Career Decisions

At one time or another in every person's life, there comes a time when they must face the question: What on earth do I want to do with the rest of my life? If you're incredibly blessed, the answer is plain to you. You've known what you wanted to do since you can remember. My brother was fortunate in this way. Growing up on an air force base, he always knew that he wanted to be a pilot. And he accomplished that dream, and is now both an aircraft mechanic and pilot. That is awesome.

But what if the answer is not so clear-cut for you?

This is the case for me. I've never really had a dream, career-wise. Sure, when I was younger, I can remember wanting to be an astronaut, a pilot, the first female NFL football player... things like that. But there was never one thing that I stuck to, that I knew I wanted to work towards.

In high school, I thought I wanted to be a teacher, like my aunt. I was an assistant in her classroom, and really enjoyed being a good influence to the kids and helping them out. But I soon learned that's the only thing I was good at, as far as teaching goes. I'm not what you would call assertive, and therefore have trouble gaining control of a classroom. If you don't have control as a teacher, you really have nothing.

When I started college, I started off in Mass Communications. I love working with cameras and things like that, so I thought it would be a good fit. I worked with the newspaper, worked at the campus tv station. Absolutely loved it. But when I realized just how competitive the job market for mass comm graduates was, I thought it might be best to switch to a safer degree.

I believed I wanted to work with computers, because I'm always toying around with mine, and have a pretty wide knowledge base of all things technical. But I soon found out that while I enjoy using computers, the actual making them work part of it I cannot stand.

So now... here I am, back to square one. I had a little run in with a glass door in a pool, and had to get my face X-rayed to make sure my nose wasn't broken. As this was going on, I was watching the X-ray tech and thinking, "Hey, I could do that." So I began to look into radiology. I got pretty excited. Found out it's usually a two-year program, and I would get to still work with computers, but more hands on, and also with lots of technical machinery. Awesome!

I was incredibly excited because I thought I finally found what I wanted to do with my life. Well, I went to the only accredited school in my city, and found out there is a two year plus waiting list. TWO YEARS?!?! .... well. that kind of burst my bubble.

And here I am today. What on earth am I supposed to do? My best friend tells me I should go into PR (public relations) because I'm good at writing and promoting myself (job-wise), so she thinks that would be a good fit. I have to agree, I do enjoy writing. But I am not what you would call an extrovert by any means. A lot of stuff I see on public relations says that the ideal candidate is very out-going, that sort of thing. I don't know if that is necessarily true, because what if I just want to go into it on the writing side? Not all PR jobs involve interacting with the media and the general public. Surely not.

I did a little research, and found out that with my previous mass comm classes, I can still graduate on time in two more years if I get a mass comm degree with an emphasis in public relations. That's pretty cool. And no more business classes. THAT is wonderful. I hate business. I never understood why I had to take so many business classes with computers.

So I got online and looked at the registration for next semester. And while the majority of classes are full because my school is kind of terrible at being organized and helpful to students, I did manage to find three I could switch out my computer classes for.

So as of right now, I have a tentative plan in place.

I understand it may not be what I end up doing when I graduate. But the main thing is: I graduate.