Are you a professional? Increasingly, the answer to this question is no. Does it affect the quality of our work? Does it say something about the education received? Not always. On the other hand, it clearly indicates a change in the requirements that we place on ourselves and our (professional) life.
Recently, eras have been changing quite quickly, and what happened 30–35 years ago is perceived as an antediluvian era. It is difficult to imagine a world where there was no advertising, mobile communications and the Internet, but there was a lot of Brezhnev. Where it was possible to save up for a refrigerator for 6–7 years, while standing behind it in line. Or, say, buckwheat and sprats were included in the grocery order issued by the local committee. A dollar cost 60 kopecks, but it was a crime to buy it.
Those who are younger do not remember this time for obvious reasons. The oldest remember inaccurately and selectively, depending on their mood either idealizing or demonizing the late USSR. All hope, it would seem, is for my generation – fifty dollars plus or minus a few years, but whose hope? Who needs the artificial experience of a fictional country? Perhaps in contrast to the current state of affairs, in order to more clearly distinguish in comparison what can be taken for granted, merging with the background.
For example. In the USSR, a person, as a rule, graduated from an institute after school, after which he was assigned to work somewhere for three years – so, smoothly changing jobs to similar places, he grew to some kind of career and property level, and there and pension. That is, along the way, he could confidently identify himself as a metallurgist, or an engineer, or a teacher. Of course, there were exceptions. Moreover, from these thousands of exceptions in a multi-million country, it was also possible to make typical stories – when a forty-year-old man, in an understandable crisis, suddenly drops everything and goes to the foresters. Or remembers that as a child he dreamed of becoming a musician. But today we are talking about the rule, about the dominant, although the exceptions are also curious.
When the USSR collapsed in all respects, it turned out that about 90% of the manufactured goods were not competitive, all these branch research institutes and NGOs were redundant and unprofitable, and no one needed millions of engineers. Since this is still not a fairy tale, it is unlikely that the carriage turned into a pumpkin overnight. It is more logical to assume that she was a pumpkin – and a year, and ten before the final calculation, she was only called a carriage. That millions of smart, decent and professional people in closed research institutes duplicated each other and produced the same product thousands of times, which is the norm in relation to socks, but wildness in relation to ideas. Summing up: neither the education system nor the population employment map corresponded to the real demand – that is why they were so easy to connect and build.
Today, employment of the population is our reality. This formula does not bear any charge of approval or condemnation. This is a primitive statement: if Vasya rented an office and called himself a notary, it means that an extra notary is required in this quarter, but if not, so much the worse for Vasya. The education system, on the other hand, is more demand-driven: you want to become a lawyer/economist – why not? As a result, quite often a person with a degree in law / economics (because he wanted to) works as a manager / copywriter (because it is in demand and more or less prestigious, or rather, not shameful). So who are you in the end?
By education – see above. Note that this is real: in the past, as a rule, it was superficially assimilated and half-forgotten. The Russian language is very rich and capacious, thanks again for the amazing wording: there is a crust. I work as a manager in the department of ready-made linen. Of course, temporarily. Thank God, serfdom (in particular, the professional serfdom of the USSR) is in a gloomy past. Who and where I will be in 6-7 years, one can only guess. Right? As one good friend of mine says, yes and no. Observation experience gives: until now, circumstances have developed around a young man, including a girl. His (her) activity was more of a reciprocal nature: agree / refuse. With the same involvement, he (she) can almost endlessly change the awl for soap and vice versa – get a job as a manager in another department or still as a copywriter. May acquire moderately exotic and socially harmless hobbies. And in this sense, the volatile carnival character of the new time fully manifests itself.
But paradoxically, today’s thirty-forty-year-olds who have realized some personal, author’s life project, at least in my field of vision, form the same percentage of the total livestock as 30 years ago the notorious foresters-priests-directors of the 80s. Not that nothing has changed at all. Today, author’s projects are more individual; in a good way, each specific case is a separate story and almost a single word. But, as then, this personal and beautiful is not in the air, it requires special directed efforts. However, it would be strange if it turned out differently.