Wow, DH and I are still students. The thought is somewhat depressing, but I’ll write from an older perspective. But heck the CollegeMoneyNetwork is having a giveway for a free ipod nano and cash prizes so I decided to enter.
So been there done that? What advice would I give? Do what you love. Find out early in college or even high school what you really want to do. It’s so hard at 18-22 to decide what you want to do with the rest of your life. I can’t believe we’re picking our future careers so early and without knowing anything about it.
Pretty much all of my friends are 30 now and changing careers. The idea of their career did not turn out to be what they thought. Or it became too much or not fufilling enough. Truth is that I think we should take more time in college say 5 years and do internships with our degrees. That way we can really decide and learn about our future career choice.
These internships shouldn’t be free, but paid and they should give college students an opportunity to pretend working at their careers for 3-6 months. Hopefully they can envision themselves being happy or run screaming for the hills.
It will also give students an opportunity to discuss with people in their career field the pros and cons of their decision. They can learn what sacrifices need to be made and if it’s what they imagined. I wonder if we took more time to ponder our career paths that we wouldn’t be switching jobs so much?
Don’t get me wrong, I’m in this category of people, wondering what am I doing with my life. And I’m already contemplating a career shift, but I wish my parents had given me more guidance and my college had allowed me more time to choose. Instead I did what I thought was the “right” path. So did my DH. We chose the safe route. We didn’t have time in college to “experience” different fields or take courses outside of science. There wasn’t time. But there also wasn’t much time to experience what a career in science would really mean.
So now is the time to find out. When in college start to explore what you really want out of your degree and do it.
6 responses so far ↓
1 JB // Aug 15, 2008 at 9:31 am
But at the same time… you can go too much the other way and try to experience EVERYTHING and try out every career…. and I think we all know at least one person like that. At some point you have to stop and just get a degree… any degree, and get out of there.
2 Kristy // Aug 15, 2008 at 10:04 am
I did an internship in my field and hated it! However, that was after my junior year in college and I only had one year left. Since I was paying my own way, I sucked up and got a Bachelor’s in Chemistry. I worked in the field for 2 years, then switched careers completely at 24. I love what I do now.
Anyway, I agree that there should be more internships and I would suggest that they start the summer after your first year of college. The first year is mostly electives and if you decide to change your major it shouldn’t affect you too much.
3 LivingAlmostLarge // Aug 15, 2008 at 11:35 am
JB are you pointing at me and my DH? Sigh. Oh well.
4 Meg // Aug 15, 2008 at 1:20 pm
I agree! We need to have more internships in college and they need to be early on before we’re locked into a major. I only got a taste of what I was ‘trained’ to do in my senior year — when I found out it wasn’t for me. There’s a huge difference between knowing what you like studying and knowing what you like doing.
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