When I was in high school, I had zero clue what I wanted to do for my career. And everyone kept telling me it's okay you have time and then I did not have any more time. Not everyone knows what they want to do in the future, and I wish someone was there to ease my worries. When I was trying to figure out what I wanted to do with the rest of my life I went through a couple of phases:
Phase One: Complete confusion
I had no idea what I wanted to do. I mean no idea, nothing even on the horizon. People would tell me what they do and nothing was grabbing my interest.
Phase Two: Relaxed exploration
During high school, I was so clueless about what I wanted to do. My family was made up of accountants and engineers, and I knew I did not want to sit at a desk for the rest of my life—and that is all I knew. So all of high school I would explore different jobs by researching and reading about them but still did not know exactly what I wanted to do.
Phase Three: First decision
Going into college, I had an idea of what I wanted to do, forensic scientist. But I had this uneasy feeling, I was unsure. So I started to take classes in college.
Phase Four: Less confused, but still confused
Then I realized I do not want to be a forensic scientist because while taking classes, I realized I was not engaged. So I was back to the beginning. I was a freshman in college, so I was able to take different beginner classes to see what I liked. I started taking an array of classes, criminology, management, anthropology, and others.
Phase Five: Finally
After taking classes and searching, I finally figured out what I wanted to do. I was so excited. I loved my classes and was very interested in the different topics. I felt relieved.
Phase Six: Finally again
It was the summer going into my junior year and boom! I changed my mind again, and this time I did not even think about it. I was like this is what I want to do and that was it. I changed my major again, hopefully for the last time.
After struggling to make such a monumental decision, I realized that you have all the time in the world to find your passion or career. There is so much pressure in high school and college to know what you want to do but you have your whole life to test out different paths and determine which is best for you. And you can realize at any time that you want to do something different. And that is okay. So do not stress if you are still confused.
