Career counseling #2: How to choose what to study

Every adolescent face a tough choice: to choose their studies, their high school studies when they are just 14-15 years old. It`s a hard choice to choose your path in life, even for adults. Because this is what this choice means: beginning to carve your way in life.

When I was 15 years old, I faced the same choice. And, from my point of view at that time, I failed terribly. My options at that time were to either study foreign languages or IT. I didn`t study either.

I was considered by my teachers a high achiever and, because of this, I was arrogant, arrogant enough not to study for my final exams out of secondary school. For the last 3-4 months before my exams, I did not study at all, except for the lessons that I was obliged to learn to get the same high grades that I was accustomed to.

As you guessed already, I failed miserably. I took around 6 something (D+ in the US system); I can`t even remember the grade right now. I was obliged to forget what I thought at the time that was the thing I wanted to study.

I studied agriculture. I was assigned to the agricultural high school in my city, considered to be the worst high school there was (out of a total of 17).

I studied hard, got to grades, got involved in many extracurricular activities and won some competitions. My goal was that, after my baccalaureate, to get to choose my education. It didn`t happen. Even with my high grades, I didn`t do my Bachelor in the field I wanted.

I wanted to study political sciences. Instead, as before, I only got into to the Agronomy (university).

Since then, my career revolved around agriculture. My Master and PhD are both in agriculture; my professional experience is also in agriculture.

To have the opportunity to study what you want, you first have to know what you want. Don`t expect to study what you dreamt about a few days, weeks, months before. If you don`t know exactly, others might choose for you, whether it`s God, the Universe or however you want to call it.

For me, it was my subconscious. It seems that what I wanted to study wasn`t exactly what I wanted. I failed two exams to get into the high school I wanted and chose wrong what university to apply to. I only had money to apply to two universities, so I didn`t exactly apply to what I meant. I applied to the Agronomy (where I was sure that I would get in) and to philosophy (to be able later to change to political sciences).

It seems that I knew what I wanted, but not when I thought about.

Tread carefully when you get to choose.