Ask HN: How can I choose a fulfilling career?
I'm currently a high school senior about to apply to colleges, but how can I even know what will make me happy? It feels like I have to make a huge decision without knowing anything.
Do you have any ideas in mind? Even the slightest vague inkling like "this topic or activity has me curious"? Or are you applying to college because it's the next-thing-to-do and that's what everyone else expects of a high-school senior?
If you don't know what to do, make a basic plan to 1) list out a few things that you're curious about and 2) try them. It's really that simple. Don't get into analysis paralysis. Pick something and try it. If you stick with it and it sucks, try something else. This is real life now, and you're completely free to try whatever you want. The key is to try something though, don't bury your talents in the ground (so to speak) and get stuck in fear. Once you get older, you'll realize anyway that fulfillment is often correlated with your attitude... some activities make it easier to have a good attitude, so it's your mission to find them.
A short aside on College:
When I chose to go to college and bury myself under a crushing mountain of school-loan debt, I went because I had clarity about what I really enjoyed and where I wanted to end up... in my 5th grade yearbook other kids were writing down "singer" and "astronaut", but I wrote down that I wanted to be a "Computer Programmer / Hacker". I had zero self-awareness about it back then, but it authentically came from a heart that loved to build/engineer things.
Don't apply to college with NO PLAN and pray you'll end up somewhere, unless of course you have parents who are paying for all that ;) At the end of the day, this is your life now, and if your plan involves taking a year to figure yourself out, that's a completely valid life course to take, too.
It's not all bad either, I learned a few good lessons about the time/energy/freedom value of money and have also been rewarded with a strong aversion towards impulsively taking on debt.
2. Spend as much time learning about yourself as you do about different career fields
3. Dont take advice from career counsellors or program advisors. In my experience most of the time they are sales people in disguise.
4. Talk to seasoned adults who have been doing what they are doing for a while (lets say at least 5 years). In most professions it is not weird to ask for an informational interview, and they are super useful. A lot of the time people you interview with will try and find you jobs or other leads.
5. Remember it is your life, not your parents. Making them happy wont necessarily make you happy and you have to live your life.
6. Volunteer (if you can afford to)
7. Travel (if you can afford to). check out youth/student working visas in foreign places.
8. consider if your personality and lifestyle is compatible with career fields you are considering. For example, if you like stability and routine, Film might not be your thing. If you like to move about and use your body as well as your mind, computer stuff might drive you batty. If you want a life outside of work, and dont want to be working all of the time, dont become a nurse, etc
9. Check out trades apprenticeships. Trades are high in demand, you get paid while you are in school (in Canada at least), you have a job most of the time, and at the end of it you make way more money than most people. If you decide the trade you have chosen isnt for you, you will at least be making enough money to put yourself through school again.
10. Meetup.com. Find a group that meets about something you are interested in and join it.
I recommend this to anyone in high school or college who is looking for good heuristics for life direction.
My "elevator pitch" answer (much included in pg essays) is:
a) Find interesting people you like to be around.
b) Find interesting and hard problems to work on.
c) Find a place you want to live.
Looking at these heuristics often makes choices a lot easier.
Most people give the advice of "Do what you love and get most excited about" and this is, to some extent, the advice I would have given as well. However, when I think back to the work I've done and that has made me most proud in life, a bit chunk of it is simply doing new things, and pushing myself further than ever before. Cal Newport's advice is more along the lines of "Do what you're really good at, rather than only what you love."
Of course, this assumes you don't hate what you're doing. Food for thought.
That's interesting, as other career gurus argue the opposite view. For example Barbara Sher, author of "I Could Do Anything If I Only Knew What It Was" gives the example of herself as an unhappy stay-at-home mom. She is an expert at cooking, changing diapers, and other aspects of child rearing. If she pursued what she was really good at, she'd be limiting her options to work as a nanny, or perhaps open a day-care center.
Look for a job with interesting work, nice people to work with and a financially stable company. Sometimes you have to settle for two out of three.
It's really not a big deal. I thought I wanted to do engineering, and after my first internship I realized it wasn't for me. I got to try out new things, made a couple of non-CS friends, and only lost a few credit hours (almost everything transferred as "electives").
For freshman year, you're going to be be taking mostly your generic core classes, like sciences, English, and math. Maybe you'll take one or two major related classes.
If you're stuck between majors, try taking the intro class of both majors. They're generally not major restricted like the higher level classes, and you can decide while taking them. Maybe you'll even decide dual majoring is for you. There's also sometimes "certificates", that's a smaller requirement than a minor.
Remember that even Steve Jobs took classes outside of his core major, and those "unimportant" design classes influenced what he built. College is an experience to open you to new ideas, so might as well take advantage of that.
Still, don't stick around too long, since you're paying for those experiences. It'll get mighty expensive if you choose professional student as your major.