Finding direction in my future

After having seemingly straightforward goals in high school, I often feel a bit directionless at university and like the crystal-clear path I previously envisioned is no longer so clear.

University is filled with so many opportunities. This is one of the many reasons I find it a great time of life. However, with so much opportunity and choice out there it can feel different to high school. In high school life was seemingly a tad bit simpler. My goals were straightforward. Get into university and then get my dream job. Unfortunately, I wasn’t prepared for so many doors to open up and so many to feel like they have closed. The perfect career I had mapped out seemed straight forward. Then once I arrived at university, I realised there was no direct path. No guaranteed job, or internship or course that would get me exactly where I wanted to be. It seems the recipe for success would now be hard work, clear goals, a bit of luck and random fortuning by the universe.

Then I started questioning what direction I even wanted my life to take and why? As we are probably all aware everyone is expected to work many different jobs in different sectors and industries. The world has changed. A career is no longer linear, and some jobs are changing and ceasing to exist whilst completely new jobs appear.

When I think about how far I am through university and how I still don’t have an exact idea what I want to do, I can become quite anxious and negative about my future. When I think like this, I try to remind myself of a couple things:

My interests are as diverse as the job market

With so many career changes and new jobs predicted, I think it is quite counterproductive to view my future in a linear way. There is not going to be a dream job that I land straight out of university that continues until I stop working. This just isn’t a reality. Instead, I try to remind myself that I have a lot of interests and consequently, a lot of different goals and ambitions. In this sense, I am not working towards a goal, but multiple different goals at different times and under different circumstances in my life.

Let my passion guide me

Letting my passion for a sector or job guide me is something I am trying to adhere to. Too often I have pushed myself to do something that I have felt would lead me to a job or I thought was something I should do for my future. Unfortunately, I have found you can’t fit a square peg into a round hole. If something doesn’t interest me or makes me uncomfortable, I am unlikely to make the most of it. Instead, I am trying to do what I enjoy and do it well.

There is no rush to get to a final point in life. Like my goals and ambitions, I am always changing too. There is no rush or reality to find exactly what I want to do in my life. It’s just one step at a time and always looking to something new.