_ozymandias comments on Less Wrong mentoring thread - Less Wrong
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
Comments (92)
I'm 17 and going to my final year of high school in January. I'm having some trouble making up my mind about what to do after high school and would appreciate some help with this.
I've skimmed a few books on career choice but they all just spout platitudes. I don't think I should do "What Interests Me" because I think I'd become bored of almost anything after a few weeks. I don't think I should do what I'm "talented" at because I doubt talents are specific enough to narrow down career-space enough. (Yes, a person might have high g and thus be good at computer programming, but that same high g would aid them as much with lots of other careers - why choose programming specifically?) Even if talents were specific enough, I don't think my self-assessments of what my talents are are even nearly accurate enough to base the next 50+ years of my life on them.
It's pretty obvious that most people have no idea what they're doing when they choose a career. So what should I base a career choice on?
Very few people know what career they want when they're seventeen. Of those people, a significant proportion end up either doing a different job or displeased by their choice.
This is what I did; it may or may not work for you. Go to a college with a wide variety of class choices and highlight everything in the course book that looks interesting and that you have the prereqs for. Narrow it down to four or five classes by eliminating courses that occur in the same time block as another course you're more interested in, courses with dull or unintelligent teachers, or courses that come from disciplines you've already taken a lot of classes in. (Note: if you have general course requirements, take those courses.) That should give you some data to eliminate majors you're absolutely not interested in; for the rest, assuming you have not gotten an all-consuming obsession with one particular field, look at the BLS statistics to see which one has the best overall job outcomes (income, hours worked, unemployment risk, etc) and major in that one.
General warnings: unlike most people here, I am not a STEM major; my experience applies strictly to the social sciences and the humanities. I also have not attempted to get a job in this economy, so take my advice with a grain of salt.
Related idea: look through the course catalog for the course prerequisite chains that are the longest (they will probably be for math, chemistry, and physics). Take the 1st course in each of the longest chains early on in your college career so you'll know right away if one of the long-chain majors is for you (as opposed to a few years later, when it will be too late to make the switch).