Helping Our Kids Figure Out What’s Next
It's very common for our kids who are close to graduation to start hearing the question, “So, what are you going to do next?” The query usually strikes fear into the hearts of many high school and college graduates because many have absolutely no idea what they’re going to do after they graduate. This anxiety isn’t limited to young adults; many students graduating from master’s degree programs, similarly, have no idea what exactly their next steps should be. The first vital step is to recognize that these decisions are not one and done. Despite the warnings from your favorite aunt about needing to “make the right decision about your college major and your career, or you could ruin the rest of your life”, none of these decisions are irreversible.
Help Them Narrow Their Options
Sometimes the difficulty in making college and career decisions stems from the overwhelming options available. One of the things a teen or young adult can do is to try and narrow their focus and look at the available career information in small chunks. Start by helping them ask themselves personal questions to gauge their preferences, such as: Do I prefer to work in a group or would I rather work on projects by myself? Questions like these can help them get an idea of whether they would prefer a career that demands they be active and engaged most of the time or one that allows some downtime. While three questions are not enough to determine the best career for our kids, the analysis gives you a start toward helping them decide what they would like to do and how they would like to spend their time for a large percentage of their lives.
Help Them Narrow Their Sources
Another thing you can do is to help them narrow the scope of who they listen to. As you probably already know, everyone has an opinion on what your kids should and should not do. Do they have a favorite adult whom they can trust? Would it be better for them to seek out a career counselor to help them walk through the process and clarify some of their options, or would it help to complete some shadowing in the area that they think they might enjoy?
Help Them Find Practical Experiences
Job shadowing is actually an amazing way for kids to gain some perspective on the type of career they might enjoy. Most businesses are happy to have older teens or young adults come in and spend some time with them as they learn about the ins and outs of their business and what it is like to work in that particular industry. If your child is not comfortable reaching out to a business to ask for a job shadowing opportunity, you can reach out to some of your relatives and employed friends. It’s likely they can probably help your child find a business or someone in that business who will be happy to help them have a beneficial job shadowing experience. It is a much better idea to complete some job shadowing experiences than to just try to guess whether or not they would really like to work in a particular job setting
A similar idea is to find out if a business has internships that will allow students to gain some job experience in a particular field. It is much smarter to do either job shadowing or internships before paying for college tuition in a major that’s not a good fit. Either of these experiences can provide our kids with information without the expenditure of a lot of money.
I worked with one young lady who was absolutely certain that she wanted to be a nurse. She had several medical people in her family, her grandmother was a nurse, and she felt that this was absolutely the best career path for her. We decided it might be a good idea for her to get a summer job at the local hospital to see if she enjoyed the medical atmosphere and the workload that is required in nursing. She kept that part-time job throughout her college career, but, ironically, she decided that nursing was not the best career for her. She was okay with the blood and guts and the crazy schedule that nursing required, but there were certain settings that were just uncomfortable and very hard for her to adapt to. She saved herself quite a bit of money by choosing a different career path and is currently happy with where she is working today.
Similarly, I worked with a young man who was a college junior, pressured to become a lawyer because that was the expectation from his family of lawyers. As we talked, using some of the questions presented in this blog, it became evident that the profession would not fit what he enjoyed doing. I encouraged him to do some job shadowing in other professions, and he actually chose to get out of law and into another career much better suited to his personality, his likes, and who he was as a person. He switched majors and found that he was much happier in his new career path. Sometimes taking a step back, evaluating one's likes and dislikes, and doing a little job shadowing can help our kids narrow their choices and alleviate some stress.
Help Them Find Objective Tests
A career assessment inventory is another great way for our kids to learn a little bit about themselves as they are working to make decisions about their career options. There are a myriad of career inventory assessment activities on the internet, and the majority of them seem to be pretty valid. You can expect to find the Myers-Briggs Personality Inventory, Strong's Career Assessment, and many more. Some are free, and some charge a fee, but the free ones should really give your kids some basic information that will help as they continue making decisions about their paths. I have used the O*Net career inventory with many of my students, and they have found it quite helpful. It is a good idea to complete two or three of these assessments and see how the results are alike or different. If you start seeing similarities in your child's test results, you might find a trend that is leading him or her in a particular career direction based on interests and basic likes and dislikes.
Help Them Know They Don't Have to Decide Today
Finally, there is one more thing to remember: our kids really do not have to feel uncomfortable, embarrassed, or stressed when someone asks them about their next steps and they do not have an answer. To be honest, those folks probably did not have an answer to that question when their favorite aunt asked them, "What are you going to do next?" It is a normal part of progression through life's changes to not have all of the answers all of the time. It is perfectly okay to say "I am working on that," "I haven't made up my mind yet," or anything else that makes our kids feel comfortable about the situation. It may be a good idea to help them plan ahead of time what they are going to say when someone asks them that question, so that they don't have to try to think of things on the fly. Not having an answer to the "what are you going to do next" question means that they are simply in the process of figuring out their next steps.
