Azzara: Hasty choices lead to unfulfilling careers

I have no idea what I’m doing with my life after college. In fact, I haven’t had… I have no idea what I’m doing with my life after college. In fact, I haven’t had a clear direction in mind for quite some time.

Vague memories still exist of an elementary-school version of myself who hoped to be an artist some day. Though finger painting isn’t the best measure of actual artistic ability. Eventually the realization dawned on me that I didn’t have the skill to make a living in this trade.

From time to time, my parents try to convince me to follow in their footsteps and become a speech-language pathologist. But as for having my own dreams in life, I have to say that recently I have felt a bit lost.

This, of course, made the whole college application process slightly frustrating, especially when schools required me to respond to essay prompts such as, “How will attending our university help you to accomplish your life goals?” Uh, what goals?

Instead of trying to figure out the answer to that question, I ended up writing an essay that creatively disguised the fact that I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life.

Choosing a major was an even trickier task once I was admitted to college. While people around me chose career-oriented majors in engineering, education and business, I opted for the one that sounded the most interesting to me even if it were slightly vague — communication. Paired with my other topic of study, Spanish, it still doesn’t offer me much of an orientation toward any specific career.

Until recently, I didn’t really think too much about my lack of direction, hoping that maybe I would just stumble across a career and have everything fall into place. Or, better yet, that I would be discovered for some talent that I never knew I had and be able to make a living off that for the rest of my life.

But with my older sister graduating in May, she’s had to do some serious thinking about her life after college, and it’s made me realize that someday soon, that will be me. The thought of graduating and moving on to the real world is daunting enough for most college students. For those of us who remain undecided about a career path, it’s all the more unsettling.

It is this fear that leads some students to hastily and impulsively select a career path — especially with the notion that not finding a job right away means you’re destined to dwell in your parents’ basement. Despite my lack of direction, I still think rushing it is an unwise move. While perusing my psychology textbook I read that it is normal for people to change jobs as many as seven times throughout their lifetime. After all, a life goal isn’t exactly something that can be established simply. It’s the kind of thing that most people just know, and if not, they have to discover it.

Thus, I have to caution those of us who don’t “just know” what we want to do with our lives against prematurely choosing an occupation. Consider this: Isn’t it worse to force yourself into choosing a career path than it is to wait until you find something that you truly love and want to do for the rest of your life?

I think that people tend to forget that entering the workforce is not the only option that they have after graduating from college. If you have the means, traveling is an option that might point you in the direction of a career or at least give you some extra time to think about it. Programs such as the Peace Corps and Teach For America are also viable options of productive post-college activities.

But if you have no other choice but to get a job after graduation, remember that it can be useful to explore a number of temporary jobs before settling on a full-time career. It’s fine to be undecided about what you want to do, but you’ll certainly regret spending your life — or at least the younger years of it — doing something you hate just because it’s the first job you were offered.

My advice to people like me — those concerned about the fact that they do not have any definite post-college plans — is simply to keep your options open, and wait until you find something that genuinely sparks your interest. There are plenty of explorative opportunities to take in the meantime.

Now, it’s not realistic to expect that the perfect career will just magically appear upon graduation. In fact, it would be impractical to think that way. But for those of you who haven’t been blessed with the knowledge of what you want to do after college, it might be just as silly to expect to arbitrarily choose a career path and expect to be content with it for the rest of your natural life.

E-mail Katie at Kna6@pitt.edu.