What Career Path? Sophomore ConfusionAnswered
Hey I'm a sophomore. I'm supposed to know what career I want to do, the guidance team at my school has already given us several options and surveys (Naviance, Virtual Job Shadow) to figure it out, but none of the results seem satisfying to me. I want to do a job that gets me excited to get out of bed every morning. Somewhat idealistic, I know, but I want to be passionate about it so much that I can overlook the disadvantages that come with every job. Any resources or tips for me?
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2 answers
Honestly, it's okay if you don't know what career you want to go into! You're just a sophomore and have a lot of time. About 30% of college students will switch their major at least once, so even they didn't know for sure what their career would be. My advice would be to experience as much as you can. If you're considering joining a club or extracurricular activity or sports team, go ahead and do it! You'll learn more about yourself with each new thing you experience, and it'll hopefully bring you closer to finding something you're really passionate about. If you join an activity and you don't like it, it's okay to stop participating, just like how it's okay to switch majors once you're in college. If you can narrow down your interests to a specific category (ex. science, languages, engineering), you can then begin researching jobs that exist in that field beside the basic ones that everyone knows about. There are so many cool jobs that exist that people just don't know about. If you can narrow it down but still feel undecided about your specific career path, it's okay to plan to earn a degree in a more general field and narrow down your interests in college through specialized programs, minors, and jobs you apply to.
The best method I've found for finding a job/career path that you're passionate about is looking at what you already do. Take every activity you do for fun and ask yourself:
Why you do it?
Why did you start the activity?
What do you feel like the activity fulfills for you?
Sometimes it also helps to analyze what you don't like to do because that can help you figure out what you can't stand or what wouldn't make you fulfilled.
Try to dig down to the root of the answer too. Instead of just saying, "I like to read fiction because it's entertaining," try to go for a deeper answer such as, "I like to read fiction because I can see the world from different people's perspectives." From there you could realize that you really like to connect with people in general and that could lead you to realize that one of the most important aspects of a career would be the ability to work with other people who come from vastly different places and perspectives than you do.
I've done this plenty of times and it helps you determine what your values are in a career which can help you judge different jobs, classes, and schools based on how well they fit with your values.
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