Help Students Fall in Love With Their Career Plans

It is Valentine’s Day soon, so we’re going to hear a lot about love — whether we want to or not! There are many catchy phrases about love: all you need is love; love makes the world go around; love is friendship set to music.  In fact, some of the best quotes with the word “love” are actually about careers. A good one is from Confucius: “Choose a job you love and you will never work a day in your life.” In other words, if you love what you do, every day will be like a holiday. Isn’t that a great goal for students?

Newspaper publisher Katherine Graham once said, “To love what you do and feel that it matters — how could anything be more fun?” That’s a pretty good summary of an ideal career: You love it, you feel it’s making a difference to the world, and it’s fun.

So how can students find that elusive career? It all comes back to them – and the qualities that make them unique.  Just as students don’t all don’t fall in love with the same person (imagine what a mess that would be in a classroom), they aren’t going to love the same things in a career.

We’re all different, so a good starting point is getting to know ourselves. That’s why we have a Learn About Yourself section under the Career Planning tab. The Learn About Yourself section guides students through assessments that help them learn about their interests, skills and values. In other words, they’ll discover the things that make them unique – and then see how those qualities can connect to careers. After discovering careers that match their personal strengths, they can continue to find out what they need to do for each career, from creating a high school plan to applying for university. (If only high school romances came with clear instructions like that.)

Let’s end with another quote about love and careers from the late jazz artist Ella Fitzgerald: “Just don’t give up trying to do what you really want to do. Where there is love and inspiration, I don’t think you can go wrong.”