Choosing a Career
 All young people at a certain period in life have to face the problem of choosing a career. The task is not easy. People usually want to have an interesting, prestigious, well-paid and prospective job.
Lots of psychological problems arise from an uninteresting, unloved job, such as low self-esteem, lack of self-confidence, aggressiveness, inferiority complexes, depressions, and nervous break-downs. Not infrequently, professional problems become an indirect or direct cause for family confusions, and divorces. A lot of grown-up, self-realized people confess that if they had an opportunity, they would choose a different profession. (There are cases when adults decide to get a second higher education, a second diploma, so to say.) And very often parents play a “fatal role” in their children’s choice of a future profession.
When parents choose a future profession for their child, frequently the main reasons for the choice are: prestige, fashion, money, an opportunity to get a good job and later on a promotion, sometimes because elder children have the same profession: it runs in the family, so to speak. But you shouldn’t forget that in every profession there are a lot of specialists who haven’t found themselves, those, who even having an opportunity to get a good, prestigious job, have been unable to realize themselves.
Helping their son or daughter choose a future profession, parents must take into consideration the fact that school marks don’t reflect the presence or absence of abilities for this or that subject at all. It is not a secret that a lot of children’s talents remain undeveloped due to unfavourable circumstances.
From what age should parents pay attention to the professional orientation of their child? The earlier the better! Of course, you can only think about a concrete choice of a profession in the last forms of secondary school. But a part of the child’s abilities and inclinations already reveal themselves by the age of three. Having recognized them with the help of a specialist, or with your own keen observations, you get an opportunity to develop the child more purposefully. This knowledge will help you to make the right choice of higher education. Mothers and fathers must remember that, first of all, they have to take their children’s preferences into account: one can hardly be successful in a profession that one doesn’t like.
When you have chosen a profession, try to find out as much as possible about it. Together with the child, visit a probable higher educational institution, talk to graduates who have already got the profession or who already have diplomas. You may also view a list of job offers according to the profession you’ve chosen. If you can, visit a likely place of work, get some information on working conditions, working hours, perspectives, and salaries. Sometimes a seemingly attractive and romantic profession turns out to be commonplace and uninteresting.
And another important thing: rank doesn’t give privilege, it confers responsibility. You should bring this home to a child: a child must be prepared to take responsibility. The more money one earns, the higher the level of social responsibility one has to accept. If there is any room for disappointment, let it take place before and not after getting the education.
A psychologist can help you to discover your child’s abilities and chief work type at an early stage. You ought to know what suits your child best: manual labour or intellectual. It is better if a specialist knows not only Russian methods of determining professional fitness, but also foreign ones, as the tradition of using them abroad is much older. As a result of testing, parents will be given a list of professional fields where their child can work most successfully in the future.
By Olga Kostenko |