I don't know what to do with my life

College Majors
1

I am a junior in high school and I am very confused, stressed out, and depressed thinking about what I want to do with my life. Before people tell me that I have plenty of time to figure out what I want to do, I really disagree with that statement. I want to figure out what I want to do now so I can start to map out my future and doing things relative to my interest so I can get into a good school for what I want to be doing.

I will begin this by explaining the things I KNOW I want out of my life.

  • I know I do not ever want a job that would be just “settling.” I want a career that will have things in my life constantly moving around, changing, and things to be challenging.
  • I want to always be finding new opportunities for advancement and to never remain in the same position for a very long period of time.
  • I want to do something impactful with my life. I really want to change something in the world.
  • I know this is kind of superficial, but a part of me really wants to have some kind of recognition. I sort of want to be famous - not in the Hollywood kind of way, but the kind that has people recognizing what I do and admiring it. I get that it might be selfish, but it’s what I want.
  • I want to be able to travel.
  • I want to be able to live in a city for the majority of my life.
  • I want to be able to help people.

For most of my high school career I’ve been strongly considering doing political science and going into politics. It sounds like a great idea for me- always has. However, I’ve run into some problems with this that make me question if politics is really fit for me and if it’s what I want to do with the rest of my life. I am really not involved with politics at all as of right now. I have been told by multiple people that if I really want to go into politics I should start now by getting involved with local politics - but that’s really just not something I want to do. I am sort of a shy person and I get anxious around new people, and I find it hard to jump into new things sometimes. I don’t think I really want to get involved with local politics at this point in my life unless there was a set opportunity for me to do so. Sometimes I question my leading capabilities too - since I’m not good at talking to people I get worried that I am not fit to be a leader. This also makes the college-choosing process difficult , because I know if I want to go into political science I may have to be in the DC-area. However, a part of me REALLY wants to see what else there is for me out there in other places, and I know it might not be such a good idea to go to California for school if I want to be in politics. This is why I want to figure out if it’s really what I want to do.

I’ve always been extremely interested in psychology, but I feel like if I go into this field that my life won’t be impactful in any way. I’ve also barely had any experience in psychology because I haven’t even taken a course in high school that relates in any way to it. I also have a slight interest in biology but I’ve barely explored it at all, only by taking honors biology in 9th grade and being currently enrolled in AP biology.

I have absolutely LOVED animals my entire life and I thought about maybe doing veterinary science, but again I have barely explored this at all and I have no idea if it’s anything close to what I want to do.

Now, my absolute DREAM would be to do something related to film, acting, or music. That would be the absolute greatest path in my life and I think I would be so happy and satisfied with my life if I ended up in any of these fields. However, as everyone knows, these fields are extremely unrealistic and I don’t even have the slightest bit of talent with any of these at all, so I would find it extremely difficult and probably fail if I really tried to go for one of these fields.

My current extra-curriculars don’t relate to any of these at all and that’s where I fail as well. I’m involved with DECA, Key Club, gifted and talented, cheerleading, swimming, yada yada… I’m a college’s worst nightmare of the “well-rounded” student. I really want to go to a very good school and my dream college is University of Pennsylvania, but with me not having literally anything impressive or even mildly interesting I find this is going to be pretty hard to accomplish. I was thinking about trying to get in the New Jersey Governor’s school for science so I can see if it’s really something I want to do but I feel like I wont get in considering they look for kids with a fervent interest in science and study it inside and outside of the classroom - and that isn’t me. I feel like I’m running out of time to look impressive to colleges because I apply in a little over a year. I know, I know, that I shouldn’t be focused on building up a resume, I should be focused on doing what I like, I hear it all the time. But I don’t KNOW what I like anymore. I thought I did, but I don’t.

2

Re: having an impact, helping people, and loving animals – you can do this without it being your job. I volunteer at an animal shelter. It is one of the most fulfilling things I have ever been a part of. It’s not what I’m going to do for a career, and who knows if I’ll be able to continue after college since I don’t know where I’ll be moving to, but it’s still something I enjoy that feels impactful and satisfying.

You don’t have to choose a path now, but I would consider whether your list of must-haves is actually a list of must-haves, or if they all need to be satisfied by your job alone. Jobs are not your entire life. I think you’re going to have a hard time finding the ~perfect~ job that satisfies all of those requirements.

Side note:

In my experience, the people who really love those fields are already involved. I know someone who composes music; I write and know several other writers; I follow a ton of artists on social media. Everybody can dream of being a pop star, but the people who want to be good at it are the people who put the work in.

3

@bodangles You’re definitely right, I do want to do lots of volunteer work when I’m older. I do really want to change things on a large scale though as well - be it through doing something impactful through politics or research in science, I do want to help a large population of people in some kind of way. I think I would be willing to sacrifice most things on my list to just be able to make a change in the world. I already participate in a lot of community service and I really enjoy it and I think I know for sure that I want to change things on a larger scale.

4

Think carefully about what you are interested in the IDEA of, versus actually being interested in.

Just using the idea of music, it’s never too late to pick up music, but is it actually something you think of, and think the Ideal You™ would totally play guitar and be in a band… but the real you actually just hasn’t been driven to go get a cheap guitar and mess with it??? If so, you’re likely talking about what I call an “aspirational interest” - an interest you’re interested in being interested in - rather than a real one.

When you figure out your aspirational interests, you can avoid making mistakes in putting energy into them, and follow your real ones instead. This can sometimes be confusing as real and aspirational interests can overlap (ask me about my comp sci degree… sigh)

I will say, if you want to travel, and experience cities, and whatever … go to school away from home, and for the love of YHVH do some study abroad EARLY, and if you like it, do a bunch more. Honestly you really do have time in that you can put together a hazy road map and burn a year filling gen eds while you get more information from being there and doing the stuff.

One aside regarding film, there are sooooooo many roles in film, you might find you like something other than what you thought. Your drama/music/film idea sounds like you want recognition, but just remember that although the director usually gets less attention than the actors, and the director of photography (for example) gets less attention than the director… they can absolutely make or break a film, and a good DP, editor, etc won’t be a household name but will get recognition in the industry. Being a household name is pretty overrated.

Good luck!

5

“I want to figure out what I want to do now so I can start to map out my future”

To me, having a map of your future is appropriate for people who have a very specific career in mind. If you want to be a software engineer or a nurse or a doctor then you can plan now how to get there. If you want to do something new, then planning is not going to be so easy.

Many of the people who have had a lot of impact on the world did so because they built or contributed to something new. As such, they ended up working on something that didn’t even exist when they were in high school. It would not have been possible to map out their future when they were in high school because the map didn’t exist at that time.

As one example, think of the people who built the Internet in the late 1970’s and the 1980’s and 1990’s. None of them in high school said “I want to build a worldwide network for ubiquitous information sharing” because that concept didn’t exist when they were in high school. Even in the early 1980’s when the Internet was up and running (on a much smaller scale with much less useful applications) still most of the people working on it did not realize how large it would become.

So what can you do now? I think that I see many paths that split into two “camps”. You can consider a range of known careers and over time find a way to pick one. Alternately, you can understand what areas you are most interested in, then study those areas in university. Get a solid background in Mathematics or in Psychology or Computer Science or perhaps something else or a combination. Then follow your path where it takes you. It will very likely lead to a career doing something. If you are lucky it might lead to a career going something new and interesting.

One warning: If you don’t know where your path is going to lead you, avoid carrying a lot of debt on the way. You would be best to avoid taking on significant debt for university unless you are very sure that you are headed to a specific career that will be sufficient to pay it off.

People who are very smart and good at a wide range of things sometimes take a while to figure out what they are going to do with their lives. You will figure it out over time.

6

You can disagree with it if you want to, but you will still be wrong :wink: It is an absolutely factually correct statement to say that as a junior in high school - age, what, 16? - you have plenty of time to figure out what you want to do.

It doesn’t really work that way. First of all, life rarely takes a linear path, and often people end up doing things completely differently than they expected (in good ways). If you’d told me when I was a junior in high school that I’d be working at a tech company as a psychological researcher 15 years later, I’d be pleasantly surprised but surprised nonetheless. (Actually, if you had told me that three years ago when I was starting my postdoctoral fellowship at age 28, I’d still have been surprised.)

It’s really hard to plan out your entire career at any one point in it but especially at 16. First of all, you haven’t really worked that much so you don’t really know what you want to do yet. You don’t know what tasks you like and dislike, or what topic areas you like that you haven’t been exposed to yet. Second of all, the world could change drastically between now and when you are loosed to find your career. When I was 16 and at the beginning of my junior year of high school in 2002, most of the big competing tech companies as we know them either didn’t exist (Facebook, Snapchat, Uber, Twitter) or were shadows of what they are now (Amazon, Google, Apple). Xbox Live, one of the services I work on, hadn’t launched yet.

The list of things you want quite frankly won’t really help you find a job by itself, because you can do those things in the vast majority of jobs. Some jobs that could satisfy everything on your list include physician, lawyer, engineer, software developer, psychologist, professor, accountant, economist, politician, social worker, community organizer, sociologist…I could go on.

You’ll have to think about things you want to do - your work environment, the tasks you want to complete, the kind of schedule you want to have. That often takes some experience, like internships or part-time jobs, to figure out.

The other thing is that you don’t have to commit to doing one thing for the rest of your life! It’s okay to investigate something for a little while and later decide you don’t like it. In fact, that’s the ONLY way to find out if you like something well enough to work in it. And even if you decide you do, that doesn’t mean you won’t get bored later on and change your career. People do this all the time! So even if you’re questioning whether something is a fit for you or whether you really want to do it forever - that doesn’t mean you can’t explore it. In fact, trying it out is the best way to figure out whether you can do something longer-term or not.

There are lots of different ways to work in politics - you don’t have to be a politician, and even if you are one you don’t have to be elected. There are tons of people who make the political machine work.

No you don’t. Every state has a government; every major city has a government; heck every minor city has a government; there are lots of think tanks and policy institutes and federal government outposts all across the country. Including in California.

How? There are definitely famous psychologists who have changed how we think about humans, from Sigmund Freud to B.F. Skinner to Stanley Milgran to Kenneth and Mamie Clark to Claude Steele to Steven Pinker. All of them famous psychologists (they all have Wikipedia pages).

And even if you major in psychology you don’t have to work in psychology or human services.

7

OP, I commend you for being driven and service oriented, however I find you to be all over the place. That’s ok, you’re 16-17 years old. For now, plan on finding the right college fit and apply undeclared. It’s more exciting to enter college thinking of all the possibilities of what to major in. Utilize your academic advisor to help match your strengths and desires to a major.

I have observed a new trend developing with millennials and that is the quarter life crisis. Many twenty somethings end up changing jobs frequently, not staying long enough to build a career in one place; quit working altogether to travel the world; or go back to being a full time student. That tells me that you will probably move jobs quite a bit until you settle down, so no need to stress now over a career choice. I’ve seen this first hand with a lot of my extended family.

Very long term, if you plan to marry and have kids, what kind of career will be family friendly and offer a work-life balance? Being a working parent is very tough and many times leaves you ridden with guilt. Also, what kind of lifestyle do you want? A house in the burbs? A swanky apartment in the city? All this takes a lot of money and rarely is achieved on a single income. These are things you should consider when pondering majors and careers as you get older.

Good luck!

8

Hmm, I would caution against someone especially this young taking this into account too heavily when choosing a career. Many students - especially many young women - start thinking about this early, get the wrong impression about what jobs are family-friendly and what jobs are not (especially because they don’t have a lot of experience) and talk themselves out of positions, careers, or futures that might be great fits for them because they assume that they wouldn’t work well with a hypothetical family or hypothetical kids.

If you had asked me at 16 what my personal life would look like at 31, I would’ve assumed I’d have at least two kids by now. I have zero, with no immediate plans to have any, so I would’ve hated to have planned my life around some hypothetical kids that I do not have.

Besides, whether your career/job balances well with kids often depends on the environment and employer and not simply the job title.

Sheryl Sandberg addresses this really well in Lean In. Her advice is for young women to lean all the way in and make the career choices they want and then think about the family friendliness when the time comes (aka when they are actually planning to have kids in the immediate future).

9

My kid who is a physicist had never even taken a class in the subject when she was your age, and it certainly wasn’t on her radar. Chill a little.

Your post seems kind of inconsistent. You seem to crave change and variety, but don’t like to meet new people. It is hard to have one without the other. Also, regarding not staying in one position for a long time – there is little more annoying to an employer (and co-workers) than someone so busy looking for their next position that they don’t stay long enough to build the skills to contribute to the department they are working in.

10

Juillet, I agree to a point, that’s why I suggested the OP think first in baby steps…first choosing a good fit college, meeting with an advisor, etc.

When kids begin their major they do think about the next step in their future like what internship to do for the summer, what job they’ll land after graduating and where geographically they’d like to settle for their first job (or grad school).

I know for certain though, that life almost never turns out how we plan it :slight_smile: I was the opposite of you and thought I would never marry or have kids by 30 but guess what, it happened :wink:

I have friends who only focused on their careers for many years. Two of them married late in life but unable to have kids (waited too late) the third friend married late 30s and had three kids all while holding down a ‘power’ position. She’s happy and her kids are her world but she’s constantly stressed and overwhelmed and now has a host of chronic health issues due to stress, no doubt from juggling everything. Sadly another friend who worked her way up the corporate ladder, married with two young kids, died suddenly from a stroke. I could list more examples but my point (and opinion) is that women have a difficult position in life as working parents compared to men, even when their husbands are supportive and share the workload of raising kids. It’s not easy and I wholeheartedly agree that one should choose their career without any restrictions. OP should find her calling and do life as it suits her. I’m just sharing some real stories of ‘how it is’. Personally, I love my kids to the moon and back, but I am ready to be an empty nester and have them make their own way in life.

11

Go into law. Major in something that you love as an undergraduate.
Politics, business, agriculture, animal science, psychology.
Combine your interests with law. You don’t necessarily have to practice law–but the background will be invaluable.

12

You have a lot of time OP, that’s just the facts. It took me years to figure out what I wanted to do with my life, and if you go to a university that has an open curriculum for your first couple years you’ll be able to take classes in tons of different fields and get a feel for what interests you most.