Dear Jonathan, I’ve started to feel quite anxious about what comes next; how can I start to get a clearer picture of the workplace and the options available to me?
Dear Jonathan,
I’ve started to feel quite anxious about what comes next; I’m not sure what the reality of working life actually looks like beyond university. There seem to be so many different paths I could take, and I worry that I don’t fully understand what those jobs involve day to day.
I’m also concerned about making the “wrong” choice after I graduate. I don’t want to miss out on opportunities that might suit me better; it feels like there’s a lot of pressure to have everything figured out, but I’m still unsure.
How can I start to get a clearer picture of the workplace and the options available to me? And how do I make decisions about my future without feeling like I’m closing doors on other opportunities?
- 2nd year, English
There are many different career paths open to Oxford students, and it can indeed be puzzling and perhaps overwhelming in how to choose on which one to start. In terms of whether a choice was “wrong”, you may only come to consider this years later; as Søren Kierkegaard, the Danish philosopher wrote, “Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.”
So, you are left with making the best-informed decision with the information you have now, recognising that over the probable 40+ year course of your career, you may take many paths and explore different careers.
How to choose?
One overarching rule is to take a role that will give you more choice and more control; think about the job that comes after the one you are selecting – will you be better placed, have more skills and experience?
To help inform your choices, to learn more about what a job involves day-to-day, you can apply your research skills to collect information about jobs. There are many sources available: from desk research (e.g., using our Sector Briefings), to talking to lots of people (friends, parents, parents’ friends, friends’ parents, lecturers, alumni just to start with). Consider information interviews and while talking to relative strangers may not come easily, it can help if you frame it as learning and collecting information. “Can I ask you about your job? The industry? What attracts you to it? What skills do you look for in applicants? What’s a typical day?” are the sort of questions you can ask.
As you get a clearer understanding, the ideas and knowledge will settle in your unconscious mind and an initial career path will probably start to emerge from the current fog. It’s natural not to have everything figured out yet, indeed leaving some areas undefined will leave you open to new opportunities of jobs that may not even have been invented yet.
Closing off options (for now) may give you Fear Of Missing Out; life is finite and we have to make choices - making a decision and setting a direction can be liberating.
Jonathan Black - Director, Oxford University Careers Service
Read more guidance on Developing Career Ideas:
About the Dear Jonathan column
For six years, the Oxford University Careers Service Director Jonathan Black, wrote a fortnightly column for the Financial Times answering readers’ careers questions - you can still find it here.
Now, the “Dear Jonathan" column has come to Oxford.
If you are an Oxford University student, send in your career question to dear.jonathan@careers.ox.ac.uk and each week of term, he will answer one of the questions in this feature. We’ll anonymise the author (but please tell us whatever is relevant) so you can be sure that readers won’t know it’s you.
