you have to make some really high stakes decisions after high school--do you want
to go to college? if so, where? what will you study? how do you pick a job or a
career? what will you be good at? what do you like to do? what...will you become?
in a lot of ways you have to make these decisions on your own
nationally there are half as many high school guidance counselors as there
should be--in some states there are only a quarter as many
almost a million students in the country don't have one at all
the counselors that do exist only spend about 20-50% of their
time doing college counseling so it's up to you and maybe your parents if they can help
but their experience may be totally out of date--even your older
brother or sister might have gone to college before the 2008 recession and
the job market has changed since then -- so what's wrong with that?
college is really expensive whether or not your degree helps you get a good job
right now an associate's degree costs about $11,500 a year and in-state public college costs
about $20,000, out-of-state is $35,000, and private college is $40,000 a year
that's a lot of money to pay for a degree if it doesn't help you that much
on average, someone with a four-year degree makes about $17,000 more a
year than someone with an associate's degree, who makes about $2,000
a year more than someone with a high school diploma--but that's not true
for everyone who gets a degree--college degrees aren't making people as much
money these days because we think technology has started to replace
skilled workers the way that robots started replacing factory workers in the 1980s
which degree you get can make a big difference in how much you earn
there can be more than a $30,000 a year difference in salary between two different college graduates
plus let's not forget that most people don't get a college degree
only about 1/3 of the country gets a four-year degree
another 10% or so get associate's degrees and then another 20% go to
college but don't finish any degree--but everyone gets a job even if they don't
go to college and a lot of people aren't very happy with our choice of job and
aren't confident in their future--slightly more than 1/2 of all Americans
say that they aren't satisfied with their job and that's the
highest it's been in ten years--more than 1/2 of all Americans also say that
they're not confident in their financial future and a little under 1/2 of people
surveyed say that they don't work in the field they studied and about 1/3 of
people say that they've NEVER worked in the field they studied so you have all
these people making really important decisions who end up unhappy with them
so what do we do about it? deciding what to do with your life is
always going to be hard--people have been trying to figure out that as long as
there have been people--there's a lot of research out there so I pulled together
a bunch of it to save you the trouble of finding it yourself--it's not so much a
map as the starting line for a race-hopefully it helps when you're making
this kind of decision--step one is to spend some time figuring out what you
want and which of those things are more or less important to you--a lot of people
only start thinking about what they want when they need to decide on a school or
a job which means they decide too quickly and they're only thinking about
the choices right in front of them--sit down somewhere quiet and think about
what you want from a job or what you want to get out of college--do you want
to make a lot of money? do you want to help people? do you want to spend lots of
time around other people or be by yourself? what kind of people do you work
well with? what kind of people get on your nerves?
picture having someone around for 8 hours a day or getting to tell you
what to do--what do you best at and where do you struggle?
think skills not just subjects--talk to your friends and family too
they see you differently than you see yourself and may have ideas you haven't considered
if you add together what's important to you with what you're good at
it will rule out a lot of things--if you love arguing and writing papers you
probably don't want to be a chemist and if you love math you probably don't want
to be an english professor--if you want to be home by 6 PM every night
you'll be a different kind of lawyer than if you want to make lots of money
some people recommend personality tests though your mileage may vary
asking questions like this will help you avoid making a decision for an easy reason
like what your parents want, what your friends are doing, or how easy the degree
or job will be--hopefully after some time spent on your own personal vision quest
you'll have brainstormed a bunch of options--maybe even jobs no one's invented yet
figuring yourself out in advance will then make your next task easier: research
oh who doesn't love spending hours looking stuff up?
make a list of the questions you have for schools or degrees: stuff like how much
will it cost, how many people graduate and get jobs, how much those jobs pay,
how much it costs to live there, the rankings of different schools and professors,
what kinds of alumni networks you can use, and so on--this gets down into looking at the
requirements for different degrees if you're trying to choose between two
remember that it might be more important to find a school that's great in your field
than one that has a good reputation overall since those specific
professors and connections will be what you use--for jobs ask questions like:
how long people stay there, what the pay is, the hours, how often people move up,
how people like their bosses, what the average day looks like, and etc
with a job one of the most important things to figure out is what sucks about it
no matter how good a career might be there are going to be downsides
if you want to be a professor get used to moving around the country chasing a
permanent position--if you want to be a computer programmer get used to sitting
at your desk for hours and maybe getting carpal tunnel syndrome--if you want to
work in a factory you might end up getting stuck on the night shift
maybe you're cool with that but better to know now, right? how successful you are
in the long run will be as much about what you can put up with is what you like
some of the answers to your questions will be online but you can ask
friends and family, find friends of friends to talk to, or ask people in the field directly
in high school in college there are people who get paid to advise you
even if there aren't enough of them--in the working world
there are professional career counselors though you got a research to make sure
you don't pick a quack--sometimes the best people to talk to are people in your
shoes or just a little ahead of you because they're trying to solve the same
problems you are--ask college students about the school or degree you're interested in
talk to people who are pretty new to the job or career you want to try
there are internet forums just for people to do this like Glassdoor and
College Prowler--always be polite but don't be afraid to get what you need
you're doing your future school or employer a favor by being well-informed
so you can make the right decision for everybody
you might find out that college doesn't make sense for you and
that getting a certification or an associate's degree or even just plain
work experience is good enough for now-- you might also find that you're way
closer to qualifying for your second choice degree or job than your first choice
don't worry if you start to feel overloaded from all the information out there
you'll have a lot of info at first but then you can rule things out and
start narrowing down your focus before you ask more detailed questions
this is also why it makes sense to start thinking about a major decision like a college
or a job field long before you need to do anything so you don't feel rushed
having said that you should use research to try and rule stuff out
it's going to seem a little weird that the next thing to do is keep an open mind
most people find their job or degree and they're passed by stumbling into it
it might be a random friend who hooks you up with a job or a random job that
turns into a career or a favorite high school teacher who turns you on to a
particular degree or field--you never know where something will lead so keep
your eyes open--even dead ends and failures can teach you something
people specialize so much that you might end up creating a new job that combines several
different skills you have--maybe you liked marketing and hated working in HR
but learned a lot so you do marketing for HR firms
similarly knowing what you want is important but sometimes you need
experience to be sure--maybe you need to take some classes before you settle on a
major in college, maybe you want to wait a year or two and get some other
experience before you go to school so you get more out of it, maybe you want to
volunteer for different projects at your job to figure out if you'd actually be
better doing a different thing there--even if you know what you want to do
your early career is still more about learning than it is about "being successful"
all that learning and trying will pay off later and if you're not sure
what you want to do, pick a degree or a job that can be applied in a
lot of ways or a school where you could switch majors to a second choice and the
degree would be just as good--the reality is that everyone guesses when they make
major decisions and everyone experiments--the trick is knowing when to cut your
losses and move on from something that isn't working--as long as you learn
something it wasn't a dead-end, so long as you don't spend forever on it
volunteer opportunities, part-time work, and internships are all great ways to do
this--they aren't available to everyone but even 4 or 8 hours a week might be
enough to figure something out--this is also one reason why you want to meet new
people, especially people who are different than you, because they will
bring you ideas and opportunities you wouldn't find on your own
Malcolm Gladwell talks about this in his book The Tipping Point where he explains
how research shows that the people you only kind to know are the ones most likely
to open a door to a new job or a new field--your closest friends know all the same
things you do so they can't help as much--this brings up that dreaded word: networking
for most people it sucks but it's necessary to find your path and
then to actually start on it--what seems to make it easier and also more
effective is to focus on doing things for other people instead of asking them
for favors--if you can help a person find a new connection or a new opportunity or
even do a favor for them that's still networking--asking people questions and
letting them talk about themselves and give their opinions is kind of making
them feel important, so even that could count as a favor--another helpful mental
thing you can do is question all your assumptions--for example you might think
that you need to love a job or a school or it's not right for you but if it
seems interesting and fits your abilities give it some time
scientists find we're actually pretty bad at guessing what will make us happy, even in
knowing how happy we'll be tomorrow--research also shows that people will
feel more passionate about something as they master it--you might think that you
need to make a lot of money to succeed but research also shows that people
accomplish more when they do something for themselves than when they do it for
a reward--one theory about what kinds of work make us happy says that we need
three things: autonomy, competence, and relatedness--autonomy means having some
control over how you do what you do and when you do it, competence means being
good at it, relatedness means knowing your work helps other people--all this
also means that finding your career path is as much about figuring out how
someone like you gets those things as it is figuring out what you like
there's also a theory that people tend to be either
prevention focused, which means they're mostly worried about avoiding anything
bad happening in their careers, or promotion focused, which means they're
mostly concerned with moving up and getting more rewards--if you care more
about rewards you'll want to work in a field like finance or sales where people
can get a lot but there are also a lot of risks--if you care more about
stability you'll want to work in a field where things won't change too fast and
you can always get a job like health care or accounting--you might also think
that making a big decision like this is a super serious deal but if you are
being adaptable then this is only decision for the next couple of years
don't freak yourself out about it or you'll be too scared to decide or to get
anything out of your next choice--so now that you're freaking out from all this
advice is there anything else you should know?
you might not know that one of the most important things that predicts whether
you'll be happy in your job is whether you have friends at work--you might not
know that people who don't mention any real weaknesses in their job interviews
are actually less likely to get the job because they're seen as being less
self-aware and honest... don't overdo it though--which is another reason why you
need to figure yourself out first--you might not know that there are millions
of well-paying jobs in the trades like bricklaying welding and plumbing
hiring right now--Mike Rowe, the Dirty Jobs Guy, has a whole website about this
it's something else to think about if you're trying to decide how much school to do
and what to study maybe you spend 6 to 12 months learning a trade and end up
better off than if you had spent 4 years in college--to each their own
but forget all of this because most importantly a lot of advice is wrong for
many people anyway--people who research this stuff find that
common career advice doesn't work in plenty of cases, so really as long as
you're thoughtful and pay attention you should be fine--also read The Adventures
of Johnny Bunko: it's super short, it's got great advice, and it's written as a
comic book, you won't be sorry--having thrown all of this at you, what's the point?
why did I wait until the end to tell you the advice doesn't matter anyway?
imagine a world where you and everyone you know ends up with a job
they like and they're good at--imagine a world where college was cheaper because
fewer people ended up with expensive degrees they couldn't use--and imagine
being free of student loan debt earlier--wouldn't that be a great world to live in?
you can't change the world alone but you can change your life
and there you have it
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our next video will be an attempt to quickly explain the alt-right and white nationalism
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thanks for watching!