Help Choosing Your Options
The first thing you need to do is to find out about all of the choices open to you. When you’ve done your research and understand what each option involves it’s time to think about what you enjoy doing and are good at.
Ask yourself:
- What are your strengths and weaknesses?
- What skills, interests and talents do you have?
- What topics and subjects interest you most and least?
- How do you learn best? Courses are taught and tested in different ways. It may be that one learning or assessment method suits you better than the others?
- Would work experience be an important part of any course you chose?
Doing this should help you start to see which options could be a good or bad choice.
If you have a firm career idea in mind you should check to see if there are any subjects or qualifications you would need to take. Nextstep is a useful place for finding out what subjects and qualifications are needed for different jobs and careers. If you don’t have a specific job idea in mind think about choosing a broad mix of subjects as this will help keep your options open later on. You might also want to make some “reserve” choices just in case your school can’t offer you all of your first choices.
It’s best if you don’t:
- Choose an option just so you can stay together with your mates.
- Choose subjects just because you like the teacher – you might not have the same one next year
- Think about ‘boys options’ and ‘girls options’ – remember that all options are open to everyone
- Panic! You do need to start thinking about your choices but if you start early enough there’ll be no need to rush into making your decisions
For more information talk to your teachers or careers contact in school, call the National Careers Service on 0800 100 900 or follow this link.
