What Job Is Right for Me? A Guide for Young People Part 1 Revisited

What Job is Right for me? A Guide for Young People Part 1

Making smart life choices for the first time – Choosing School Subjects

Is the thought of choosing your school subjects totally unsettling?

When you are midway through high school, people will start to ask you what you want to do when you leave school, but what happens if you just don’t know?

You need to pick your subjects now or prepare to leave school. This is enough to make students panic and make bad choices!

Suddenly you need to start making choices which will affect the rest of your life and nobody seems to be able to help. Pleasing your parents and/ or teachers seems to be the way forwards but is it the right choice for you?

It is useful to have some strategies for coping with this time in your life and we can try to reassure you that you don’t need to know exactly what you want to do now.

There are specific things that everybody should be encouraged to focus upon at this time to help you to get to know yourself better such as Life Skills, and other things that you might not necessarily learn at school and which will help you on the road to finding your ideal career path. 

This is the first in a series of weekly blogs based on this subject and today we are focusing on: Choosing School Subjects.

If you know you want to continue with your education, but you are unsure to what ends – picking school subjects can be a daunting task.

Here are some important basic questions you need to ask yourself:

1.       Which subjects do you enjoy?

It is more likely that you will succeed and achieve the results you would like when you study something you really enjoy. Sometimes it’s easier to ask, what subjects do you not enjoy! However, I always hated Maths and it certainly wasn’t my strong suit, but I knew I would need it for the future no matter what I ended up doing.

2.       Which subjects are you generally good at and enjoy success in?

This isn’t about taking the easy route; this is about confidence and you must go into your study choices with the confidence that you will pass them.

3.       Have you spoken with your teachers, year head and career guidance counsellor at school?

It is important to take their thoughts into account but also listen to your heart.

4.       Which subjects are the most practical?

Going back to my initial point about Maths – sometimes having your practical head on and choosing subjects with a clear practical application can be the most sensible thing to do. Subjects such as Administration, Accountancy, Maths and Business Management, for example, if you have such things on offer, are a great choice.

5.       Which subjects do you feel that your parents/ family and friends would be able to help you out with?

Not feeling that you are going it alone can really give you the confidence boost you need to succeed.

6.       Have you chatted with older family and friends to see which subjects they found useful and enjoyable in the past?

Sometimes chatting with people who are not your teachers or parents can give you the perspective you need.

7.       If you continue with your studies do you have any inclination of whether you would like to go to college or University?

I know you might not know this yet and that’s ok. If you do know, do you have some idea of whether you would like to stay close to home or move away for your studies?

Start to look at what subjects Universities like to see taken together. Very often this includes Maths, English and at least one Science Subject. Subjects such as Sociology are usually looked upon favorably as is History for example. So, these are a useful basic set of subjects even if you don’t know what you would like to do.

8.       From the list of possible subjects, you have picked, do they compliment one another?

I mean, do they look like they ‘make sense’ as a combination or are they wildly different? Sometimes picking subjects that are wildly different will make it more difficult for you in your future studies.

9.       Do you have some job ideas in mind?

Even if these are dream jobs write them down and think about what subjects would be relevant for these. Remember that most people don’t go on to do the jobs they think they want when they are younger – but you need a rough starting point.

Generally speaking, you only need to make very accurate subject choices now if you know 100% exactly what career path you want to go down and these types of careers tend to be in the Medical Profession, Accountancy, Law, Science etc. Otherwise, you can make sensible, well rounded choices of subjects which can be used in most professions.

Once you have chosen your short list of subjects- now go back and think about what jobs you could do using these subjects? What comes up when you do a search?

10.   Do you already have a part-time job?

Sometimes having experience in the world of work is a massive help when choosing what you want/ don’t want to do later! Perhaps there are things you would like to know more about? Perhaps you can see that you are good at something, but not sure which subjects would help you to get further. Why not chat with your supervisor or manager to see what they studied?

Making the right choices for you can be a difficult and stressful task, however it’s really important to note that these choices are not the be all and end all of your career. Everybody, at some point in their careers will look at making a change. This will often mean studying new things, going back to basics, and getting new qualifications and perhaps a completely new change of career. Things change, requirements change and what is important to you now may not be important to you in the future – the best thing we can do is be open to changes and be flexible.

Here is the checklist:

What do you enjoy?

What are you good at?

Who can help me with my studies?

What do teachers/ career guidance say?

What did friends/ family study in the past?

What job could I do in the future?

What could I study at college/ University?

What has my part-time job taught me?

Which subjects are most practical?

If you are still struggling with choosing your subjects and not sure where to turn next – give me a call for a free consultation and we can use some easy tools to help you out. Don’t struggle on in silence!