Students often struggle to balance passion with practicality in career decisions, influenced by financial obligations and societal expectations. Many enter careers accidentally, through apathy, or via social pressure, leading to dissatisfaction. Encouraging thoughtful reflection on values and proactive choices can guide students toward fulfilling career paths aligned with their true vocations.
One of the challenges for our students in making vocational and career decisions is finding the appropriate balance between passion and practicality. While the pursuit of one’s passion is often considered the ideal, the realities of modern life—with its multitude of well-meaning voices, financial obligations, and family concerns—frequently necessitate more pragmatic choices. This tension creates a dynamic in which vocational aspirations and career decisions are continuously evolving and being reconciled.
Vocation often has spiritual and philosophical connotations. And even though we often use career interchangeably with vocation and calling, there are important distinctions between these words. Careers are frequently regarded as more pragmatic and of lesser importance, with the implication that vocation, and especially calling, hold greater depth. I would contend that one’s career also merits deep reflection and discernment. Today, a career is understood as the journey or path one takes in their professional life. While vocation speaks to the inner call, career offers a different context that includes steps taken to build one’s life’s work. Our careers, although distinct from our vocations, can be the means through which we express our vocations or callings. In this context, our careers should also be the result of deep thought and discernment.
How can we effectively encourage students in their career and vocational choices? We may have them consider the enigmatic Dr. Seuss’s playful words from Oh the Places You’ll Go, which encourages them to see self-determination at the heart of career decisions: “You have brains in your head,” he writes, “You have feet in your shoes. You can steer yourself any direction you choose.”
Students might also consider the advice of Curly Washburn from the film City Slickers. In it, Curly Washburn, played by Jack Palance, is not a career coach, but he offers some wise advice to Billy Crystal’s character, Mitch Robbins. A New York radio ad salesperson, Mitch is experiencing a midlife crisis, feeling unhappy with his life and job. He and his friends join a cattle drive in the Southwest as part of a vacation adventure, where he meets Curly, a rugged cowboy who initially seems intimidating but later shows a sensitive side.
Curly’s most famous advice comes from his “one thing” speech. He tells Mitch that the secret to life is finding one thing that truly matters, and everything else will fall into place. He does not tell Mitch what that one thing is; it is something each person must discover for themselves. Although Curly does not directly give Mitch career advice, his wisdom helps Mitch rethink his priorities and gain clarity about his life. Curly’s sage advice reflects the idea of a single, defining career choice, which can help our students anchor their early decisions about their careers in something that matters to them.
If our students do not have access to a career mentor like Curly, then we might consider the three most common paths—and potential pitfalls to avoid—when people initially choose a career. I’ve discovered these paths through experience and observation; they are: by accident, by apathy, and by social pressure.
One of the most common ways people enter a career is by accident or happenstance. Countless stories abound of individuals who stumble into a career path they had never previously considered, often through a chance encounter with a family member or a random conversation at a social gathering. In Fooled by Randomness, Nassim Taleb reminds us that serendipity can significantly shape our professional journeys. Even as career choices that happen through chance may not always align with one’s inner calling, they nonetheless open doors to new paths. Before entering academia, I landed a career in business-to-business marketing (B2B) through a random connection made through the University of Minnesota Carlson School’s placement office. I have met many B2B marketers who started in unrelated functions but later stumbled into the field. In The Graduate, Dustin Hoffman’s character, Benjamin Braddock, might have pursued a career in the then-emerging plastics field due to a similar serendipitous encounter. While luck or happenstance plays a role in this discernment process, we can also make our own luck by being open to new opportunities and pathways.
Apathy, or a lack of direction, is another frequent career choice path. Due to a combination of poor guidance, limited role models, or passivity, many people graduate from high school or college with little idea of what they want to do in life. Faced with the pressure to earn a living, they often choose the path of least resistance, accepting any job that comes along—even if it has nothing to do with their interests or their field of study. I have seen this with many students who have no idea what they will do after graduating from college. This reactive approach to career choice can lead to long-term dissatisfaction, as individuals find themselves trapped in roles that fail to allow them to realize their full potential.
Social pressure is another factor in career decision-making, particularly among those who have a plan. From early childhood through adulthood, we can become bombarded with expectations from well-meaning family, friends, teachers, clergy, and the media about what career to pursue. For many, these influences lead to the pursuit of professions in law, medicine, business, or engineering, regardless of whether these fields hold any interest. The inter-generational transfer of attitudes is another factor, in which the opinions of parents and grandparents often reinforce biased views about what is acceptable. I have observed this amongst many high-achieving first-generation college students. One of my son’s former college roommates pursued a career in medicine solely because of parental pressure. This conformity can stifle personal fulfillment, leading many to question later in life whether they had followed their true calling or succumbed to family expectations. Working hard, earning success, and then working even harder to gain even greater success, ad infinitum, reduces one’s life to a depressing treadmill with no end beyond unceasing climbing.
According to the Pew Research Center, less than half of American workers feel satisfied with their careers. This is a sobering statistic, suggesting that too many of us settle for a job that pays the bills or is convenient rather than one that fulfills our passions. This is confirmed by a recent Gallup survey of 227,000 workers across the globe, which reports that only 21% are “engaged” with their work.
The common factor in career choices driven by accident, apathy, or social pressure is that they are reactive rather than proactive. When we let others or fate decide our career path, we risk ongoing dissatisfaction and frequent job changes. Proactive career planning, on the other hand, involves thoughtful reflection on one’s values, interests, and skills, leading to intentional choices that shape a more fulfilling professional journey. As mentors, we should encourage our students to use this unique time in their lives for thoughtful reflection and discernment in pursuit of their vocation, calling, and future careers.
David Youland is associate professor of business at Southwestern College in Winfield, Kansas. A native of Minnesota, he has also lived in Iowa, Tennessee, and currently resides in Wichita, Kansas. Before joining Southwestern College in 2018, he worked for 35 years in marketing and innovation roles with organizations ranging from Fortune 500 firms to smaller corporations listed on NASDAQ. During that time, he also held adjunct faculty roles at St. Cloud State University, William Penn University, Central College, and King University. He is a noted thought leader and consultant specializing in organic revenue growth and the author of Driving Organic Business Growth: Actionable Strategies for Smart Innovation and editor of Readings in Qualitative Market Research: Insights for Managers.