What do you wanna be when you grow up?

I ask myself that all the time – “What do I want to be when I grow up?” Even though I have a job and I graduated college…It’s something we have to always ask ourselves. At least I think so, in order to avoid waking up one day when I’m 40 wondering what I’ve done with myself and why I’ve got the job that I have. I know that’s hard to swallow or even think about if you haven’t even graduated high school, I really do.

On Thursday I asked 7th and 8th graders the same thing; and I asked them to think pretty hard about it, too. I know it seems early, but middle school actually isn’t too early to think about what life will be like after high school. There are so many things you can do with the talents, skills and interests you have, it’d be nearly impossible to really decide what one (or a few) things you want to do when it comes down to graduation time.

So Thursday for one of my middle schools was Career Day. Actually, it was a pre-Career Day, because next Friday is going to be a Career Day where people’s parents or family friends come in and talk about different careers. Thursday was to get the brain juices flowin’ so people would have an idea of what they might want to learn from different professionals.

So here’s what we did – and you can do this too (I’ll give you some websites to check out). We did this in a big setting in a gym, but you can do this at home, too. First everybody read through some questions like, “Do you like to be in charge of group projects?” Then they ranked the different things they like to do. Eventually, through a scoring system, students got to search through different tables chock full of careers. Once they chose a career they might like to try out, they learned how much money they’d make if they chose that career in real life. Equipped with a monthly salarly, based on their career choice, each student visted stations where they had to deal with life costs – education loans, groceries, utilities, rent, and transportation costs.

Everybody learned about how much it costs to live on your own after high school and how much education is required for different jobs, and how much money people can make in different jobs. What do you think? Could you figure out how much life costs and how much you would make in different careers? Check out knowhow2go’s career section. Here’s a game you could play to think about what life might be like after high school. Now I gotta tell you, this one does have a lot of info to read through…it could be fun to do with a parent to help you understand all the info. Or you could check out this chart (and the whole website) to see how different careers require different amounts of school.

And even if you don’t check out any of these websites, at least do your self  a favor and just think about it. What are you interested in? What are you good at? What do you want to prepare for when you grow up?

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