Wednesday, December 07, 2011

Explore Careers and College Majors

You are finished with school and have decided that you want to further your studies. Do you know what it is that you want to study or are you still undecided as are many other young people of your age?

It is a big lifetime decision and something that will affect the rest of your life and you need to take care about making the right one.

College and university degrees also enhance your chances of finding employment, more so than if you did not have one. A starting point would be to concentrate on what you are good at. If you are good with math, a career in that direction might appeal to you. It may be a career in computer science, a profession as a teacher or lecturer or an astronaut or financial whiz, for example an actuary.

What you also have to keep in mind is whether you enjoy working with people or not. If you are not a people`s person, it will suit you better to work in areas such as computers as opposed to something like media and communication. A practical and hands on person who enjoys working with people can, for instance, consider nursing. Engineering courses such as chemical engineering are for those with enquiring minds.

If you can choose a combination of majors, it can open up more than one career opportunity for you and choice is always a good thing. A variety of aptitude tests can hone your abilities and highlight your strengths and weaknesses. This will make it easier to arrive at a right choice.

College and university studies are expensive and you should take care to find the correct career and majors before taking the next step. If you cannot pay your tuition fees outright, you can apply for a student loan or your parents can get a parent loan on your behalf. The fact remains that these loans must be paid back and money is hard to come by today. Even if the interest rates are reasonable, interest will have to be paid and that amounts to extra costs.

A good idea would be to find employment in the area of your interest while you are still at school. That way you can find out whether you like it or not. If you are not sure what you want to do with your life, whether you want to further your studies or start working, a gap year might be a good idea.

If you are enrolling for a degree that you don`t really want to do, you might keep someone else away who wants to study but discovered that there is no space for more applicants to the course. Spending anything from three to seven years studying for a degree only to find out it is not what you want to do is going to be a waste of many good years. These are years that you could have spent differently.

In this day and age one must be economically active as soon as it is legally possible. To support yourself but also to add to the household income, spending time and money on a wrong degree is not going to help in this way. There are many colleges to choose from including online ones. Take the trouble and do your research at college.com.