How do you know what you want to be?

Hi Kalan,

5 Questions That Will Help You Choose the Right Career

1. 
   

   What are you good at, and what do you love?
   Your skills inventory could take the form of a checklist, a mock resume or interviews with friends, family members, mentors and former employers who can provide an outside perspective.

   
   


2. 
   

   Are you promotion- or prevention-focused?
   Feeling motivated is an essential aspect of job satisfaction. But causes for motivation vary widely from person to person. In general, there tend to be two main motivation types: promotion-focused and prevention-focused.

   
   


3. 
   

   What is the best environment for your personality type?
   Particularly important is determining whether you’re more of an introvert or an extrovert, as the two personality types differ widely in their needs.

   
   


4. 
   

   What kind of lifestyle do you want?
   Most jobs start off with at least a few years of hard labor at lower pay than you’d like. What’s more important is looking ahead at people well into a career track to determine whether the lifestyle they lead is desirable to you. Some factors you might want to consider include the amount of control they have over their own time, their salary and the amount of travel involved, among other factors.

   
   


5. 
   

   Where do you want to live?
   Beyond geographical region, think again about the lifestyle on offer in the places you’ll be headed. Do you seek a metropolitan lifestyle with restaurants and cultural attractions on every corner? Or do you need the beauty and quiet of a rural setting?

   
   

I hope this can help you in your reflexions:

http://www.brazencareerist.com/blog/2013/06/14/5-questions-that-will-help-you-choose-the-right-career/

“What do I want to be?”

That’s a great question! Unfortunately, you’ll likely ask yourself this question until the day you retire. It’s human nature to want more or something different. So even if you achieve your goal, you’ll likely realize there’s yet another fork in the road to ponder.

I wouldn’t be too stressed on what you want to do. What you want now will differ from what you want when you turn 25, when you turn 40, etc. Our desires are as predictably unending as the tides.

Instead, I’d focus on where your passion lies and to weigh it against the commercial viability of your passion. In other words, you want to enjoy your field of study…but you also need to eventually find a job. You might have a passion for hunting butterflies. But if you can’t find a job hunting them, it’s probably best to look elsewhere.

Certain fields of study have higher commercial demand. For example, majors related to IT and engineering are easier to land a job than majors in the humanities. I’m not saying not to major in the humanities. But you need to balance what you want with what employers want.

So the three main points I want to make are…

1. Don’t stress on what you want to do because it will change


2. Do what you have a passion for


3. But also do what has commercial viability

Good luck!

Hi Kalan,

You raise an interesting question. The previous post is good for raising a lot of questions for you to consider as you move forward. Those are very important issues to take into consideration.

As a sophomore in high school I would say that it is okay to not know. Although everyone is different, some people are very driven and know exactly what it is that they want to do for a career. I'm sure that there are many possible jobs out there that you've probably never even heard of let alone considered. University can be a great place to discover new fields and jobs.

To give you an example from personal experience: I started out in bioengineering at UC Berkeley, switched to integrative biology and graduated with that degree. I then went to the Academy of Art in San Francisco and pursued a Masters of Fine Art in traditional illustration while working as an IT manager. I tried to break into the comic book industry but then ended up getting a job in the video games industry and have been there ever since.

As a point of contrast, I have friends who knew exactly what they wanted to do from an early age and poured all of their energy into that and now have the job that they worked so hard for.

So in my opinion, it's okay if you don't know what you want to be. And if you have friends who know what they want to be that's great too. There isn't one right answer that works for everyone. Stay curious and keep your mind open to new ideas and experiences. Who knows, maybe you'll start a company or create a job at a company that's never existed before. And that'd be awesome as well.

I hope this helped and didn't just confuse things even more (sorry if it's the latter).