Changing careers seems to be a big part of our modern times.

Teacher, one moment; tour-guide, the next. Contractors become real-estate agents. And, if they aren’t good at their jobs, sometimes bankers end up being baristas.

As far as I’m concerned, not all career changes make sense. Take the upcoming provincial election, for example, in which several candidates are turning in their microphones as TV personalities and hoping to become elected officials.

Even though an election hasn’t even been called, Bruce McAllister and Sandra Jansen have both announced their intention to run in what will surely be a historic provincial vote. McAllister left his anchor post at Global TV and shortly thereafter announced he intended to run as a Wildrose candidate, aspiring to represent Chestermere–Rocky View.

Jansen, a former TV anchor for CTV and Citytv, has said she will be seeking the PC nomination in the riding of Calgary North-West.

Since their respective announcements, I’ve been doing some research, hoping to find that beyond their TV careers, McAllister and Jansen might also have extensive political experience.

From what I learned on their websites and LinkedIn profiles, I myself find it a struggle to consider anything they’ve done so far in politics to be beyond minimal. Quite frankly – especially after watching Barb Higgins’s cringe-worthy campaign – I’ve become nervous about people who make such a drastic change in their career path to pursue what often seems like a conveniently timely newfound interest in politics.

I’m not one to say what people should or should not be doing with their careers. After all, I have a degree in Spanish from a university in New Brunswick.

However, I hope that, as the election draws nearer, those who choose to run do so because they know they can handle the responsibility and not because they think being a household name will garner them an easy victory. 

I hope they sincerely believe that all of their life experiences up to this moment have prepared them for a job that will see them making big and often life-altering decisions for people they may never meet.

While there are aspects of politics that do seem appealing, I know that, at least at this point in my life, I would not want to be responsible for making decisions on important issues like pipelines, school closures and taxes. When people go from reading the headlines to being the subject of them, I can only hope it’s for the right reasons.

Mike Morrison is the perfectly bald head behind Mike’s Bloggity Blog. He also tweets regularly from @mikesbloggity.