Where Do I Go From Here: Career Selection
From the earliest days of high school, we are all taught that you must find your passion now. You are told that if you don’t, you’ll never finish with your degree on time, you’ll never find a good-paying job—you’ll never succeed. But guess what? Life is just plain and simply not that black and white.
You might start out at a so-so job, but you always have the option to move on and grow. For example, if your passion is in home decor and furnishings, find a career that will excite others when they come looking for a beautiful front door for their home. Use your knowledge and your passion in career selection. It will transfer to them and they will get excited about how their home is going to look.
Find Your Passion
One of the biggest myths of the 1990s, and in many places still today, is this ever-present idea that if you want to succeed in life, you must love your job in order to get in the front door of the business you want to work at. As though, somehow, without the passion to keep on going, you’ll not only fail to find a job at all but eventually give up. First of all, there are not always as many people as there are jobs or jobs as people. Sometimes you have to take whatever you can get. Second jobs are a lot like chores—there is always more to do than you think.
A career is no different. That means that what you are skilled at is the best place to start, and passion truly does help, but neither is strictly necessary. You can learn something your passionate about as much as you can create skill from dedication or even do both together for something you want to try.
A Career Is Until Retirement
While such a misconception is slowly fading away, there are still a great number of people that think that if they don’t find the perfect career now, they’ll be stuck in the job they have temporarily taken until they die of old age. This is not true. Not only do professionals of all Careers change their livings sometimes, but even those that take temporary positions hop from one position to another. Fast-food employees that leave or are fired often attempt to do anything that they can to swap industries, taking acting jobs or becoming mechanics.
The same is true of those in these same two fields. Bottom line: no matter what you do with your life, how you get started, or where you go, it is important that you plan on at least one change of career throughout your life. And when you do so, it’s a good idea to put up personal boundaries and rules for yourself in advance—those help keep you on the right path, rather than just running into the arms of whatever cushy jobs show up at first light.
Some Say It Takes Years and College to Get a Good Career
The idea of college as a breeding ground for knowledge is a brilliant one; however, the idea that it is solely responsible for where you go or how you get there in life is a lie. There is a great deal of good that comes out of solid university education, and a great deal more from practical applications like that of labs and internships, but (especially today) they are not the only sources.
Knowledge is the key to what makes education worthwhile or not, and in the information age, that education can be found anywhere—even online. The trouble is with the credentials of education. A degree proves that you were taught, but it does not prove whether or not you’ve learned anything. There are “experts” all over the world that don’t actually know anything about their craft or they washout. Meanwhile, a good solid business owner that has taken years to self-educate may find it difficult to get employees, investors, or others to take a risk on them without proof that they know what they’re talking about.
The statement, “The proof is in the pudding,” has never been more relevant in the world than it is in the workforce right now. What you learn is more important than how you learn it, but without a healthy balance of material proof and genuine know-how, you can easily just be run right over.
Honestly what you do does matter, but make sure you listen carefully to all the advice you get. Use what you can and disregard the rest. This is your life and you will do what is necessary to find your place in the working world.