Bottom line: You don’t need to know what you want to do with the rest of your life. Just find a line of work where there is opportunity to be productive and to make a good living. You can figure out what you want to do with the rest of your life over the course of time. In the meantime, work hard at a productive line of work, and you’ll develop skills and experience along the way that will pay massive dividends for you.
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The most-frequent lament or statement of concern I hear from young people today, both in and outside of the autism spectrum, is “I don’t know what I want to do with my life”. If that statement applies to you, first of all, take heart that you are not alone. Most folks your age are in that predicament. It would not be a big deal were it not for the fact that with the gradual entrance into adulthood comes the gradual assumption of adult obligations/responsibilities and the fretting over how to meet them (i.e., paying rent and bills).
This concern is all the more intense when young people are graduating from high school and find themselves as a major crossroads about how to go about learning to be a productive element of society. Many young people both in and outside of the spectrum have been fed the line since they were in grade school of “just go to college and everything will be fine”. This line is wrong on so many levels. For one, it puts pressure on 18 year-olds to decide what they want to do for their career. Other young people receive this mantra and think that all they need to do is major in something in college, and as long as they earn a college degree, they’ll be all set. The latter group finds out the hard way how wrong they were when they graduate with degrees in English, Philosophy, or Sociology, and they quickly learn that nobody is looking to hire anyone with those degrees. Often what happens is grads with these degrees end up taking jobs that require much less education, but these jobs won’t pay well enough to lead a middle class lifestyle. Fewer things are more frustrating than being over-educated and under-employed. Been there; not fun.
Even if the latter group is smart, they’ll still be in the same boat as the former group, wherein they’re facing a major crossroads at age 18 of what to do with the rest of their lives. So what to do?
First of all, this pressure is undue, and it comes from a false assumption that what young people decide to study at age 18 will equal a career they’ll have for the rest of their lives. Real-world experience states otherwise. The majority of middle class folks in the workforce have had considerably varying careers, starting out in one line of work, and gradually working their way into a different one. The paths to improving their careers are as varied as the people and their respective experiences. Being at the right place at the right time is sometimes involved. Improving one’s career oftentimes requires the willingness to learn new things in the course of their jobs, to get training that will help them gain new skills that will be key for advancement. This is yet another example of learning being a life-long process, to say nothing of a reminder that we should quickly embrace these blessed opportunities when they arise.
Second, as I have stated time and again, and shall state time and again, look for opportunity, and gain the marketable skills necessary to seize that opportunity. For most white-collar jobs, that involves getting training in engineering, accounting, or computer science. All three of these job categories are tailor-made, to varying extents, for those on the autism spectrum. Failing that, look to pick up a trade.
The latter item of picking up a trade is a truly underrated opportunity. It is lower-cost on the front end (vocational training is much cheaper than college educations, especially in the 2020s), and one can quickly earn a decent living depending on how hard one is willing to work. Those of us on the autism spectrum have great potential here, as our condition, if channeled properly, can lead to a laser-like focus in diligence.
Whichever path one chooses, make sure there is opportunity (meaning, skill-based jobs that companies hire for to satisfy unmet needs) to be productive and thus to earn a decent living. Make sure you get the necessary training and skills to seize these opportunities. Once you land a job where there is such an opportunity, work hard at it. Over time, you’ll hone your skills, gain experience, and over time you’ll also develop transferrable skills, both hard and soft that will help you in finding the next stage of your career, however that may manifest for each individual.
We’ll focus on related aspects of this issue in subsequent articles. But for now, look for where there is opportunity, and gain the training and skills to seize it. Once you do, put all diligence in landing a job in the field, and once you succeed there, put your nose to the grindstone to build your skills and gain experience. Following this [relatively] simple path will help you do your part in being a productive element of society, and will allow to you make your contribution in helping us all learn and grow together.