Not everybody has a clear vision about which college major to choose or which career path they want to follow. The important thing to keep in mind while you are struggling to make a decision is not to feel overwhelmed or pressured into feeling like you are the only one left behind while everyone else has moved on. Instead, take a deep breath and explore these proven strategies to help you solidify your career choice:
Spend Some Time On Self-Reflection
Before doing anything else it would really help to spend some time thinking about your strengths, your talents and your personality. Think about what interests and motivates you. Are you a person who is super-organized and thrives with structure or are you a little more easy-going? Do you like the idea of working as a team member or is working solo more up your alley?
What do you see yourself doing five years from now? Do you see yourself sitting in a back office poring over a computer while working on coding and programming? Or do you see yourself interacting with other people? Do you see yourself working with animals, people, nature, or in a laboratory?
Write down everything you can think about that would help you narrow down your choices. While writing down things you like to do, also make a list of things you absolutely cannot see yourself doing. Cancelling these options right off will help you narrow down your list even further by the process of elimination.
Attend A Summer School Program
So you think you would like to be a medical appliance technician, constructing and fitting medical support devices, but you are not 100% sure that this is the right choice for you. One way to solidify your choice is by attending a summer school program that exposes you to this field. It is far better to find out in summer school that maybe this is not the right choice for you, rather than enroll in a 4-year program and then come to this realization.
Do An Internship That Aligns With Your Career Choice
Nothing beats practical experience when you are trying to make an informed decision. No matter how much you read about a particular career path, it will always be somebody else’s opinion, not yours. Just because one person has written about the joys of being a video game designer, it does not mean you will like it as much. You may prefer to play video games rather than sitting in a back room creating or designing games.
Once you’ve narrowed your choices during your self-reflection, place the careers in order of preference and apply to an internship in your first-choice career.
Doing an internship in your field of study is like getting a reality check of what that profession really is like. It takes away the glamour of the profession and exposes you to nitty-gritty of the job. A few weeks or a couple of months into your internship, you will have a much better idea of whether or not this is the right career choice for you.
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