Moving with the times in career choices

By Michael Oriedo

As rates of unemployment soar and trends change, parents are now allowing their children to study courses that are outside traditional careers that were initially the most preferred.

Many parents, though conservatively, are accepting their children to study courses for instance in disc jockeying, acting, movie-making, animation, and singing.

This is as opposed to traditional careers that parents prioritised for their children namely accounting, teaching, nursing, engineering, medicine, and law.

The need to diversify to keep up with changing times has seen the careers start to gain acceptance in Kenya.

An artistic dream

Grace Njeri is a student at a performing arts college in Nairobi.

Njeri, who completed her form four a year ago and joined the school, says her dream is to become a performing artist.

"This is what I wanted to be because I was good in acting while in secondary school. I believe I will become a good script writer when I complete the course," she says.

When she informed her parents about her choice of career, Njeri says they were stunned.

"My parents could not believe that I wanted to act in life. They questioned my decision and accused me of being brainwashed. They then gave me two days to think about what I wanted to study," she recounts.

But when the time lapsed, Njeri stuck to her decision. Her parents were infuriated. They had planned that she studies nursing.

Later, though doubtful about their daughter’s career choice, they paid her school fees at the college but warned her never to turn back to them when things do not work.

Mr Wallace Kariuki, Academic Director at Shang Tao Animation College in Nairobi acknowledges that parents and students are now searching for careers that are not over saturated.

"Parents are now looking for something fresh in line with new technological changes. This would help to give their children an edge in the job market," he says. He notes that non-traditional careers are now among the most well paying in the country.

"You look at most of our musicians, deejays and other people in the entertainment industry, they are earning far much better than most people in traditional careers. And still, there is a lot of room in the industry," he says.

Kariuki, a 3-D animation tutor says the course, which has been in the country for about ten years now, has gained acceptance. "When we started, we took time to get students because most people did not understand what the course entails. Many did not believe that you can study animation as a career," he says.

According to the animation artist, many parents associated the art with cartoons, which are seen as not serious work, thus cannot make a good career.

Better changes

"Some parents would decline to pay for their children school fees or throw them out of their houses once they chose to study animation, but things have changed for the better," he says.

While misconception still exists that animation is about cartoons, he says the course is among the most important and is interrelated with many others. "Engineers, teachers, doctors, interior designers, architectures, the military, the police and historians need 3-D modelling and visualisation during their work," he says.

Doctors can perform new forms of surgery with the aid of 3-D visualisation, while architectures can design buildings and visualise how they will look like when they are complete using the art. On the other hand, historians can use it to recreate historic characters and events and the police can use it to recreate accident scenes or scenes of crime.

Better visualisation

"Imagine how physics and chemistry in secondary school would be interesting if teachers used 3-D animation in teaching concepts like gravitational force and pressure. Students would be able to visualise the ideas and not imagine things," he observes.

He advises that in future, 3-D modelling and visualisation should be part of teaching aids at all levels of education if we are to make learning interesting. Kariuki notes that most non-traditional courses are not popular because people resist change.

"It is hard for instance for people to move from 2-D visualisation to 3-D. The former is what people are used to. That is what we were introduced to when we were young," he says.

He notes that career prospects in most non-traditional courses currently are plenty.

For instance, he says it is hard to saturate the entertainment industry. "This is an area that is fast revolving. Fresh people are coming up every time thus making the industry dynamic," he says.

In animation, he says graduates have career opportunities in the media, movie and education industries among others.

"All the current learning materials will have to be developed into multi-media. This has started to happen where books are put in digital format," he notes.

Kariuki observes that acceptance of new careers, beside the traditional ones would help the country develop.