This might not be the best community for this, but I don’t know what job I want after high school. I’m afraid of pursuing a job that I’ll end up hating. How do I figure out what job I want when I grow up?
[cynical rant – take with a bucket of salt]
you don’t
you pick something that you are competent at that pays the bills and keeps you alive and gives you enough free time to work on what you actually want to do
traditional boomer advice was to pick something you love, but after putting in endless hours of doing it over and over just to make enough to keep you fed and provide a place to sleep, you will grow to resent it with a passion – for your own mental health, you absolutely must maintain a separation between the job and your personal life
You should pick something that pays the bills and gives you free time to do what you want, but it’s good for it to be something you find some enjoyment in. Not necessarily something you love. But something you can get some level of satisfaction from learning and doing.
Yea that seems about right. I wanna find a job that I’ll be content enough with doing for at least 5-10 years, but not necessarily something I love. Something that pays the bills is very important since it’s what you need to survive and I also don’t want to be stuck in a career where I’m struggling to survive or have room for my hobbies and free time.
If you can find something you love that pays okay, though, do that.
The saying that “if you’re doing something you love you’ll never work a single day” is true. I mean you’re still working but it feels way better than doing something just for money.
When you’re just working for money it feels like an imposition and like work is taking you away from life. But when you’re in a job that you love, your whole day feels like part of your life, like you get to enjoy everything.
I’m shocked people seem to agree with this so much. While there are certainly circumstances where you don’t have much choice, spending your life in a job/career that doesn’t give you meaning and fulfillment will probably depress everyone sooner or later.
Many people don’t find meaning and fulfillment through their jobs, and that’s okay. No one is saying go out and find a job you hate just to pay the bills, but the advice of finding something you love so much that you’ll feel like you’ve never worked a day in your life is inapplicable to most people. If you happen to be one of the few people in the world who love what you do, great. But the reality is that the vast majority of people do not make a career out of their passion, and that’s just fine.
To OP, find a job you don’t mind, one that gives you the right balance of money, time, and fulfillment in your life. Even if that fulfillment comes from things outside of work like hobbies, friends, family, or something else. And remember that the choices you make now are not set in stone. You can always change your mind later if you find you’re not happy.
Nah, it’s much better that way. I go to my job to get money, not to find purpose in life. My boss and employer does not get to dictate my fulfillment.
My job is my job, I use money from my job to go do stuff that has actual meaning to me.
You do you, but it would drain me too much to work a job just for the money if it doesn’t fulfill me in some way directly. I’d compare it to working a shit job your whole life with the goal to finally retire and enjoy life.
Only then, you’re too tired or have health problems, so you can’t enjoy life after all.
I agree - I loved art in high school and really wanted to be an illustrator. But I graduated in 08 (recession) and I didn’t have the confidence to try to make it as a freelancer or whatever.
I ended up choosing a really boring path in office work because I just wanted to make sure I was inside at a computer while I was working. At first it was so depressing - I had built my identity around my artwork. But I eventually found a new field that I loved and transitioned into that thanks to skills and resources from my boring office experience - I’m really happy with it all today and don’t regret anything.
I guess what I’m saying is that I’ve found happiness/success by disconnecting my identity from my occupation and focusing on the work environment I want instead of the content of the work.
That’s the neat part, you dont. I’m in my mid 30s and I still don’t know what I want to be when I grow up.
You want the job that is offered to you, pays good, and won’t feel like hell every day. This job may or may not be related to your field of study, but you better study something useful if you want to be taken seriously.
Stop thinking that you can pick and choose, sometimes you can, sometimes you can’t. Some people can, most people can’t.
You need to figure out:
- What you like
- What you’re good at (or can become good at with training/a degree)
- What people will pay you to do
If you like something, you’re good at it, and people will pay you to do it, that’s a career. Stick with it your entire life.
If you’re good at something and people will pay you to do it but you don’t like it, that’s a job. Work it to pay the bills, but don’t be afraid to jump ship as soon as something better comes along.
If you like something and are good at it but no one will pay you to do it, that’s a hobby. You’ll need to supplement that with a job to get by.
If you like something and people will pay you for it but you’re not good at it, fake it ‘till you make it and hope no one notices.
If you only like something, you can git gud or find something else. If you are good at something but don’t like it and it doesn’t pay, stop doing it. If you can get paid but you don’t like it and can’t do it, don’t waste your time pursuing it.
Obviously, if something is no to all 3 then it’s not for you.
This is a major failing of the school system.
The best I can recommend is that you try out jobs now – but maybe skip anything ‘fake’ like online courses unless you think they prepare you for what’s in the next sentence. Go find people professionally doing a thing you might like, and try to work with them, somehow. Internships, volunteer work, organizing events, etc. File paperwork and make coffee, if that means you get to see the work actually being done.
Barring that, do the thing yourself if possible. Publish the results. All code goes on public repositories, all stories should be submitted to magazines or literature groups. All songs written must be sung in public. Get certified for CPR and first aid if considering medicine, and volunteer using it. Get an amateur radio license and build a radio. Look at jobs on a freelancing platform, and just do them on your own to build a portfolio (maybe actually apply for the jobs, once you have a portfolio). Not every type of job can be tried out this way, but many can.
You’re going to get rejected a lot, you can’t just show up with a resume and demand a job (people who claim this works are weird). People who create and do nothing will mock you sometimes. A lot of jobs want young people ‘out of sight and in school’ too. However, this kind of disappointment happens to all of us at some point anyway, so may as well get it over with.
If you’re lucky, you’ve got a few years between the age of say 14 and 19 where you’re not expected to support yourself financially but your brain works as well as it’s ever going to. While it’s useful to get good grades while you’re in school (although they are useless afterward), I think it’s a mistake to focus on that at the expense of actually trying to do things. A college degree is too big of an investment of time and money to go into blind.
If you’re in a situation where you do have to support yourself or your family before finishing school, then the necessities of life obviously take precedent. I won’t pretend I have a good solution to that difficult situation.
