I am almost done with my first semester of my sophomore year at a 4 year university. I’m just gonna be 100% honest, like probably a lot of other college kids I have no freakin clue what I’m doing. Or better yet, I’ve had a clue, rather several that just fizzle out due to sudden disinterest or research surrounding each field. I came into college with a bright-eyed perspective that I was going to work with special needs kids through special education, but I suddenly realized oh wait I don’t actually want to be a teacher, especially not with the burnout rate that special ed teachers in specific have… Continuing with my idea of special needs I thought okay, lets think of another career that has a better career outlook and possibly pays better. Okay how about speech pathology, except for the slight problem that I have absolutely no interest in that career, just the slight possibility I could work with special needs. I’ve contemplated so many things in such a short amount of time and as much as I want to be set in stone on something, I can never get to that point. I thought about going home and getting a degree in a technical program but honestly that is such a bad idea for someone who can’t possibly stick to one thing. I’ve been thinking about nursing and I really like the idea of it, but I also understand there will be a lot of sacrifice made by me while in school and out of school as well. I don’t mind the in school sacrifice, as it is for a good cause, but it makes me sad to think that one day I might not be able to watch my kids grow up because of the 12 hour shifts. I want a career where I can help other human beings on a personal level, without sacrificing my well being in the process. Is there even a career that fits the description?! Please don’t be mean, I know I may sound like a whiny 19 year old but these are legitimate concerns. Any adults on here, just try to remember how it felt for you at this time in your life. Thank you you guys.
There are a lot of different ways to approach this.
Some people (a lot of people) pick a major without knowing what they want to do for a career. This is a perfectly valid approach. College isn’t entirely vocational, and most careers don’t require any specific kind of major. So you could study what you like and then worry about figuring out exactly what you want to do later. Most people change careers multiple times in their life, too, so whatever you choose isn’t set in stone.
Or you could work backwards from something that you know you want. I always tell students to think not only of the area they want to work in (like working with special needs children) but the kinds of tasks they want to do. You’ve already been thinking that way - realizing, for example, that you don’t want to teach or do speech therapy. Luckily there are lots of different ways to work with special needs children, especially depending on how you define special needs.
Social workers do a lot of work with special needs kids, and there are school social workers to do that work within schools. That’s a way to work in special ed without being a teacher. To do that, you can major in anything (although a social science major helps - like sociology or psychology) and then go get your master’s in social work after college.
School psychologists are another group who work with special needs kids. They help create the individualized education plans for special ed students and do counseling and therapy work to help them succeed. To be a school psychologist, you’d need to major in psychology and then go get a master’s or PhD from a NASP-approved (and APA-accredited, in the case of the PhD) program. Check out NASP for more information: (https://www.nasponline.org/).
There’s also being a child life specialist. Child life specialists work in hospitals with children with long-term illnesses and disabilities. They help children and their siblings and parents face the challenges of hospitalization and illness/disability - through pain management, coping strategies, preparation for medical procedures, information, play therapy, etc. I work in video games, and I’ve met several child life specialists who set up special video gaming programs to help kids - for example, one hospital in Michigan used Pokemon Go to help the kids get active and do their physical therapy. I volunteered in a school program in a child life program at a hospital designed to help the kids get tutoring and academic help so they could stay current with school work and rejoin school if they left the hospital.
There are lots of other careers in which you can work with special needs children - rehabilitation aide, physical or occupational therapist, mental health counselor and/or play therapist, adapted physical education teacher, audiologist (which is different from SLP), or educational diagnostician.
Two things. I am assuming that you are a traditional-aged sophomore in college - so many 19 or 20 - and don’t yet have children. Don’t take yourself out until you’re out! Lots of time students - especially young women, although young men can do it as well - start worrying about hypothetical children and spouses and how they are going to fit them into their lives, and make career decisions based on things that haven’t happened yet. Maybe your spouse will be a stay at home parent. Maybe you’ll take a few years off to raise your kids and then go back. Maybe in the 5-10 years before you have to worry about this we’ll have implemented universal child care. Maybe you won’t even have children! I’m not saying that you shouldn’t think about any of this at all, but don’t rule out an entire career field - one that has many different configurations - because of something that hasn’t even happened yet and isn’t guaranteed to happen.
But secondly, nursing is one of the most flexible fields for people with children. (My mother is a nurse.) Yes, many hospital nurses work 12-hour shifts - but they only work three of them a week to be full-time, leaving them with four days off to do as they please. They can also work night shifts - my mother did that when I was a teenager, and she was always home when I came home from school and didn’t leave for work until I was about to go to bed. In addition to that, there are a lot of other ways to be a nurse - research nurses, nurses in doctor’s offices, school nurses, consulting nurses, and other kinds of nurses work different kinds of hours. My mom is a school nurse now and she works Monday to Friday from 8:30 to 2:30, and only from August through May. She’s off during the summer!
Julliet offered you great advice. Another career option might be occupational therapy. They are flexible in hours, location, and field. My Dd has a similar desire to work with people and help them. Her calling is toward geriatric patients, but special needs students are another large patient population.
Her program was through an Allied health program and she only pursued her OTA. It required 30 hrs of pre-reqs prior to application and then 12 solid months of classes and clinicals. It has been an excellent career with great pay and very flexible hrs.
This is going to be so ridiculously unhelpful, but I just got seriously freaked out by this post. I just posted a topic in this forum with almost the same title, and a really similar dilemma. I can’t really offer you any advice with a good conscience, as that would be hypocritical, but I do want to say that I feel exactly the same as you do. It’s so frustrating, the pressure to pick some career path that you know absolutely nothing about what your daily life will be like in that field. It’s scary to think you could be following your dreams one day, and then all of a sudden lose interest, or realize all of that work was for nothing. So many people keep telling me that I’ll find out what I want to do eventually, but how am I supposed to plan for now if I don’t know what I’m doing?
I can give you a bit of insight into the profession of nursing. My mother is currently finishing her degree in nursing, and she absolutely loves it. Don’t get me wrong, its crazy difficult, but life is hard. Don’t be afraid of hard work, some of the best careers require such a level of studiousness. It will be rewarding. Nursing is also extremely versatile, for someone like you with a need for variety. You not only see new people all of the time, new cases every day, but every place of employment can be different. In addition, each field of specialization can be an entirely new set of duties. To add to this, if you get really bored, you can also practice nursing overseas with programs such as Medecins Sans Frontiers, or even within the country. I met a lady once that would do jobs for a few months in one state, and then move on to the next. Of course, this is impractical if you plan on having a family, but i felt it was worth mentioning.
But, my mom, during her clinicals, has also found a lot of fellow nurses who have little empathy for their patients, nor passion for their work. They just aren’t right for the profession, and you may or may not be, but its important to acknowledge that different things work for different people, and I’m sure you’ll figure it out eventually with trial and error!
I wish you the best of luck, and I promise you’re not alone in your frustrating, confusing college journey! Take it easy!