Searching for Schools, Finding Your Passions

By Katherine Elliot - SchoolFinder.com

When it comes to choosing a post-secondary institution it can sometimes feel like you are trying to decide your entire future. It can be difficult to know what you want to study or where you want to attend school when you aren’t even 100% sure what your interests are and “what you want to be when you grow up.” Searching to finding the right school does not mean you need to carve out your future in stone. This search is more about establishing a groundwork for you to build off of. It’s a search for you to understand your goals and interests and ideally, this will shape the direction you take.

Although you may not know your exact end goal, this is the time to start asking yourself questions like, what do I want to gain from an education? Or, what type of person do I want to become in the next few years? Questions like these will help you do a bit of self-reflecting and you can determine, in addition to obtaining your degree, certificate or diploma, what is truly important to you! Regardless of what school you attend you will gain new academic, social and practical skills that will help to develop you as a well-rounded person. Many institutions focus on developing your transferrable skills, skills that will help you in a variety of careers and that you can apply to many aspects of your life. Through working on these skills you may find yourself interested in something you never thought possible.

Feel free to take the next few months learning about yourself as much as you are learning about different schools. Make short and long term personal goals, ask some schools if they have exploratory introductory years, or interdisciplinary courses and how you can customize your program. One thing to keep in mind is that you may still not know all the answers by the time you begin your studies, and that’s ok. Students change their programs fairly frequently, people change their career paths on average 7 times in their lives. The finite details of your academic experience can change, but if you keep checking in with yourself to know what you personally want to achieve, you can ensure that you will get there – regardless of what path you take.