Usually, everyone wants to be something whenever they grow up. Veterinarians, astronauts, artists — the sky was endless. As those kids start to grow and change, usually their dream career changes along with them. Real estate agent, flight attendant, teacher, news anchor.
A good portion of high schoolers, however, don’t know what they’re doing until later on in school or after graduation. Not surprisingly, a good portion of high schoolers also aren’t working towards the careers they wanted when they were kids. Junior Katherine Albertson had been a member of FBLA and DECA since their sophomore year, and that experience led to her current career plan. But as a kid, she wanted to have a lot more multitasking on her plate.
“In kindergarten, I wanted to be a teacher, ballerina or a doctor. I did dance when I was really young, I really liked my teachers, and my mom is a nurse. I wanted to do those three things at the same time, but then I went from wanting to do engineering to architecture to what I want to do now: international business management,” Albertson said.
That path is a new development for her — like a lot of kids, younger Albertson’s interests changed as she got older until she landed on something solid. It wasn’t until they joined FHC’s business clubs that the choice was made.
“I joined FBLA and DECA my sophomore year. Those are both business clubs where you are able to network with other people, to compete in different competitions and your interests for business. I joined it for fun, but that made me realize that I was really interested and really enjoyed marketing concepts, selling products, and leading. That’s what made me turn towards the management side of business,” Albertson said.
Senior Sydney Belter, like Albertson, was also inspired by her classes to go into a particular field: technology. Beforehand, she had a similar yet adorable lack of foresight whenever she was a kid.
“In elementary school, I wanted to be a veterinarian. I had a cat and thought that she was pretty cool… but I was allergic to her. Yeah, I didn’t really think about the long term effects of working with [animals.] I let go of that dream when middle school came, but in high school I developed more of an idea. I took a few computer science classes and I liked it, so I’ve decided to go into the technical field,” Belter said.
Some interests stay the same as children turn into teens, and teens into adults. Charles Fussell, a senior at FHC going into the aerospace engineering field, wasn’t surprised that he’d gone in that direction.
“I watched a lot of ‘Kurzgesagt – In A Nutshell’ on YouTube and that initially got me interested in space and all of the word oddities. My dad’s also an aerospace engineer, so we’ve been to a gazillion museums across the United States and we talk about space stuff all of the time,” Fussell said.
Kurzgesagt is an educational YouTube channel that releases animated videos about complex science with dozens of videos on space. Among the posters about the sun and stars around his room, he’s had one of Kurzgesagt’s right beside his bed. Space, whether it involved aerospace or not, had been interesting to him for years.
“There was one specific [rocket launch] video that I would watch: the first launch of the SpaceX Falcon Heavy. It was the pure joy of the mission control for something small. ‘It reached Max Q! Wow!’ Everyone was so happy, [and] that would be really cool to be a part of. You could see that all of their hard work was paying off. I know it’s [probably] not going to happen, but being on mission control would be really cool. Most of them are aerospace engineers, so I could still have it work out,” Fussell said.
Especially in scientific and technological careers, heavy and intense workloads are common. However, a lot of people go into those fields expecting that. With a mix of realism, hope, and aspiration, students may be more prepared that adults realize.
“Whenever we work on our big unit projects in Comp Sci they’re a lot of work at first, but they’re also really rewarding. I feel nervous and excited — I know that [computer science] is a challenging field, so I get scared that it’s going to be really hard, that I’m going to be miserable. But I’m also excited for the parts that are novel and fun,” Belter said.
