From my experience (as an adult educator and a career quest-er myself), there are several critical questions to consider:
- What do I enjoy doing enough to spend all day long five (or six) days a week doing it?
- How much money do I want to earn? (Or perhaps, what lifestyle do I want?)
- Where do I want to live?
Enjoying one's work is one of the greatest gifts a person can have. How can we discover what we would like to do ... all day every day?
One of the most useful resources I ever came across to help me assess what I enjoy doing is a book called What Color is Your Parachute? by Richard Nelson Bolles. It provides thinking exercises aimed at making a person reflect on what they have done in the past that gave them a sense of joy and satisfaction.
Doing these exercises while taking a break from teaching, when my children were young, rekindled my interest in writing. I had considered journalism as a career when I was in high school, but my university experience quickly squelched that dream: I concluded that my writing wasn't good enough for me to be a professional writer. Recalling how much pleasure I had derived from writing (while I was doing the exercises in the Parachute book) encouraged me to consider writing again.
Another way to discover what we truly enjoy doing is to work in a field, preferably before spending 2 or 3 years studying (and then discovering that we don't like the reality of the workplace). I met a young woman recently who was studying law here in Ottawa, after spending several years working for the government. But midway through her studies, she realized she didn't want to be a lawyer either, though she planned to finish. Another young woman I know was fascinated by the idea of creating animations - but when she completed her studies and began to work in the field, she realized she hated sitting in front of a computer all day long, staring at the screen. She also discovered that working with many others on a large animation project - even an artistic one - did not give her a sense of personal satisfaction, as she was one of many "cogs" in the production "wheel."
Internships can give us a taste for the reality of the workplace. I tried one after taking numerous writing courses. One summer I did a brief journalism internship at one of our local newspapers. Was this to be my big break into journalism?! My three weeks at the Ottawa Citizen demystified the journalism process, but I also discovered that, as much as I derived pleasure from writing, I didn't want daily writing assignments which could be edited away if space that day were limited - or if a bigger story came up. I also didn't want to interview people who had just experienced a tragic event, sit at the courtroom, or dig through government data - to get a news story...
So I went back to teaching - realizing that I did love my daily interaction with students, much as I hated the endless marking!
As a teacher, I encouraged my students to try on-the-job learning. Our school had an active co-operative education program, and I recommended it to many. One of my students told me she planned to study nursing, so I encouraged her to do a five-month work placement in a nursing home, as one of her courses, to see how she liked the medical field.
How is it going? I asked her one day.
I can't wait for it to end, she replied. I hated hospitals when my mother was sick. But I thought I had gotten over that. Now I see that I still can't handle seeing so many sick people. I definitely can't be a nurse.
She changed her career plans and became an accountant.
Having seen many students change their career plans after experiencing the reality of the work place, I am a great believer in internships, summer jobs, part-time employment, volunteering and student work placements - anything that gives one a taste of the reality of the workplace environment.
How much money do I want to earn?
This may seem like a strange question! As much as possible, of course! But the reality is that not all jobs earn the same pay! So if your goal is, for example, to "help street people," you may earn minimum wage, working somewhere like a drop-in center for the homeless (where many workers may be volunteers). You will earn more as a social worker (though you probably still won't drive a Mercedes Benz and live in an upscale neighborhood). Your chances of getting rich would be better if you were a lawyer, perhaps on the board of directors for a shelter for the homeless, or owned a successful business - where you could partner with organizations that help homeless people get back into the workforce.
I remember reading about a man whose dream was to be a professional dancer - but he realized that (given his talent) he couldn't earn enough money to live. But he didn't give up his dream. Instead, he found a job that met his financial needs yet gave him the flexibility to pursue dancing in a serious way, though not as his main source of income. Artists, actors and writers often do the same thing.
Realizing this was liberating for me: I could still be a writer - yet not depend on it for my family's financial needs. So I wrote part-time, not earning a lot, but satisfying my creative urge to write.
Finally, where do I want to live?
Every job has a location. When I was studying at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, there were a lot of engineering students on campus, many studying mining engineering. But if you become a mining engineer, you will probably spend your life living near a mine in the mountains... Similarly, if you want to work in publishing, you will probably only find work in a major publishing center like Toronto or New York...
It may not seem important, but I have heard of marriages breaking up because one partner didn't want to live where the other needed to work... Of course, some jobs (medical, educational, mechanical, and so on) are needed everywhere!
It isn't easy to find the perfect job - but it is worth the effort to try!
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