Determining the Criteria
The most important step in deciding on a career, or anything for that matter, is figuring out what matters to you and what will make you happy with your life.Generally, there are three major criteria. These apply to virtually everyone, varying only in degree for each person.
1. Intrinsic Liking
Think about what you really enjoy doing. Since you’ll be spending a majority of your time doing your job, pick something that you enjoy doing.
Possible preferences to consider:
• Hands on work or theoretical work?
• Work individually or in groups?
• What subjects do you enjoy most, science, math, history, English?
• Do you enjoy organizing, leading, and public speaking?
• Do you enjoy doing labs in sciences courses?
2. Material Comfort
Like it or not, your job will have a huge effect on your level of comfort. Besides the obvious effect of determining how much money you make, your job can also be high or low stress, have long or short hours (jobs range from part-time [around 20 hours] to 90 hours per week), have high or low flexibility (can you choose your own hours or are they set in stone?), etc.
Think about the type of life you want to live outside of your job. Do you want to have a family and kids? If so, bearable hours and especially flexibility are usually preferable. If you want recognition and prestige, a career in a field of power or wealth would be ideal.
3. Bettering Society
The impact your life will have on your community and world is another important consideration when deciding on a life path. What you do in your life can greatly better society.
Of course, your goals for making an impact on the world don’t solely have to come from your job, at least not directly. You can also contribute on your free time by engaging in social activism and community service or by donating money. This means that while it would be ideal if your job directly helped in fulfilling your goals of bettering the world, it is not absolutely necessary. You might simply follow a career path in the field you feel the greatest passion for and contribute to the world on the rest of your time.
1. Material Help: Obviously a great portion of the world’s problems stem from material problems. Millions of people are plagued by poverty, disease, and violence. There are a plethora of pathways to relieve this suffering. Professions ranging from scientific research to politics can have a tremendous impact in this area. A similar, but less pressing issue, is simply the progress of society. Developments like democracy and the personal computer have enhanced the quality of life of countless people around the world. Again, almost all professions will contribute to this progress in overall quality of life.
2. Intellectual Help: A slightly less obvious way of bettering society is to contribute through intellectual innovation. This can mean writing new social, political, and philosophical ideas or making advances theoretical science. John Locke and Isaac Newton didn’t directly save lives or improve quality of life, but their work did lay the foundations for much of society’s progress today. What seems like mere abstraction today can very well be practical reality tomorrow.
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