There was a simpler time when it wasn’t so difficult to choose a career direction If your father had a workshop, you learned the trade and ended up inheriting it, if you were lucky enough to be able to access higher education, you joined a market that did not collapse, and if everything failed, there was always the possibility of accessing certain public positions. or private, perhaps less glamorous but just as worthy.
However, at a time when there are so many obstacles to playing the feared role of self-employment and with fierce competition in the labor market, there are more and more prepared graduates who often have to seek luck beyond the Pyrenees. Choosing a career path is an increasingly dramatic decision. And when it’s time to decide…It is better to choose to study what we like, or what has the best chance of giving us work well paid? It is not an easy question to answer, but a good part of our lives are involved in it.
Choose studies for vocation or for job opportunities?
Nowadays, aptitude tests are carried out, academic performance is assessed according to success in different subjects, sporting and artistic abilities… to, in general, end up giving the correct and generic advice: do what you like.
Yes, it is important to work on what we like, not only because we will be happier and spend more time happily (which is no small feat) but because a high motivation for the task at hand predicts a greater probability of success, by predisposing us to learn about it, overcome failures, etc. In other words, we are good at what we like. But beyond the child who asks kings for a stethoscope at 5 years old… Do our students know what they like?
The question is not trivial, since, if I like, say, psychology, I will need to have a high school degree in health sciences, and to access it it will be advisable to have taken the electives related to it in the 4th year of ESO, when I fill out the registration at the end of 3rd year… So, if I want to be a psychologist, I better discover it before I’m 15 or be lucky enough to have done science because, as my counselor said, “it opens more doors for you.”
Uncertainty when deciding profession
However,How is such an inexperienced person going to choose a profession?, of all the ones there are, with the information you can have? Normally, we tend to focus on the subjects in which kids excel. If we are lucky enough to have them distributed evenly corresponding to one of the three or four baccalaureates, we take note of our first clue.
Here we run into a certain logic problem. On the one hand, it is a simplistic view to associate jobs with their corresponding high school degrees. In the case of psychology, science major, what is most important that you like? Mitosis and integrals, or contact with people? Which skill is more important, mental calculation or empathy? What should a future journalist like most, a humanities career? Kant and etymology, or current events and narrative?
Don’t get us wrong: all competition is welcome and knowledge always adds up (although it does take up space, according to the psychology of memory), but we may fall into a fallacy If we intend to restrict professional opportunities to primary subjects
Perhaps the most advisable thing would be to create an environment that facilitated more skills than academic ones. That it wasn’t all about “behaving well” and passing exams (which, I insist, is just as important). That motivations for those skills such as creativity, social skills, humor, initiative, effort be addressed… so as not to enter into the eternal debate of those subjects that are so outrageously undervalued in the curriculum, such as artistic education, music, physical education. …
The key is to detect sources of motivation
Each professional career usually has very specific competencies and skills, so it can be a mistake to fail to pay attention to the student’s motivation due to certain elements that may later turn out to be surprisingly crucial. It is vital that a student be able to detect those skills that motivate you since high motivation for the task to be performed is a predictor of success and well-being.
Therefore, it is the responsibility of educators to establish an environment that facilitates the deployment of the different competencies that the student can develop, and while schools and other formal learning environments adapt to these new times, parents, monitors and psychologists have the honor to complement the work. An environment based on passive education will hardly be suitable for students to develop areas of interest, and consequently a good part of their potential will be lost.
And, although at an early age we do not have to know how to effectively choose how we want to direct our lives, it is a key vital stage to autonomously develop areas of experimentation, curiosity and personal interests. that later will become talents
