When does work become more than a just a way to pay the bills?
If you’re going by the letter of the law — at least the Merriam-Webster Dictionary’s letter of the law — there’s a clear distinction between “job” and “career.” Webster’s defines “job” as “a regular remunerative position.” It defines “career” as “a profession for which one trains and which is undertaken as a permanent calling.” Sounds pretty simple. The former is the singular position, the latter is the lifelong profession. Until it isn’t.
“The word ‘career’ has a much broader meaning today than it did in the past,” says Dominick Gaitano, a former U.S. Department of Labor analyst who now pairs young professionals with jobs overseas. “It can be an evolving definition over the course of your entire life.”
Shifting interests
Gaitano says it’s human nature to adapt the “job” and “career” definitions to your own life. “A job may be that nine-to-five thing you do every day to pay the mortgage and pay for that trip to Disney,” he says. “A career is something with more staying power. It’s spread out longer, maybe from your early 20s to the time you retire, and for most of us, it’s what we do.”
Essentially, it’s the title below the name, according to Gaitano. “Teacher, author, engineer, assembly-line worker, landscaper, electrician, certified public accountant, chef, psychologist. Those are careers,” he says, acknowledging that titles can be used interchangeably during a person’s life. “There are people who define themselves as teachers in their 20s, graphic designers in their 30s and restaurateurs in their 40s. Some career shifts are dramatic and have fascinating backstories — the plumber who takes night classes to become an attorney, or the administrative assistant who opens up a donut shop after 12 years of setting up executive meetings and ordering office supplies. Where does one career stop and the other begin?”
Pam Farnsworth, a social worker in Philadelphia, says that’s a difficult question to answer. “I think the very idea of defining a career today is problematic,” she says.
“In the past, you knew what you were going to be when you accepted your high school diploma. If your father was a bricklayer, chances are that you would have been a bricklayer. Even if you went to school, you had a fairly good idea of the type of job you wanted when you graduated.”
Not today, says Farnsworth. “People react to low wages, to relocation, to their own ambition and other factors,” she says. “They want to keep moving.”
‘Call it what you want’
Farnsworth says many people today identify their careers in unique ways. “My mom was a pediatrician for 30 years, and when people ask her about her career, she always says she was in human relations,” says Farnsworth.
“I told her to stop saying that because it sounded like she worked in HR or she had some sort of creepy mistress job, but she’d always insist on that as her career definition — human relations. Because she said that her job was examining, diagnosing and treating patients, but her career was about relationships — human to human, human to doctor, human to technology, human to him or herself, human to surroundings. I don’t agree with her, but I understand what she’s saying. I tell her, ‘Call it what you want. You’re a pediatrician.’”
Navya Banerjee, a 44-year-old artist in Toronto, says she’s been defining her career for years, acknowledging that it’s led to some confusion with her clients. Banerjee, who owns and operates a landscape business, says she’s been calling herself an artist ever since she began working in a flower shop when she was 12.
“When I’m asked to work on the outside of someone’s home or to create something for inside their home, I’m creating something. Creation is art. Creators are artists,” she says.
Before you roll your eyes, Banerjee says she’s well aware of “how pretentious” she sounds. She also says she doesn’t care. “When I say things like that out loud, I always think to myself, ‘Wow, you sound like a real piece of work.’ But I’m not saying it that way. What I’m saying is that I approach my job in a certain way and that approach is what defines me,” she says. “I approach my job like an artist. Therefore, I’m an artist.”