Are You Supposed to Pick Just One Career When You Grow Up?
This is a common question that students may ask. Are you supposed to pick just one career when you grow up? The answer is no. As you go through elementary school and high school, you will find that you will change your interests all the time. Maybe in school right now, you’re interested in animals and you want to become a Veterinarian. When you start high school, you may find out that you’re really good at writing so maybe you want to become a writer. There’s nothing wrong with that. You will find through experience that you are more interested in other subjects than others and the natural thing to do is to choose a career based on what you’re most interested in doing and what you do the best in, and you only find that out through time and the different courses that you will take.
Elementary school is great to figure out what you like as you are introduced to a lot of different subjects in school like Art, Math, Science and Gym. In high school, you get to choose some of your courses based on what you like which will help you to figure out what you like and what you don’t like, taking you a step closer to what career path you want to follow. Of course this can change a few times in high school. Even after high school you can change your mind in university or college. You will see that maybe you’re more interested in another program so you can switch to that or maybe specialize in one program as your major and take another course at the same time as your minor. There are a lot of options available to you.
Even after college or university when you’re starting to work at a job, you will find you will switch careers often. Maybe there are not many jobs available in your chosen field after graduating and you decide to work in another industry. Maybe you started working in your chosen line of work after graduation and you find out that it’s not really what you want to do after all and you decide to pursue another line of work, maybe going back to school in that industry or maybe you happen to get a job in that field. You never know what will happen.
The most important thing to remember is to keep your options open as anything can change, including your interests and available jobs in that market so you must be able to adapt to these different situations. The best part is, you can gain skills in many different industries that you can you can use in any job. So enjoy and take advantage of all these experiences.
I agree with this article, but the worksheets on this site, seem to indicate that children need to be thinking and deciding about what they will be when they grow up at a very young age.
I think children should not be stressing about what to “choose” at an early age. The language of this needs to change. They should not be rushed to grow up and take on adult issues, but be encouraged to learn, and to explore. Encouraged to learn about different careers, learn about different jobs for example: “that involve animals.” Current research around childhood anxiety and mental health supports the concern that we are rushing our children to grow up too soon. By simply changing the wording of the information, the children will react to the information in a very different way. I believe children should learn about all jobs, all options, all types of education. As they learn about these jobs, they will naturally consider them as future options.
For example:
Did you know there are different ways to continue school and training after high school?
Learn about the different types of education / post secondary.
What is a trade, what do these people do in our communities, what sounds interesting about this job? Versus what are your current skills and how do they match these jobs? One encourages student to be engaged and excited to learn about new things, the second approach is scary, “I don’t know what skills I have?” or “I don’t have these skills = I can not do this” Very harmful results, that can make children disengage.
Career information is very important for young people to be exposed to, but we must remove the – “What do you want to choose for your future” to an appropriate where students learn about the “jobs that people do.” Just like the site’s name. In highschool, students need to start making more decisions, which will be easier if they have been taught about various options in a non-threating way.