From the age of about 14 years old it has felt like everyone has oficially needed to know what they wanted to do with their life - myself included. This being said however, I feel that in many ways this can be a totally unacceptable thing to force a young person to do! I wish somebody could simply explain to me, how at 14 years old with a limited knowledge of the world is anyone supposed to make a decision of such magnitude.
Now don't get me wrong, I am aware that there are many people out there who have a clear idea of what they want to do with their life and they have known from the moment they were born. I, sadly, am not one of these people.
Even now as I write this, I am 22 years old (turning 23 at the end of March), with a first class honours degree in ICT and I still am unclear as to what I am meant to do with my life. Yes I could go and find a job within the IT industry which would earn me a great deal of money but would I have job satisfaction? Would I want to get up everyday and rush to work because I love what I do? I simply cannot answer these questions - am I even old enough?
Am I The Only One Who Didn't Know at School?
I have never been someone who has known what they want to do. When I was asked at 14 by my teachers at school, to bring in research about my future career I brought in multiple documents about multiple careers - politicians, cabin crew, a pilot for an airline, lawyer, web developer - clearly I never had a clear path.
When finally choosing my GCSE subjects I made the decision to study two languages as this would give me the best chance of working with an airline to become a member of cabin crew. All of this changed when choosing my A-Level subjects however - now I wanted to be a journalist it was just a matter of deciding what kind.
When I had work experience in Lower Sixth (my penultimate year of school before uni) I decided I wanted to be a political journalist so I spent a week shadowing a politician. After speaking with journalists and seeing how confident and forward they were I decided that it wouldn't be for me.
When the time came to picking my University degree courses I was back to the drawing board. I never believed in myself enough to think I could get the grades to study Law to be a lawyer so I dismissed that idea. I then moved on to something I thought I was good at - English. I decided on three University courses in either English or English with Linguistics. I had one spot left on my application and I thought to be diverse - as that's what I seem to be in my interests - I would apply for something I have been relatively good at since I was very small - computing. When it came to choosing which course to make my firm choice I yet again changed my mind from studying English and Linguistics to deciding I wanted to study computing.
Why Can I Not Decide?
So to look back in the space of four years I have managed to change my mind about my career at least 4 or 5 times. Clearly deciding on a career is not as easy as some people would like to think it is.
There are days when I truly wish that I had been born with a clear path and knowledge of what I wanted to do from the word go. I however, have been lumbered with interests in a ridiculous number of areas and noway of knowing exactly what I want to do everyday.
As I write this rather long post I have been researching the original path I thought I would take at 14 - cabin crew. I feel that after many years of studying and working myself extremely hard I want some adventure in my life and a challenging career which could take me places I never thought I could go. This being said however, with my track record my mind could have changed again by the time I wake up tomorrow morning.
All that remains is the age old question..
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