How did YOU decide your career?

Parents Forum
21

<p>Forget about anything I had set my mind on before I entered college. I knew there was a good chance that I'd end up going on for a PhD and becoming a professor. But what field? That's one thing I sorted out in college. Social science not bench science.</p>

<p>It's important to bear in mind that when I was coming out of college, the Vietnam War was still raging and the draft was still affecting young men's choices. The institution of a "lottery" in the late 1960s changed the situation a bit, but basically for many in my cohort the goal after college was to stay in school for a while. By the Spring of my senior year in college, I was still thining doctoral program but had kept two options in mind: law school or doctoral studies.</p>

<p>I applied to 2 doctoral programs and 4 law schools, thinking that the outcome of those applications would decide. Alas, I got into all of the schools I applied to and thus had to invent a secondary decision rule: money. I got nice fellowships to grad school, but law school would have required real money. So I decided ultimately on grad school (PhD), though I deferred my acceptance to law schools in case I didn't like the PhD program. By the following year I decided that I liked the PhD program (Wisconsin), and so finally turned down my law school acceptances (Stanford, Chicago, Berkeley-Boalt, Hastings). (I'm pretty sure I took an actual deferral on the Stanford acceptance as my "backup" while turning down the others immediately. But I don't recall precisely. That was a long time ago.)</p>

<p>It was the right decision. Or rather, had I decided to go to law school that would have been a good decision, too. You see, I never thought there was "just one thing" that was right for me. But I liked the idea of doing research and teaching more than the idea of practicing law, even though they both involved thinking and problem solving and after all, I could have become a law professor. Anyway: end of story.</p>

22

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I thought I would work half-time for a few years when my children were very young, and then go back to full-time. Well, motherhood was a much bigger and better job than I imagined, and I never worked as much as I intended. Funny how things work out.

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<p>Same here. </p>

<p>I remember in 7th grade US history we were to pretend to be the Continental Congress. I was a delegate from Massachusetts. Everyone in the class just repeated what the textbook said about the need to move beyond the Articles of Confederation, blah, blah, blah. It wasn't at all like the real debate. So I started arguing about the importance of keeping a loose confederation of states to avoid tyranny. I started convincing people to vote my way. The teacher told another class how I should become a lawyer some day. It just clicked ... and this is what I did.</p>

<p>But life happens. My few years at home with the kids ending up being longer because they had special needs. I ended up advocating for them and other kids. I thought this would be more rewarding and important than going back to my old job. Then the situation got so bad in middle school for my youngest I took her out to homeschool, which I did for a little over five years.</p>

<p>Now she is a freshman in college and I am waiting for life to indicate what I should be doing, like it has always happened for me. Meanwhile I am doing a little of this and that and spending too much time on CC!</p>