Brief 010: Are you choosing your education path, or just following everyone else?
For many of us, choosing what to study starts with a surprisingly small question: “What is everyone else doing?”
Your friends are applying to university, your parents have a degree in mind, someone tells you a particular course has “good prospects”, and suddenly you’re choosing an education path without really knowing where it leads.
Maybe we should start somewhere else.
Where do you want to go?
If you want to become a doctor, that narrows your options.
If you want to learn a trade, another path may make more sense.
If you want to build a business, you may need a mix of business knowledge, practical skills and experience.
If you’re changing careers, you may not need another full degree. You may simply need to learn what’s missing.
So before choosing a course, qualification or institution, ask:
What am I trying to become capable of doing?
Then:
What does that actually require?
And don’t forget to consider the things nobody puts on the shiny university brochure: Cost. Time. Location. Your current skills. Your interests. Your responsibilities. And what opportunities the qualification can realistically open.
There isn’t one “best” education path. There is only the path that makes sense for the destination you’re trying to reach.
My question here is: If you stopped asking “What should I study?” and started asking: “What am I trying to become?”
Would you make the same choice?
Read the next Brief here: Brief 011: Are you getting educated, or just collecting qualifications?
One Comment