Ah, youth.  It’s a fickle beast.  I keep getting older.  And today’s incoming college students keep getting younger and more indecisive every year.  And I know that from recent experience.  I just spent yesterday at a conference meeting with up-and-coming teen leaders from various high schools around the Kansas City metropolitan area.  Two things to note:  1) kids are a LOT more business-savvy than I was when I was seventeen and 2) several of them called me “sir”.  So, it’s official.  I’m old. 

I’d say a good 95% of the kids I talked to had absolutely no idea what they wanted to be when they grew up.  Not a clue.  Nada.  Sure, they’d show the occasional hint of interest occasionally, but most played it close to the vest.  

When I was a high school senior, I was more interested in attending an upcoming Wham! concert than I was in choosing a college and/or career.   Parachute pants, hair mousse, and learning all the choreography to the latest Exposé video were also far more interesting than college or career whatnot. 

The only thing the kids wanted to know at the conference was how I got my job.  They absolutely, positively did NOT want to hear that “I fell in to” advertising.  They wanted to know I got the job because of brains, not moxie.  (I didn’t have the heart to tell them it was solely because I longed to work for D&D Advertising on “Melrose Place.”) 

A few years ago, one student quizzed me about internship possibilities.  I remember asking why the student was so interested in internships.  A brilliant stall tactic on my part!  The student coolly replied, “Today’s interns are tomorrow’s junior executives!”

Oh really? 

I immediately said, “Well, in the immortal words of George Michael … you gotta have faith!”

The student replied, “Who’s George Michael?”

Mercifully, he scampered to the next booth before I had a chance to hurl my Walkman at him.