Career questions tagged following-your-passions
How do you find opportunities for what you’re passionate about?
How can I find and get involved with volunteer organizations and research programs near me or virtually? How do you find a career you are passionate about?
How do I stay passionate about things while also balancing school and other activities?
I'm a middle school student with very driven passions outside of school, psychology to be specific, but recently I've found that it's difficult to commit to my passions and also balance schoolwork and without my passions I don't have the motivation to do work but if I focus too much on my personal activities I get bad grades.
What is the best way to find my passion?
There are a lot of things I like a little, but nothing that has made me want to do it for the rest of my life. I feel lost and confused sometimes, or like it's too late to develop a new passion (even though I know it isn't.) I am really interested in doing something creative and personal, that can make a difference. I like making things look good, and I love photography, I just haven't had a lot of experience with it because I couldn't afford a camera until recently. Sometimes I am discouraged by the fact that others are ahead of me and that I am losing precious time to develop that skill. It gets really hard when most of my life is taken up by academics and schoolwork (I prioritize my grades a lot, I am in Junior Year.) so I sometimes don't have the energy to do the things I love and improve at them. What advice would you give me?
Which is better: continuing to work a job you've grown to dislike because it is advantageous for you career-wise, or finding a new job that you genuinely enjoy?
I've always believed that if you pursue a career you love, then you'll never work a day in your life, so I've followed my dreams and have always planned to pursue my passion, even if it might not result in the most high-paying job. This passion is writing. However, throughout the years, I've discovered that not just any type of writing suits me. I did informal work as a journalist by copywriting for my high school yearbook for my entire four years of high school, and now I’m continuing that type of journalistic work by working as a copy editor and staff writer for my college newspaper. The problem is that I don’t like journalism. I don’t quite hate it, exactly, but I’d much rather be devoting my time and energy into creative writing. I forced myself to do copywriting for all four years of high school even though I disliked it and thought about quitting so many times, mainly because I wanted to have one extracurricular that I had done consistently to put on my college resume. But now that I’m in college, I find myself stuck in the same position—I’m writing for the student newspaper, but I don’t actually like this job because it’s practically identical to my yearbook role. I can’t quite bring myself to just quit so easily because I’ve convinced myself that if I stick with writing for the newspaper for all four years, then it will be good job experience, especially since I want to go into publishing in the future, but do I really want to put myself through yet ANOTHER four years of forcing myself to tough it out in a job that I don’t like? Is it wrong to want to put my mental health and happiness first, even if I know that sticking it out in this job might be more advantageous career-wise? The thing is, I don’t even want to do journalism as my career—I want to work in creative writing or publishing, but I’m trying to be open-minded about all writing opportunities. At the same time, though, I don’t want to get stuck in a career in journalism when that was never what I wanted in the first place. I’m just so stressed and confused about what I should do. When I asked my aunt for advice, she basically told me I was being too naive and that it’s called a “job” or “work” because you’re not SUPPOSED to like what you do in the first place, so she advised me to just stick it out. The whole reason I wanted to pursue a writing job is because I love writing, but the thing is, I’m not enjoying THIS type of writing, and it just makes me think… what was the point of pursuing my passions in the first place if I’m still not happy? Instead of doing journalism, which makes me so unhappy, I might as well have worked toward becoming a doctor or lawyer or something, since I’d be equally as unhappy but they’re higher-paying jobs. I’m a seriously conflicted student in need of career advice. #college #journalism #writing #job #work-life-balance #work #career-advice #help #career-help #advice #technical-writing #creative-writing #publishing #editing #career #following-your-passions #career-counseling #career-choice #career-path #student #career-planning #student-advice #writing-and-editing