What do you want to do with your life?, careers Options

[CandyPop]

I have no idea on what career I want to do. I am not really good at anything. I have to figure out what I want to do now because i'm starting college this fall. When ever I take those surveys to find out what careers best fit you, my results always include that I am more of a creative person. The only problem, is that most jobs today seem like they don't pay much for being creative unless you are REALLY good. I am mediocre when it comes to web designing, drawing, and writing stories. I'm no good.

I did want to be a psychiatrist but I stink at talking to people. I get very nervous around people I don't know. And I am thinking about becoming an accountant but I am horrible at math and critical thinking.

I just finished taking a skills test, and my results were horrible. They said that I could be a maid, or a restaurant waitress. That just took a large toll of my self-esteem. =( When people siad that I am smart, they were lying...

I just don't know what to do. I really don't want to just pick any career and end up hating it. I want a career that I know that i'll like.


If you ever were in my position, what did you do to figure out what career fits you the best?

[tokyo-rose]

I have no idea on what career I want to do. I am not really good at anything. I have to figure out what I want to do now because i'm starting college this fall. When ever I take those surveys to find out what careers best fit you, my results always include that I am more of a creative person. The only problem, is that most jobs today seem like they don't pay much for being creative unless you are REALLY good. I am mediocre when it comes to web designing, drawing, and writing stories. I'm no good.

I used to think that I had to have my major and career path all figured out before I started college, but I learned differently once I actually got to college. I know a lot of people who are exploratory/undecided on a major, which is fine if you're only a freshman; you don't have to declare your major until the end of sophomore year. Just don't fool around with courses and credits, otherwise you might mess up your GPA and/or expected graduation date.

Take classes in all different areas that will fulfill your general education requirements, not just in subjects that interest you, but also in ones that you don't know a lot about. Last December, I registered for RLST-10600 (Intro to World Religions: Western and Modern) mainly because I didn't know what else to take that would fit with the schedule I wanted, but I ended up liking my professor and the class a lot, and I'm now considerably more knowledgeable about monotheistic faiths than I was before. I also took ANTH-10400 (Intro to Cultural Anthropology) and ended up loving that professor and course as well. I'm not sure I'd minor in either religion or anthropology, but I'm glad I took a chance with those two courses. And, of course, I took classes in English, psychology, and sociology, since those are all subjects that I've had interest in since high school, and enjoyed all of them.

I don't know a lot about working in web design, but maybe you could improve your website coding skills and do strictly the technical part of web design under someone else's direction? Like, maybe you don't know how to come up with aesthetically pleasing designs for websites, but if someone else told you what a client wanted, you could code just the website and leave the graphic design to a graphic designer.

If you know that you like to be creative, practice the interests and skills that you listed. You're not going to improve if you keep thinking there's no way you can get better and will never get a decent, enjoyable job. That goes for writing and drawing especially, at least IMO, because it's relatively easy to refresh coding skills once you look at some CSS or whatever, but your art skills will just worsen if you let them remain dormant.