Don't push younger teenagers to pick their career paths
By Andrea Kay
Did you have a clue about your career path when you were 13 or 14? OK, perhaps an inkling. You may have liked to draw, were good with numbers or found plants intriguing. But that's a small piece of a much bigger picture to consider when choosing a career. And to ask high school freshmen to declare a major that determines elective courses they'll take for the next four years is, well, asking a bit much, not to mention sending the wrong message.
That's just what they're doing in school districts around the country that are experimenting with high school majors. It's not just a matter of adding a few courses to a broad curriculum. It's requiring these students "to make a more serious commitment to a particular educational path," said an article in The New York Times.
Here's what's wrong with that:
Whether they're 18, 35 or 75, the most frequently asked question I hear is: "What's out there?" Even if someone is thinking about a particular direction, they usually don't have a full understanding of the profession. It's based on limited exposure — much of it on TV.
A young woman in the article thought she wanted to become a lawyer. After finding many of the cases boring and hard to relate to, she couldn't take classes in other fields because she was locked into her specialization. At 16 she says, "When you're 13, you don't realize how much work you have to put in to be a lawyer. It's not like you just go to court and win or lose, you make a lot of money."
It heaps on the pressure to figure out "what I want to be when I grow up" — a deadly approach for a successful career.
If you want to grow in your career, adapt as you go through life phases and be employable and valued as the world changes, you have to: (A) stop holding the erroneous belief that there's one thing you're supposed to "be" and that you better figure it out now so you're not lost later, and (B) quit seeing yourself as a title.
It's much more helpful to begin planting the idea that you are a body of skills, interests, values and characteristics that can fit into the world many different ways, sometimes holding titles that don't even exist today because the jobs don't exist yet.
Some school district officials said they are establishing majors to engage students and "because college admissions officers have said over the years that they favor students with expertise in particular areas since it demonstrates commitment and passion," said the article. What about what employers favor? More than technical skills, they want folks who can solve problems, think critically, write well and communicate.
Your work can represent so much — the place to express yourself, learn about yourself and develop. A 14-year-old is just at the beginning of that road. I meet distraught adults of all ages who think everybody but them knows what they want and that they should know what to do with their lives. The pressure they put on themselves makes them more frantic. Why would you do that to a 14-year-old?
Andrea Kay is the author of "Life's a Bitch and Then You Change Careers: 9 Steps to Get Out of Your Funk and On To Your Future." Send questions to her at 2692 Madison Road, No. 133, Cincinnati, OH 45208, or andrea@andreakay.com. Her Web site can be found at www.andreakay.com.
