Everyone wants a life less ordinary — to be successful, happy and meaningful. But many students find that even after they have begun their university course, they are unsure what career they want.
It is natural to worry about an unknown future, particularly in times of recession. Moreover, the modern student is exposed to a multitude of job and life opportunities that did not exist before.
This is both a help and a hindrance as too much choice in any context is hard for our brain to process objectively. It leads to an inability to make a decision and feelings of dissatisfaction (known as the paradox of choice in psychology).
If this is you, don’t panic.
Keep your options open
In a recent survey only 50 per cent of students cited a strong link between their graduating major and actual job five years later. That means, for half of students the degree teaches not a subject but transferable skills and an ability to think and learn, leaving many doors open post-graduation!
The solution is to keep trying out different things. Keep researching different careers. Talk to professionals. You need to balance your academic performance with extracurricular activities, internships and volunteer work to get a strong CV. So take this time to also ‘try on’ different things and make connections with a variety of professions.
Strategies
Traditional career advice tells us to work backwards — consider which career you want, your goals, and then follow this back to what you need to achieve in your degree.
But if you find this difficult, an alternative is to work forwards. What would you like to study here and now? What do you think you would be good at?
Being a high flyer in any academic subject sets you apart from the crowd. Then as you go through your degree and begin to narrow down your interests, you can use extracurricular activities to focus on a specific career.
Focus on the now
Although it is preferable to have a goal and career plan, sometimes the difficulty you face in identifying what you want to do is because you feel the ‘wrong’ decision now will mean unhappiness forever. But this is simply not true.
As the many non-traditional students in your classrooms will attest, the modern world is full of flexibility. Think about making the best decision for who you are now, rather than thinking in terms of forever and let the future lead where it may.
- The writer is a senior lecturer in psychology and campus coordinator of the psychology programme at Middlesex University Dubai
