“You’re a jack of all trades and a master of nothing!” scolded our high school band director as we stumbled through a difficult passage imbedded in a medley of songs from the musical “Porgy and Bess”.

While his words stung at the time, as teenagers we figured we had plenty of time to become relatively proficient at something before retirement, so we chalked up his tirade as nothing more than a nicotine craving and moved on.

Well, here I am decades later and still wondering what I want to be when I grow up. I remember back in junior high school the show of hands as our teacher asked about our future career ambitions. Among those were kids who had already mapped out their college major while others -firmly entrenched in present – were sweating about passing 7th grade English. To them, the possibility of writing a dissertation on molecular biology one day seemed like science fiction.

It’s not that I lack direction. My problem is that I have so many directions that I’d like to explore on my career roadmap. However, my travel agent, Mr. Time & Money, has kept my itinerary relatively static. Looking back I see that my teacher’s prophecy came true – I really am a jack of all trades. There are so many things that I’m pretty good at that it makes it hard to choose just one thing and make it a career forever.

A friend of mine who used to work at a factory would often talk about the older women who worked on the light-duty assembly lines, tucking string cheese into small plastic pockets for eight hours straight, five days a week.

“If I’m still here 30 years from now doing that, take a gun and kill me – please!” she said half-jokingly.

There are plenty of people out there still collecting a paycheck from the same employer that hired them right out of high school or college. Many are still there because they have found their niche and can’t imagine doing anything else – hence the masters. And then there are those doing the same thing day after day because at that their age they believe they can’t do anything else.
“A trained monkey could do my job,” my friend lamented, “but the money’s good and I don’t have skills for anything else.”

But then a downturn in the economy comes along and you’re forced to go to Plan B whether you’re ready or not. That’s when being a jack of all trades can be a good thing. Experts predict that we’ll make 3 to 11 career changes over our lifetime. Thanks to technology changing today’s job market at the speed of light, we had better be flexible and adapt our job skills in order to stay on the payroll.

My grandmother who was born at the turn of the last century always wanted a career as a secretary. However, motherhood and becoming a widow before retirement age dictated her career plans. I’m sure she never dreamed of working in a bakery or washing dishes at the local café or sewing clown dolls for cash, but she was in survival mode and thanked her lucky stars that she could use her cache of talents for cash.

It helps to be a jack of all trades especially when job ‘burn out’ comes calling. As the stresses of a current job continue to mount, many of us find ourselves fantasizing about our dream jobs, taking all our of hidden talents and desires and morphing them into a single job that solves all our professional and creative yearnings. At those times we see ourselves landscaping the front lawn at the White House or giving Mrs. Fields a run for her money in the cookie business or knocking J.K. Rowling off the top of the Best Seller list.

But the truth of the matter is whether you’re a master or a jack of all trades, you can accomplish anything you set your mind to. All it takes is patience, faith and a lot of persistence, or what my grandma would call -‘stick-to-it-ivity’.