My kids are reaching an age where they’re trying to decide what their careers are going to be. We spend a good chunk of our children’s lives basically preparing them for nothing. We send them to school, and they get used to the automation of it all.

You show up year after year, going from one grade to the next, just learning the subjects they throw in front of you. We’re told to think about what we want to do when we grow up, but we really have no idea what that looks like because we aren’t shown what different jobs are actually like. How can we make a choice about a job if we don’t know what that job is about?

It reminds me of the premise of The Bee Movie. Barry (Jerry Seinfeld as a bee, basically) is tasked with choosing a career. And in Bee World, that means you choose one job and do it for the rest of your life. The idea overwhelms him so much that he ends up stuck in analysis paralysis until he stumbles onto the Pollen Jocks and makes his way out of the hive.

Both of my kids are going through this phase now. I just had a conversation with my son about it yesterday. It made me think that a post about how to choose a career might be a worthy endeavor. So let’s take a look at the advice I gave my children.

1. Don’t automatically assume you’re going to college

When I was coming up through school, pushing kids into college was the new hotness. It seemed like the entire purpose of school was to funnel students into higher education. Granted, back then the data showed that people with a college degree made more than those without one. But that was largely because not everybody was going to college.

The trouble with that era was that kids weren’t asked to think about what job they actually wanted to do. The question was framed as, “What major do you want to pick?” No one considered that flooding the market with college graduates would eventually cheapen the value of a bachelor’s degree.

Thankfully, it seems like we’re finally moving away from that mindset. There’s more emphasis on technical certifications now, and I think that’s a good thing.

2. Think about the job you want, then figure out how to qualify for it

My standard advice for anyone trying to figure out what they want to do with their life is to begin with the end in mind. Think about the kinds of jobs that sound interesting to you. Then go to Indeed (or whatever job site you prefer), look up those jobs, and see what the actual requirements are.

It may turn out that you need a college degree. For example, I’m an engineer who was also a math teacher. Both of those jobs require degrees. Yes, there are engineering jobs that don’t require a degree, but you’ll make far less money in those roles than you will with an engineering degree. In that case, pursuing at least a bachelor’s degree makes sense. The cost of the degree is usually returned many times over through salary and opportunity.

But not every job requires a degree. Some require technical certifications, and others are available right out of high school. So check the listings for the fields you’re interested in and see what’s actually required.

3. Find the path that opens the most doors

When my daughter came to me to talk about what she wanted to do with her life, she said she thought she’d like to be a teacher. Having taken an alternate path to teaching certification myself, I encouraged her to consider doing the same.

Instead of getting a bachelor’s degree in education, I suggested she consider a bachelor’s in another field and then complete a Master of Arts in Teaching program. The master’s program is usually only an extra year, and it gives you a backup plan in case things go sideways in teaching like they did for me.

For example, if you want to be a math teacher, you might consider getting a bachelor’s degree in engineering (as I did) and then doing an MAT program to get certified in math. This is where tools like ChatGPT can actually help. You can ask it to identify bachelor’s degrees that align well with specific subject-area certifications.

In general, pairing a bachelor’s degree in one field with a master’s degree in another can be very lucrative. A degree in computer science paired with a master’s in business, for example, opens far more doors than either degree alone.

4. Think of a career as a marathon, not a sprint

Most of you will work well into your 60s. That’s a long time. My father is still working at 73 and has been in the workforce for over fifty years. That’s an insane amount of time, and you’re not guaranteed to want to do the same thing at 60 that you wanted to do at 20.

It’s never too late to make a change. People like to act as if once you have kids, that’s it. But I quit my job, lived in dorms, and changed careers at 30 with two kids to support. It took me seven years to figure out how to make it work logistically (read: a lot of debt), but I found a path and didn’t miss a beat with my kids.

You’re unlikely to be happy with the first thing you choose anyway—and that’s the point. That’s what your 20s are for. You try things. You learn who you are. With experience comes clarity. So don’t panic if you discover the first path you chose isn’t the right one.

5. Find the balance between passion and paying the bills

Most career advice pushes the “follow your dreams” crap narrative. Not to be overly negative, but life isn’t a movie. Despite the rise of Main Character Syndrome, the real world doesn’t care about your dreams—it cares whether you can pay your bills.

That said, you still need to be engaged in what you do. Picking something solely for the money doesn’t work either. My son did exactly that when he got out of high school, and he lasted two semesters before dropping out. After working a warehouse job for a year, our conversation yesterday revealed why he now wants to go back to college.

This time is different because his motivation is different. He wants to become a coach–something he’s genuinely passionate about. His path leads through education, which means going back to school to get certified to teach. That gives him a stable job, good time flexibility, and a fallback if coaching never becomes full-time.

Spending time figuring out what makes you itch—and then finding a way to do that in service of others—is the best career advice I can give. There are plenty of ways to chase your dreams while still being responsible and paying your bills.

Here’s the truth no one tells you: there is no “right” career waiting for you to discover it. There are only choices and what you build from them. The people who look like they have it all figured out didn’t find a perfect path; they adjusted, adapted, and kept going when things didn’t work.

You are not behind. You are not failing. You are practicing.

Pick something that teaches you skills, pays your bills, and leaves you enough freedom to change your mind. If you do that, you haven’t boxed yourself in, you’ve given your future self options. And in a world that changes as fast as this one does, options are the real advantage.

Your career doesn’t have to define you. It just has to support the life you’re trying to build.