Decisions, Decisions: Picking a Career

In life, some people know exactly what they want to be from an early age. However, others, like myself, do not. All throughout high school we are pushed to get good grades and take lots of AP classes in order to prepare for college and to get into college, and through the rainstorm of homework and grades I never have a chance to sit down and ask myself questions about my future. Who am I? What do I want to be? What do I want to do with my life? These questions are never addressed in school for those who do not already know what they are passionate about and this needs to change. Having an awareness of what career path you want to follow later in your life is very important, and for those who are still unsure of what they want to do with their life throughout high school it can be very frustrating. Knowing what you want to be can help you select classes in high school that can further prepare you for a career and can help you have a better understanding of where you would like to attend college based on the preparations needed for said career path.

For someone like me, who does not know what career path they would like to pursue, it is much harder to make these decisions. I am going into eleventh grade next year, which is a crucial year in figuring out where I would like to apply to college and what I need to do to successfully get into these colleges, and I am hindered by the fact that I don’t know what I want to do with my life. School and all the work that comes along with it is overwhelming by itself and it is hard to even make time to consider life after school, let alone what I want to be for the rest of my life. There aren’t many opportunities offered by my school that help students to learn about different career paths. How are we students supposed to take multiple AP classes, study for tests, do homework, study for and take SATS, and make time to figure out what career path we want to take. More often than not, our minds are in the present moment and not in the future.

I believe that my school should offer a class that provides career exploration to students who are unsure of what career path they want. A class like this would expose its students to the many options that they can take career-wise, by studying about different types of careers each unit. A class like this would be extremely helpful in alleviating the stress of students who feel great anxiety as they become closer and closer to finishing high school without a clue of what they want to do with their life. School is stressful enough and not knowing what I want to do with my future adds even more stress. If my school were to allocate a class solely for this purpose, I believe many students would benefit. High school is a very important time in our lives to learn what we are passionate about and what we could see ourselves doing in the future, and a class that provides opportunities to explore different career options would be greatly beneficial to many students, including myself, to figure out what they want to do with their life after college.