My College & Career Decision Making Journey

I wasn't always decided on my future college and career path. In fact, I am a senior in high school and I've been undecided on my career path until this year!

Some people can wake up one day and decide on every aspect of their plans for the future. Some people can hear that this job or that job makes a lot of money and decide to base their entire career path on it with no question. I, on the other hand, did not operate that way. For me, college and career planning was a process, and it was not to be rushed! If you have yet to decide on a plan for after high school, perhaps the same applies to you.

The questions first started coming in the 9th grade, when I entered high school.

"What college are you going to attend?" "What field are you going to major in?" "What career are you planning to pursue?" 🤔

I couldn't tell anyone about my actual dream career because I was old enough to know what I would get judged for. I'd dreamt of being a singer and recording artist since before I could even speak. Sadly, I made the mistake of telling other people about this dream and it led to those conversations.

"You know that's a hard industry to get into, right?" "What are the chances of you being successful?" "Would you be able to handle all that stress?" "Do you know how many pop stars end up depressed and on drugs?"

I was tired of having the same conversation, so I just scrapped the idea altogether. Now that I couldn't pursue stardom anymore, what was I going to do?

In today's society, students aren't given very many career options. Well they are, but they're not encouraged to explore them. I know I wasn't. Since the 9th grade, I was taught that my options were the medical, law, and engineering fields. If students expressed interests in any of these fields, however, those conversations would be just as painful.

"You know that's going to take a lot of schooling, right?" "You know those classes are hard, right?" "Are you sure that's what you want to pursue?"

Scratch anything ambitious. I was told that my best option was to pursue a career in education. With all due respect, I was completely disinterested in teaching. I understand the importance of an educator's job, it's just my heart's not in it. And I refuse to pursue anything that my heart is not in.

Altogether, the beginning stages were frustrating. All the advice I'd taken in while being undecided just seemed to clash and contradict with one another. I didn't know what I was supposed to listen to. Dream big 😀!! But you know, not too big 😬. Do whatever it is that gives you joy and fulfillment 😄!! But you know, be practical 😬. I didn't get how these ideas were supposed to coexist ..

And then, I became a sophomore. I had to take a desktop publishing course which was basically just working with computers. The course was of no bother to me up until the day we were assigned the task of making a mock resume (😒). I always show out on class projects, though, so I had to think on my feet.

Next to performing, I had a passion for something else in my earlier stages of life: writing. Ever since I learned how to read and write, I just had a knack for storytelling and expressing my ideas through writing. Before this class, though, it was a dead dream. High school kind of ruined writing for me because English 1 was just essay after essay. Not to mention that I could barely keep up with my schoolwork, so writing novels on the side was just unrealistic. This class, though, reignited that dream for me.

"My name is Jayda Morris and I am pursuing a career in the field of writing."

I wrote the mock resume as a journalist. At the time, I viewed journalism as just working for newspapers and magazines, so I was fake pursuing the position of a journalist for Essence Magazine.

I knew that I was getting started on my career path when this project actually excited me. I found joy in this assignment, I found fulfillment in feeling like I had an idea of what I really wanted for my future for the first time. I say I had an idea, though, because of course I wasn't exactly sure. Newspapers and magazines are lowkey outdated, and I figured that working for such an elite black magazine would be unrealistic for a little girl from the South. But hey, one can dream.

So at this point, I knew what I wanted my future career to pertain to. At least I had an answer for what my major would be.

For the next year, I still wasn't confident in it. I didn't own it, I was so worried about how other people would look at me. So I wavered, sometimes I said journalism, sometimes I said I was still undecided, sometimes I said I wanted to model, I guess it was kind of a last resort. Modeling was a short-lived dream though, because if an agency representative tells me that my 120-pound behind needs to lose weight, I'm fighting them. Expeditiously.

I took AP English in the last semester of my junior year, and I enjoyed it a lot more than I expected. It wasn't just essay after essay, we did song analyses—which, I'm a sucker for music—classroom discussions/debates, article annotations, etc. It wasn't just write this and write that, we had actual interactive activities. This class helped me realize how much of a love I had for English. When the time came to write essays, I found it easier to write, I discovered a creativity within myself that just flowed through my pen. I became increasingly more confident in my major.

Butttt I still needed to figure out my career. My time was running out and I was still undecided! What can you even do with a journalism major? Besides the obvious..

I didn't quite figure it out until finally I entered my senior year of high school. It all came to me unexpectedly, from a place I never would've thought it'd come from.

Principles of Business ~ the course title is pretty self-explanatory, this is a class where you learn the basics of entrepreneurship. You know, owning a business, marketing, advertising, product pricing.

Or at least I thought that was all there was to it. Until we got to Chapter 9 : Career Planning and Development.

Whattt? Career planning in a business class? The best thing I never knew I needed.

First we learned about the steps to the career planning process. The very first step was to evaluate our abilities and interests - and we did this by taking aptitude tests.

Aptitude tests ask you a series of questions that evaluate your skills and interests and your results appear as career options. So if you say on your test that you like creating and building, your results may come back as an engineer or a construction worker.

On my test I basically answered each question the same, but truthfully. A lot of my answers were reading and writing-oriented, because I'd already had an idea of what I wanted to do.

I got my results back, and—okay I admit they were so stupid. Like I'm putting it as nicely as possible.

The first result was an 84% match—semiconductor engineer. Excuse me, what? Never heard of a such thing in life. I took a whole engineering course and we never discussed this profession. And I wasn't sure how they got that from reading and writing but okay.

The other result I got was a playwright, which is closer to my interests but obviously it's an outdated job.

There were 4 results altogether, but obviously only one of them was the game-changer: publicist.

Publicists are responsible for working with a company, brand, or public figure (like a celebrity) and basically helping them promote their business to the public. They are known for helping their clients maintain a positive image and creating advertising campaigns for them. I wasn't super well-versed on publicism, but knowing that public relations goes hand in hand with journalism, I was interested.

So I educated myself. I researched it, studied it, I watched YouTube videos from actual public relations majors and everything. On top of that, we actually learned about PR in my business class, so there wasn't much work I had to do.

So, I'm definitely looking at becoming a Public Relations Coordinator. Is that it? Well, to this day, I am continuing to educate myself on both journalism and public relations just to make sure I'm confident in my career path.

I have a much clearer idea of what I want to study, yet I'm still keeping an open mind and exploring my options. Figuring out what I want for myself and entering college does not mean I'm at the end of my journey. Especially since after I visited my future college campus, and the advisors assured us that they are prepared to tend to undecided students. Knowing that guidance will always be available, I feel confident in being indecisive.

Overall, the career decision making process for me was not fast nor was it easy. It took some self-guidance, self-education, and self-assurance. Though my journey isn't complete, I value each and every aspect of the process that has gotten me to this point. Remember that everyone's process isn't gonna look the same, deciding may come easier or harder to you than it came for me & you may need to add or subtract a few steps to your journey. If you're undecided like I was, I hope to have provided you guidance and inspired you to move forward in your journey.