Career and Life Skills 101

Alan Garza - 2020

High School students are asked constantly “What do you want to do in the future?” and there’s a 50/50 chance that a student says “I’m not sure yet.” Career Indecisiveness can be caused from multiple factors. These factors are anxiety, uncertainty, and/or external factors. Anxiety is a massive human factor of the career decision-making process that by itself can sway a person from a career choice. "I am anxious whether I will get what I desire. Then later when I finish the course, will I be able to get a job fitting to what I have learned or studied? Will I be daring enough to continue with that course?" Uncertainty is similar to having anxiety over a career choice however, uncertainty is over one’s future and thus adds more pressure to people's choices. Instead a student will question what will happen to them afterwards and if they should have chosen another career path. And lastly, external factors influence career decisions, for example peer pressure, parents or relatives, and financial problems. These factors usually narrow a student’s choices down to a few options, whether the student finds interest in these career paths or not. The best solution to career indecisiveness is work experience.

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High school students are pressured to make a choice without any experience and are told that their choice will impact them for the rest of their lives. Students are expected to make these choices without any prior knowledge. Students have access to an academic counselor, but their job is to assist students with their class choices in high school based on their career interest, which a majority of students would not know yet. So I partnered with my friend Keiddrick, who was working on a project for students to find summer programs, to create the elective C.A.L.S 101 (Career And Life Skills 101) at our school Chinquapin Prep. C.A.L.S 101 centers around assisting students with working around the mountainous task of applying to a job or summer program. Keiddrick and I delve into such topics as resume building, interviews, career choice, college choice, and much more. We taught 5 students ranging from the grades of 9th - 11th. The goal of the elective is to help give students a time to explore their interests with the help of experienced seniors in both summer programs and jobs.

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I am a senior in Chinquapin Prep, who got the idea of making C.A.L.S 101 from previous seniors. When I asked them what they wanted to do in the future, many said they were unsure because they didn’t really know what interested them. It’s alright to leave high school undecided, but I’m the type of student who always has a plan A, B, C, and so on. I wanted to learn what could solve this issue and found that having work experience was the perfect remedy for career indecisiveness. As a student who had worked three jobs by this time and had to figure out all on my own how to apply to jobs, I believed I could assist other students with finding and applying for jobs. But then I learned that work experience could also come from things such as a summer program which brought me to my partnership with Keiddrick. We work as teachers for our class, creating presentations and assisting them with their questions. I hope our students are able to have a clearer idea of what career path they are interested in and learn how to present themselves in an application.