Teen Author: Why Kids Should Start Their Careers NOW!

Ketaki Shriram doesn’t like waiting. When she was 13, she dreamed of becoming a writer, so she sat down and wrote a novel. Sorceress of the Himalayas from Crystallius Press (www.sorceressofthehimalayas.com) was published when she was 16. Now 17, and preparing for college, she is already reaping the benefits of early career development.

With unemployment claims at the highest level in history, and a recession that could last years, Ketaki believes that every teen-ager shouldn’t just be thinking about what they want to do when they grow up – they should be acting on it. Moreover, she has some tips on how teen-agers can start now on getting an edge on their competition in the future job market:

• Internships – Even if it’s an unpaid internship, it exposes you to what it’s like to work at a real company in the field of your choice. Interested in being a TV reporter? Local TV newsrooms use interns for office help and to support the producers and talent. Want to be an engineer? Apply at an architectural firm or engineering company. Even if you just get coffee for executives, it exposes you to the working world and provides you an opportunity to learn from real professionals.

• Volunteer – There are hundreds of not-for-profit charity organizations in every local community. Interested in business management? Volunteer to work in the office and watch how they run their business. Work with them in the field, or do promotional work to get experience on how to work with the media.

• Apprenticeships – Some tradesman and craft shops still offer low paid apprenticeships for young people interested in trades such as wood-working, cabinet-making, auto repair, and others.

• Just Do it – If you’re in the creative arts – writing, art, acting, singing – just go out and do it. There are tons of venues locally and online for writers and artists to display their work, sometimes even for pay. For performers, most cities have at least one community theatre, valuable for getting on-stage experience.

Every guidance counselor and job counselor knows that it’s about more than education these days – it’s about experience. And who knows better than the kid who turned her dream into a reality decades before many other writers ever do?

“I started writing in elementary school, but it wasn’t until I began writing Sorceress in 2004 that writing played a larger role in my life,” says Ketaki. “Sorceress of the Himalayas has been an amazing experience to write and publish, because it has evolved along with me as I have grown over the past three years.”

Ketaki pursued her career goals and accomplished some of them in a career where many people three times her age are still struggling. Her notion is simple – why wait until you grow up to be what you want to be when you grow up? For her, it was a matter of finding out early what inspired her.

“Writing is awesome because I can work out the stresses in my life by writing stories inspired by people and events that have happened around me,” Ketaki says. “It's such a great way for me to better understand myself and other people around me."

And that’s what other teens can discover if they take the opportunities available to them to help them develop career skills for use not only in later life, but also right now!

Ketaki Shriram (www.sorceressofthehimalayas.com) has been crafting compelling stories from the tender age of eight, when she completed her first short story for a local book fair. Over the next few years her love of writing grew so intense that by age 10 she had completed her first long form fictional story. By 13 she had completed her first novel, Sorceress of the Himalayas (Crystallius Press, $17.95), which she has now published at age 16. When she is not writing, Ketaki, an outstanding student, is highly active in her high school's student government (as student body president) and is opinion editor on her school newspaper. She is currently working on her next novel.