Exam results are in – here's my advice for the next generation

The National

3 days ago

I started working in a chippie at 13 for a princely sum of £1.25 per hour. By 15, I was a pot washer in a nursing home, graduating to a domestic (cleaner), with responsibility for 50 en-suite bathrooms on a Saturday. Despite being a straight-A student, and to the concern of my academic parents, I dropped out of university within the first year. I spent a number of months cooking and cleaning at an outdoors centre, before starting to apply for jobs at the BBC.
There, my Gaelic skills landed me some interviews, and I began my first 'career' at the tender age of 19, as a researcher and presenter in the Gaelic department.
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I moved on five or six years later, with a short spell as an information officer in the Scottish Parliament, before falling into community development for a few years.
From there, with a short detour consisting of a failed cafe business, I freelanced, built websites, and ended up working remotely in an interesting combination of tech and marketing.
That gave me the necessary background to get a job doing technical customer support for US tech startups which I did for more than a decade, starting a tea and yarn business in the process.
Today, I do five different jobs on a weekly basis; I still run a tea and yarn business, I build websites under the social enterprise I founded, I am a part-time employee at the local development trust ostensibly doing Gaelic development and comms but in reality up to my ears in a whole variety of projects, I croft and I'm a weekly columnist.
Traditionally, it's what people kindly called a 'portfolio career'. I've never known what I wanted to do, nor what I wanted to be. Originally, I fancied being a vet, but it turned out that science as a subject was not my forte. Then I wanted to be a journalist.
Coding and computers fascinated me, and as soon as a PC arrived in the house, I was off and running – working out how basic code created web pages and setting up all sorts of web pages. But it never crossed my mind that computing would be an option – and, to be honest, while my maths results were very good, they were good because I memorised how to do the workings – not because I understood the reasons for the workings!
I'm still very disinterested in detail and far more interested in the way that concepts meet – how to solve problems by bringing things together and using them in different ways.
On the other end of the spectrum is my sister who wanted to be a doctor from an early age, became a consultant in her thirties despite also having three children and has an attention to detail (and memory for it) that is frankly terrifying.
I wouldn't have my current life any other way. The variety is what keeps me interested and focused. It involves a ridiculous schedule and a never absent risk of burnout, but I'm like a collie; I get destructive when I'm bored. And it's a self-destructive streak, so best to keep busy.
As Scottish exam results landed last week, another generation will be taking their next steps towards the future – and their careers.
It's a dramatically different landscape to the one I faced as I left school, and it has huge question marks over it. The biggest question mark is the rise of artificial intelligence (AI). I have no doubt that it will dramatically affect the future job market – and that we will all be affected, no matter how good your exam results are.
Last week's exam results show pass rates are up a notch. The official press release will tell you about 'Covid recovery' and how everyone should be patted on the back. That's fine. But they are no more than a starting point. A threshold.
My exam results were useful in so much as they got me into uni. Once I dropped out, it was my extra-curricular experience, my random hobbies, my extra language and my willingness to graft that got me jobs. No-one gave two hoots about my SYS A in English Literature.
I don't think we should be telling our youngsters that results are the be-all and end-all. I'm not even sure we should be telling them there's a right way to do things anymore.
I look at my nieces and nephew, and I wonder what sort of world they're stepping into. We say, 'follow your dreams', but what happens when the dream changes language overnight? When as soon as you think you've got a handle on what employers want, someone in Silicon Valley decides the machines will do most of it for you.
Accountancy? AI can crunch numbers all day without a lunch break. Law? Chatbots can draft contracts, sort disputes and won't bill you by the hour. Even creative industries are being disrupted – AI can write, draw and compose music, if you feed it the right prompts. I'm not for a minute suggesting that is a good thing, but it is the reality of what is happening.
I asked AI which three jobs are most likely to survive this new dystopia. It told me: 'The jobs that combine physical skill with unpredictable problem-solving (skilled trades), human care and adaptability (nursing, healthcare) and deep social-emotional connection (therapy, psychology) are the ones most likely to stick around as AI becomes ubiquitous.'
It also offered some honourable mentions: 'Teachers, social workers, athletes, creatives (artists, musicians) and senior managers all sit near the top of the 'AI-proof' lists, thanks to their blend of human interaction, creative thinking and adaptability – but nursing, trades and mental health edge ahead for long-term survival.'
If you are willing to take advice from the computer that will steal our jobs (and likely destroy our mental health in the process), the most important skills won't be the ones that come with grades attached. They're the ones that don't show up on a transcript. They will be problem solving. Empathy. Negotiating with difficult people. The ability to explain something to your gran in one breath and your boss in the next.
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Move over 'portfolio career' and say hello to a 'Generalist'. Being a Generalist is fast becoming a career of its own. People who have exactly my type of random work history and the ability to join dots and bridge gaps across a whole variety of topics are banding together and discovering that not only are they not alone, but that they have a skillset that has value.
If AI does affect the job market in the way many of us suspect, then some of the only things left will be the bits that make us human – connection, debate, teaming up to solve things nobody's thought of yet. I'd hazard that the kids who get involved in clubs, volunteer, mess about with side projects, dabble with code or crofting or catering, will do better than those who stick to a tidy plan.
If I could give today's school leavers any advice, it would be that: don't get hung up on the perfect plan. Pick up every skill you can use, especially the ones AI won't touch – people, community, improvisation, genuine curiosity. When all else fails, be willing to graft, and say yes to a few odd and unplanned adventures.
AI or not, there's no template for what's coming next in life for any of us. If anything, the only thing we can rely on is change and it's never been more important that we learn to adapt. And if I had my time again, knowing what I know now? I'd get a trade, maybe more than one.