A Look at Life’s 3 Most Meaningful Careers

When you’re young, being asked ‘What do you want to do as a career?’ can be one of the most annoying questions imaginable.

09:02 27 July 2016

When you’re young, being asked ‘What do you want to do as a career?’ can be one of the most annoying questions imaginable, as apparently ‘Professional Gamer’ or ‘Pizza Taster’ aren’t ‘proper jobs’. It can be difficult knowing what you want to after your dreams of being a police officer, or ballerina fade when you get over the age of 10. I thought I’d take a little time to come up with what are probably the most meaningful careers to undertake. If you’re at that stage in your life when you really need to start thinking about your career (or a change in career) then have a look at these three, as they have proven to be some of the most meaningful and satisfying in the world.

 

Nurses

You might think that being a doctor is a very meaningful role (for surgeons, probably), but the art of being a good doctor is being lost. I haven’t had a conversation with a doctor where I genuinely thought they cared since I was about 4. The doctor-patient relationship has become extremely impersonal, whereas I would say the nurse-patient relationship has stayed consistently strong. Nurses speak to you as a real human and so it must be very fulfilling and meaningful when you know you’ve made someone’s time in hospital better. There’s also a lot of room to move around in the career as a nurse. There are string of courses and programmes that you can take online like RN to MSN programs and ADN to NP programs which means you can work your way up and will always feel like you’re progressing in your career.

 

Teacher/Tutor

As a teacher or tutor you get to watch the next generation of society grow into young adults. Teaching never gets the recognition that it deserves, which is stupid as it’s one of the most important roles in society and so, is also one of the most meaningful. Out of all the teacher roles, Business Insider found that Literature teachers are the most fulfilled in their jobs. I don’t know if that’s just a coincidence, or whether the people who take on that subject have a natural love of it and so imparting their knowledge to the next generation becomes very meaningful and fulfilling.

 

Therapist/Psychiatrist

 

I know I said earlier that doctors have a very impersonal relationship with their patients and so it’s hard to be really fulfilled in the role, but that was just for medical doctors, therapists are a different breed. It can be hard work being a therapist or psychiatrist as you get to know your patients but you have to distance yourself from their problems so that you don’t take them on yourself. All this aside, though, when you finally break through and help your patient’s marriage survive, or help them overcome depression of PTSD, it can be one of the most fulfilling and meaningful careers. Making other people happy is one of the great joys of our short time on this planet, and so how great is it if you get to do it for a living (or you can become Ellen DeGeneres she does it without a medical degree).