What Does God Want Me to Be When I’m an Adult? By Rev. Rick Marrs
efore the 1800s, answering lifelong career questions was fairly straightforward for young people. Most of them did what their parents did (e.g., farming, local merchant, trade skill) or whatever apprenticeships their parents arranged for them, sometimes starting before they were teenagers.
B
That was true for boys, at least. Girls got married and became mothers and cooked and cleaned and milked cows. But in our diverse culture and economic system today, teenagers literally have tens of thousands of career options available to them. While having options is a blessing, having that many options can be overwhelming.Think about how easy it is to choose between two to three flavors of ice cream in your home freezer and how difficult it can be to choose between the scores of tasty options at Baskin-Robbins.Then consider how difficult your ice cream selection would be if that was going to be the only flavor you could have for ten years!
Questions, Questions
H I G H E R
T H I N G S __ 10
Teens realize that much hinges on their career selection. Not only will their career choice directly impact how they will spend more than 80,000 hours of their lives, but it will influence their marriage and family, their type of home and neighbors, their socioeconomic status, and the like.This process of career decision-making (and it is a process, not a one-time event) leads to many important, inter-related questions for teens: “Should I do what I’m interested in or what I’m good at? “Should I seek the vocation that will pay the most money, or do something I’ll be happy (yet poorer) doing? “What if I start in one career and then change my mind?
“Who can help me make such important decisions? “And how does God’s will work into all this?”
Help! Who can help? Most high schools have counselors who have been trained to know how to give career guidance to teenagers.They may introduce you to computer programs (like Discover) or inventories (like the Strong Interest Inventory or the SelfDirected Search) that can help you sort out your interests, abilities, values, and decision-making processes. Many of these programs and inventories are available to take online for a fee, but your counselors will likely be able to provide such services for no cost, and they can then help you understand the results. One of the most helpful models used in these programs is called the Holland Hexagon. This heavily researched theory proposes that there are, broadly speaking, six categories of careers and six types of people who feel compatible with those careers. Realistic people prefer jobs in which they are doers, handling mechanical or material problems (e.g., engineers, builders, farmers, athletes). Investigative people like math and
