Knowing what you are going to become after completing your school can be a challenging, confusing and time consuming task. Some young people may go through their youth years just barely surviving in a pool of confusion or going through it without being aware of what is going on. It is better to start thinking of careers from as early as grade 5 (standard 5). If you are already at a secondary school, you must be having an approximate career before you reach grade 10 (form 3). We will discuss some of the important reasons of choosing a career early below.
1. Goal Setting: Choosing a career early allows you to set related goals early, which encourages you to be more focused in your schooling. This allows you to know the school subjects or requirements for your chosen career (for example, types of subjects to do at school, the points you must obtain to allow you to be qualified to train for your field). After working with young people for ten (10) years, I have come to notice that learners without goals (or reason(s) to study find it difficult to stay forcused in school work or perform lower than their ability would have allowed them to.
2. Motivation: Choosing careers early makes you/encourages you to have a purpose to work towards. You have a reason to continue doing school work because you know why you have to work smart!
3. Being Organized: When you know what you want to achieve, it becomes easier to prepare to achieve what you want. For example, let us say that you have a study time-table, and you stick to it, you might find it easier to get the right study materials for study.
4. Benefits: Choosing a career earlier helps someone to keep interested and involed in school because of knowing what to work for. This may also help raise test scores.It helps one have a sense of purpose in life.It aslo helps someone to pick relevant qualities early and start building on or enhancing them. Choosing a career early may help reduce (high) school dropout rates because learners will be able to make more effort to perform better.
5. It is A Process: Choosing careers is not a one off event. It takes some steps and time. You need to know or understand yourself. This involves identifying your values, interests, personality and hobbies. Then, you need to study the different careers; what they offer, challenges faced by professionals in that career and benefits professionals in your career get (for example; free housing, car allowances, housing subsidy,extended holidays and free medical aid).
Our teachers (especially Life Skills Teachers or Guidance and Counselling Teachers at your school) normally would like to help, so please make an effort to ask for assistance.
Finally, you need to attend career fairs, life skills (or Guidance and Counsellling) lessons, meet professionals in your field(s) of interest, then finally make up your mind on the final choices. I recommend that at first, you need to have at least five different careers you will like to choose from. Be warned that on the way, you will change careers of interest several times before you settle for the final. Some learners do not make up their minds until the end of their grade 12 (form 5)!
*The author is a Life Skills Teacher at Okahandja Secondary School, Namibia. He taught in Botswana before joining the Ministry of Education in Namibia.
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