is a factor in determining where one lives; people of different class heritage reside in different workplace environments. The relationship I have with my job differs from that of my predecessors in that they viewed the job as the only source of living, but as for me, a job is where I practice my career and get some money, but I should look for other avenues for money such as entrepreneurship. My career goals are to deliver diligently to the best of my knowledge for efficient transformation of the world and to become my boss within my area of specialty. This path is a bit different from the previous generations of my family in that my main goal is to be my boss, but my predecessors have only dwelt on their line of careers for their lifetime. To achieve my career goals, I participate in entrepreneurship seminars and workshops to gain business management skills to provide quality services to my clients that boost my professional status.

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