One Way to Find a Career that You'll Love

While your career is your most valuable financial asset and managing it correctly can earn you millions of dollars in extra income throughout your lifetime, it's not all about the money. Your career is also about fulfillment and doing something you enjoy. That's why it's important to work in the right field. Once you select what you want to do, THEN you can work on maximizing your income in that specific field.

But how do you know what you'll enjoy? Most of us have to make at least our first career-oriented choice when we're young and inexperienced, which often leads to a job that's unfulfilling (hence the reason so many people have degrees in one thing and are working in something else). It's not a great situation. But there is an alternative to making the choice blindly. Here's a piece from Money Central that gives details on Vocation Vacations -- a company that lets you "test drive" a career you might be interested in. Here are the details:

• Vocation Vacations [is] a business that gives people the opportunity to "test drive" their dream jobs. Creating temporary but intense mentor-apprenticeship experiences, Vocation Vacations enlists professionals from a variety of fields -- everything from winemakers and makeup artists to architects and sword makers -- and pairs them with people who fantasize about leaving their day jobs and want spend a few days in a profession that they had previously thought beyond their reach.

• The idea is relatively simple. Participants pay anywhere from a few hundred dollars to a few thousand (transportation, lodging, etc., aren't included) to experience life as, say, a chocolatier, a fashion designer or a race-car driver. The time spent immersed in a fantasy job allows them to get a 360-degree perspective without the risk of quitting their own jobs or investing heavily in a new career.

Great idea!!!!

Let me give an additional suggestion for you (if you're a student) or for your kids (if you're a parent): internships. In order to get a great idea of what a job is like, take internships during the school year as well as on summer breaks. Doing so can help you get a great perspective on what different fields offer (and don't offer) and can make a tremendous impact on your career choice and, ultimately, your life.

I know this from personal experience. I went to undergraduate school with the intention of going on to law school. But in my junior year, I took an internship with a lawyer and learned what it really meant to be a lawyer -- lots of reading boring, complicated cases. Yikes! This was NOT for me. Through some good advice from trusted mentors, I got re-directed into marketing and have been very happy with my decision. The internship literally changed my life!

Comments

[Steve]

Did I make it?

[CW]

I'll second the idea of internships. While a student, you'll learn all the theories and study great people in your field. It's all great and wonderful to do nothing but dream and do mock projects. An internship in the 'real world' will allow you to put the theories to the test and to do real work. Also, you'll learn about office politics, how people make money in your profession and hopefully pick up a mentor. Things that the university can't/won't teach you.

[annab]

Another benefit of taking an internship or doing work in the field is that it makes you more marketable for a job after graduation if you decide that you still want to stay in the field. Also, it might make you a more attractive candidate for scholarships or fellowships for furthering your education if it's necessary. At the very least (and this is still a -great- benefit) you can get good letters of recommendation from people who are already achieving.

[Nick]

I'll fourth the opinion about getting an internship/co-op. Right now I'm in the middle of one with a very old, very large Fortune 500 company. I'm a design engineer and a mechanical engineer by degree. Finding out that corporate engineering is more like book keeping has been quite disappointing, but I'm still glad I took the job. If I hadn't, I wouldn't have realized that I needed to get going on opening up other options.

[QWer]

>>>>i can do enething )))