How to find your passion

SRJC Lindley Center (William Winkelman / Tha Puma Prensa)

By: William Winkelman, Website Editor

Do you know what you want to be when you grow up? If not, that's okay, most people don’t know, or even have an idea of where they will find themselves in five years. This is a failure not on yourself, but on the education system you find yourself in as it lacks preparation for the real world.

At Carrillo there are a ton of electives and classes, but out of these classes, according to the data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics we only prepare students for about 30-40% of jobs and career paths in the United States of America. Of these jobs, they are for the most part among the lowest paying jobs such as culinary, art, and music. The largest career path in the medical field has no preparation at Maria Carrillo, with people who want to go into it not having taken a single class. People should be informed about what career they will spend tens of thousands of dollars at college for, and whether they even like it in the first place and not just the idea of the job.

I polled ten random students around Maria Carrillo, out of which eight said they knew what they wanted to be when they grew up. Yet out of those eight, only three said they had had experience in that field or a class, most going off of what they have seen or heard about only. While hearing about a career is a good way to learn about it, there is nothing better than experience itself. 

One of the biggest opportunities we have at Maria Carrillo is the Santa Rosa Junior College, but most people don’t use it for that. When students talk about the SRJC it’s normally about how they can take credits there to not have classes at school, free periods, or college credit. All of these answers are good answers and I still highly recommend you take classes at SRJC, but also take one for your future. The SRJC provides hundreds of classes, of which many of them prepare you for different careers. These classes can provide you with the knowledge for the jobs the school doesn't, like medical, law, or engineering. At the SRJC they provide intro classes to many different careers as well as beginner level courses on the subject.

There are also other careers that don't involve needing college at all, and these ones are much harder to do research for. Things like retail, customer service, or transportation, while being a lower paying job are still ~13% of jobs in the US. For these types of careers I advise you to talk to either Kimberly Handle while we still have her this year, looking in the Counseling Google Classroom, or doing research online for how to get more involved in that job market.

As a high school student you do not have to know where you will end up in life, it is okay not to know. But the longer you don't, the more money or opportunities you lose out on, so a balance has to be made between the two. You should still take classes you enjoy and will have fun learning in, but also get those classes about your possible future. I recommend you find some of these classes either in the school, SRJC, or through the other sources provided as they will provide you with an amazing base of knowledge and information about your possible future.