How do you find the one job you want to do for the rest of your life? How do you know if you are interested in a course of study? If you are trying to find your college major and are lost, know that you aren’t alone in that struggle. Many students have difficulty determining a career goal when they first get to college. But the real question is this: What resources have you used to help yourself find the right path?
When talking with students, I always encourage them to take a career test like Career Coach. Career Coach assesses your interests and personality to help you find careers you might enjoy. It also shows you what jobs are available and whether those jobs are currently progressing and expanding. It doesn’t have to be Career Coach. Plenty of other personality tests exist, and the key is to find one you like! Visit Eastern Florida State College’s Career Center to learn more or to take advantage of other job search tools.
Once you find a career you’re interested in, it’s time for the most important (and most fun) step: volunteering!
I know it can be a lot to give your time and energy to someone else for free. I get it – we sometimes have better things to do. But I also know that volunteering has helped many people find their career paths – myself included – if only because it confirmed for me what kind of jobs I would never want to do.
Since I was little, I thought I wanted to be a teacher, and that was the dream I was pursuing. When I got to high school, I gained a better understanding of the conditions teachers have to work in. I became scared of the things I had heard and changed my career path to something that would allow me to make more money.
While working towards my new goal, I always had the thought of teaching in the back of my mind. When I got to college, I decided to take some general education courses to get them out of the way. Since I still had a passion for teaching, filling my electives with education classes was the obvious choice.
One of my education classes required me to volunteer 15 hours in different classrooms so I could get real-life experience in local schools. This was the BEST thing I could have done. I loved working with kids so much that I ended up spending every Friday I had off in a classroom. That semester, I ended up completing about 120 volunteer hours in a local elementary school. This experience was totally different from what I had expected teaching to be like, and it changed my whole perspective.
The most important thing to remember is that you never know what an experience will be like until you actually give it a chance. You can hear people talk about the good, the bad and the ugly when it comes to a particular career, but only you can make a decision about whether you love the work you’re doing.
Volunteering confirmed a career path for me, and it could happen for you too! Or you could volunteer and find that you don’t want to pursue a particular career for the rest of your life, and that’s okay too. Wouldn’t you rather know that earlier, so you aren’t spending money on classes you don’t need? Volunteering may take time and effort now, but it can end up enhancing your college experience, saving you money and sometimes helping you to land a job! Volunteering is also a great way to grow your professional network.
Eastern Florida State College has an awesome Center for Service-Learning and Civic Engagement, which can help place you at local volunteer sites and document your volunteer hours. If you earn 300 hours before Commencement, you can even graduate as a Citizen Scholar, earning you special recognition at graduation and a great addition to your resume!
Now only one question remains: What are you waiting for?
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