In the fall of 1995, the greatest source of uncertainty about my future was not the referendum on Quebec independence. I was studying at the École du Barreau and working at The Presson the other side of Saint-Laurent Boulevard.
Posted at 2:18 am
Updated at 5:00 a.m.
At the time, journalism hiring was done sparingly and you wouldn’t refuse an offer of a replacement in a newsroom, even at the last minute, when a criminal law exam was scheduled for the following week…
I always wanted to be a journalist. I was reading from my colleague Isabelle Dubé last weekend that 66% of 14 to 30 year olds are currently having difficulty choosing a career and are undecided (according to the recent Gen Z report from the NPO Academos)1. It doesn’t surprise me, but that wasn’t my case.
On the other hand, like many people from Generation X (my generation), I was worried about not finding work in my field. I didn’t plan on practicing law, like some of my classmates, who were expected to intern at large firms to do 60 hours a week of office work in the hopes of standing out.
Back then, most employers expected their young employees to demonstrate that nothing was more important than their work. There would always be death to rest… Today, things seem to be changing thanks to Generation Z, these young people born between 1997 and 2012 who already account for 18% of the Canadian workforce. Most of them are no longer ready to sacrifice their well-being for their professional ambitions. Success is no longer necessarily synonymous for them with a promotion or a pay raise. But they are gripped by a new form of anxiety.
While Generation X was anxious about the famous “No Future” label that had been attached to it, Generation Z is above all afraid of making a bad career choice.
In addition to performance anxiety, a majority of young people suffer from happiness anxiety, of some sort.
According to what Isabelle Dubé’s text revealed from a SOM survey commissioned by Academos, 55% of young people feel a high level of anxiety about their career choice, up 10% since 2021. They wonder if they will be passionate about a job that matches their values, explains Catherine Légaré, doctor of educational psychology and founder of Academos.
According to a University of Calgary study published in February, the prevalence of anxiety symptoms was higher among 18- to 24-year-olds (20.52%) than among other age groups during the COVID-19 pandemic. As a result, when considering their careers, young people often prefer to be safe than sorry. It has also been proven that we are more productive when we are not overworked.
For many Gen Zers, stress and mental health management, the importance of well-being, and employer flexibility, particularly in the face of remote work, disconnection, vacations, or extended leave, have become core values in their career choices. And they are right. I have seen so many people of my generation suffer from burnout in their careers. It was almost seen as a necessary step.
The fact that younger people refuse to let work encroach on their personal lives does not please all managers, who are often my age. Bosses say that Zs are harder to manage, nonchalant, disinterested, even lazy. I believe instead that they have a philosophy that no longer quite matches that of their parents or grandparents. And that this is hard to accept for some.
This is human nature: we expect others to make the same choices we did and suffer as we have suffered.
I define myself a lot by my work, which I love and which takes up a lot of my time… even if I agree that it is better to work to live than to live to work. But since we spend most of our working life at work, it seems to me that we might as well find a job that we like. When it is possible, of course. It is a privilege that is not within everyone’s reach.
I have always told my sons that they have the freedom to make mistakes, to change paths. That it is normal not to know, at 18 or 20, what you want to do with the rest of your life. Above all, I want to tell them that they will never be limited to their work.
As the great American writer Toni Morrison wrote shortly before her death in the New Yorker in 2017, inspired by a discussion with his father:
1. Whatever the job, do it well, not for the boss, but for yourself.
2. You define your work; your work does not define you.
3. Your real life is with your family.
4. You are not the work you do; you are the person you are.
I couldn’t say it better.
1. Read the article “Career Choice: Why Are Young People So Stressed?”
