There are a plethora of careers to choose from in Canada from jobs like farming to rocket scientists. When choosing a career path, one needs to decide what it is that they are interested in to narrow down their choices. Yet what influences our decision for our future career? There are many things that influence our career choice. Some of the main reasons for our career choice depends on our parents, our interests and our financial concerns.
To begin, most parents want their children to have the best life possible. Therefore, they tend to influence their child’s decision by suggesting what type of job they should have to help them in the future. However, not all parents act that way. Some parents allow their children to make their own choice for their career and choose not to influence them. According to a study done by Professor Jon Miller and others at Michigan State University along with research data from the Longitudinal Study of American Youth, parents have a great influence on what career their child will choose in the future. The study focused on why students choose to purse a STEMM career, which is a career in either science, technology, engineering, medicine or mathematics. This study followed 6000 students from junior high to post-secondary school. The research showed that 41% of students that chose a STEMM career were influenced by their parents, where as there is only a 4% chance that a student would choose a stem career on their own.(study found on http://www.familyanatomy.com/2010/04/07/can-parents-influence-their-childs-career-choice/ )
Secondly, children are normally choose a job that they will enjoy as it appeals to their interests. For example, a child that enjoy working with their hands would enjoy a job as a carpenter or a construction worker; where a child who enjoys the arts may want to be an actor or actress or maybe even a painter. In my opinion this is the most important aspect of choosing a career as this will decide whether they’ll be happy in their job and whether they will want to stick with it until retirement. If a child chooses a career they enjoy, they will want to work hard to satisfy their employer and their clients instead of just choosing a job that gives them a good income per year. However, income per year can also influence what career a child may choose. As Jonny Carson once said:
Never continue in a job you don’t enjoy. If you’re happy in what you’re doing, you’ll like yourself, you’ll have inner peace. And if you have that, along with physical health, you will have had more success than you could possibly have imagined.
Finally, money is involved when a child chooses a career. To clarify, a child’s career choice may be limited by tuition prices as not all families can afford to send their child to college or university. For example, the average tuition of an undergraduate university student in Canada is $4,917 in the 2009\2010 school year. Quebec has the lowest tuition for undergrads averaging at $2,272. To further clarify, if a student were to pay the average tuition for five years, they would have a grand total of $24,585 in tuition fees (the Quebec grand total would be $11,360). Therefore, the parents or the child needs to be able to pay these fees if the child wants to pursue a university degree, or they at least need to be able to have a scholarship. If this cannot be achieved, the child will either need get a loan, in which case the child needs to choose a career where they will be able to pay off their loan quickly, or they will have no choice but to choose a career that requires less time or a lower education to acquire. (Tuition averages found on http://www.statcan.gc.ca/daily-quotidien/091020/dq091020b-eng.htm ).
Inclosing, choosing a career is not a decision to be taken lightly and should take some time to choose. A child should not be forced to make a decision about what career they choose, nor should they choose a career to make someone else happy. A career can change a person’s life and determine how someone will live their life.