Free Advice: The Working Girl

To:  79sparrows@gmail.com

Date:  09/20/10

 Your site is pretty cool.  I am an 18 year old female from Ohio.  I graduated high school this past May, and don’t know what to do.  I am so glad to be out of school because most of it sucked, but now that my whole life is ahead of me, I’m starting to freak out.  I don’t have anything planned.  Not going to a university.  Don’t know where to take it from here.  Advice please?

Thanks,

Julinda

 

Julinda,

 Congrats on graduating from high school.  Here’s what you need to know:

1.  Unless you decide to be a teacher, ‘summer vacation’ is over indefinitely.
2. You will most likely work for the rest of your life (until you retire.)

 That being said, think about what’s important to you.  Is it ‘job security’?  Doing something that you love?  Do you want a desk job?  What are your interests?

Go from there.

 If you want job security and don’t mind sitting at a desk all day, look into a job in an office.  Warning:  you will be admin/clerical for….  Forever, quite possibly, since you do not have a degree.  But it is dependable with benefits.  You will show up everyday at the same time, and leave at the same time, and everything will pretty much repeat itself over and over every year. 

 Now the other option:  setting yourself up for a job that you somewhat enjoy.  Now, there’s no perfect job out there, but it makes the day more fulfilling to do something you are interested in.  To do this, you will most likely have to go to school to learn a field.    Depending on what you like, there are vocational schools which will teach you a trade or skill in a few years. 

 OR, there’s community college.  Mind you, I hated grade school too, so pay attention:  college is NOT like grades 1-12.  Everyone is an adult, and most act like it.  I put off going to college till I was 24, and was pleasantly surprised about how different college is.  Maybe you can start out slow, sign up for a class or 2, and take it from there.

 It’s a long life of working to pay the bills, so don’t be lazy about this.  It can make the rest of the ride a lot nicer.

 God speed.

–79sparrows