All Of You Fish Whizzes

[waterdrop]

I think it would have been a career I would have enjoyed but never thought to do. Instead I work in a very technical job that leaves little room to enjoy my fish except at home. I have learned a lot about water sampling with truly good equipment for very low levels of contaminants but nothing like what we deal with as hobbyists. I was a physics, chemistry and math whiz in high school and never really figured out that fish would have been more fun as a career.
Good luck going forward Repeat.

Ha! Very good comment. I think its very hard (especially in high school and college when it matters most) to figure out how to think clearly about what will constitute the best career choices. Its very easy to confuse "a fascination" with "a good career path" I think. What's so hard at those ages is to be able to imagine that any profession, once you've set yourself into it and are way down the road, will likely become very, very familiar to you and you may, much to your later surprise, find that you have mastered it and its become somewhat tiring or boring. Because of that, it becomes so important, I think, to figure out what in life (what topic) causes you to always have a very special curiosity and/or that you perhaps seem to somehow have a talent for. Those could be separate things (those you have a "thirst" for, and those you have a "talent" for) but some people are very lucky and the two happen to be the same. Regardless whether they are the same though, its crucial for young people to -identify- those things I think, and then to try and act on that.

There are things, like our fish hobby, which young people in particular often get very excited about and think a lot about as a potential career area, but which sometimes have relatively few potential jobs out there, relative to more general professions. Sometimes the things one gets excited about are still best left as hobbies, not always, but it does take some time to work that out. Its another important realization that good success in some other career might enable one to better afford the hobbies one likes, and that those hobbies might better remain as enjoyments for one's entire life if they are left as hobbies!

~~waterdrop~~

 

[LongS]

Agree with waterdrop here, if i had to do this for a living i would end up probably growing tired of it and get fed up very easily. I like to use this as a retreat almost.