I am currently working with a client who has just finished her first year in university but wants to drop out of her course. She is very intelligent and doesn’t have to work that hard to get good marks. She was encouraged to choose a course that had high points to keep her working for her Leaving Cert exams and did very well. With no strong preference for her career herself, she followed the advice to keep studying one of her favourite school subjects, Maths.

Her course was very different from the school experience, both in the content studied and the delivery of the material. The workload was very heavy, and she felt it consumed her too much, causing her to feel resentful. She is considering dropping out of her course but wants to make a good choice the next time round.

We are now working together to explore her talents and skills to see which ones she wants to bring together to move forward in her career. She has many talents but knows that she doesn’t want to pursue music, for example. We have narrowed down the areas that she would like to explore, and we will research careers and courses within those.

Moral of the Story

For parents guiding their teens to choose a career, the moral of this story is not to push your teenagers into careers and courses that they don’t love. Just because your teenager can get the points doesn’t mean that they should do a particular course. And stall the teenagers you think may be making this poor decision for themselves. It only leads to misery and a very expensive year if they drop out of university, only to start all over again!

Instead, help your teenager to understand themselves, particularly with interpersonal or developmental skills that are not measured in school. How would you review your teenager if they were a colleague at work? (OK, try to ignore their messy bedrooms!) You can also ask them to take the careers interest test in Careers Portal to use as a guide.

Help your teenager to explore careers that suit their way of learning and working. When teenagers come to me and tell me they hate school, I question why are they going to college then? Maybe an apprenticeship would be a better match or maybe college in a few years’ time, but not just yet.

There is a perfect career out there for your teenager. It’s just a matter of thinking it all through and doing the research on how to get there.  Here’s a BLOG I wrote about how to do that research. 

Make it easy for your teenager to choose what is right for them by not setting expectations that they cannot follow. If you need some help, feel free to reach out.