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anonymous
writes: At what age did people decide on their career? I'm finishing school and have no idea what I plan to do when I graduate and I'm real worried!! Reply to this Question
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Fancy yourself as an career advisor?
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female
reader, Bev Conolly  +, writes (20 June 2006):
 Don't be too alarmed. You can "massage" your career as you go. It's what most people do, by default.
I believe that it's only a small minority of people who are really confident in what they want to do with their lives when they're still relatively young. In a way, I envy those people, but you (and I) are in the majority.
My personal experience? Although at 16, I was clear that I wanted to study biochem and make a career in research, by 18 I'd changed my mind. Another five years passed before I ended up with something I really wanted to do.
So, rather than feel like you have to be rock-solid in your choices when you're still getting your education, try to think about the qualities that you want in a career. For example: do you want thrills, or something staid and reliable? Do you want to stay put or travel? Do you want something you can learn (say, butchery) and do forever, or do you want something that requires a continuing education (IT)? Do you want office hours, or would you prefer afternoons/nights? Do you want a job that's a whole lifestyle (firefighter), or just work to support your real interests?
Then, when you have a mental list of those qualities, think about the subjects that interest you most. Are they hands-on or more intellectual? What subjects do you find most attractive and why?
Eventually you start to build up a picture of the career and life that you want, and that makes choosing a direction much easier.
Good luck.
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reader, anonymous, writes (18 June 2006): IMPOV, A good time to start thinking about your career would be around 21. However, this differentiates with different people of course. One of my friends always wanted to be a physio therapist, but it took him about a decade to actually take the route. The thing is, though he still has that dream, and is currently getting into positions where he can get that goal one day, he is currently taking a slightly different route and has become a weight trainer and tennis coach instead.
As for me, I knew I wanted to run my own company, be my own boss in my late teens. I started up my own company right out of highschool, and failed almost 3 years later. However, in that time period leading up to now and beyond, I have had the chance to learn quite a bit about business in general. For my career, I didn't quite know what I wanted to do in terms of type of industry until around grade 12 (age 18). Since I self-taught the majority of my skills, I didn't actually get into post-secondary schooling until the early new millenia to further my knowledge.
The thing is, you have to weigh what options you have, and how those options relate to your current, near, and distant futures. What you want to achieve, who will be relying on you, and where you want to be in X amount of years from now, and so on.
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