Help finding a good career

[RyanCahoon]

Meant to respond to this thread a couple days ago, but have been busy...

In addition to what [JamesBrown] and [pfreivald] said,

I would suggest talking to some of your mentors who are close to the fields you are considering. If there are none on your team, try asking teams near you or find other community members (your team's mentors and parents may be able to help you find somebody even if they don't know the field directly). This will allow you to have a more in-depth conversation than you will get online, which IMO is what this kind of question requires. During the conversation, focus on discussing what kind of things you like doing the most (you may enjoy many different things, but which are your absolute favorite), but more importantly, figure out why you enjoy these activities.

The next step from there is I would think it would be helpful to do a couple of job shadows. My high school required us to do at least one as part of our graduation criteria, but even if yours doesn't have a similar program, there's no reason why you can't do it on your own. Try to find some people who work in the fields you are are interested (hopefully you've done this already from the previous step) and ask if you could accompany them or somebody who works at their company during their job one day. As long as their job isn't classified, usually they're pretty willing, but it usually takes a couple of weeks to a couple of months to set up. This will help you see first-hand what kinds of things somebody in that occupation does on a day-to-day basis.