James is asking a good question below, but I’m going to dive into a hot take :)
If you’re about to start university, I’m wondering if you might be narrowing down too early. My normal advice for someone entering college for figuring out their career would be something like:
See if you can ‘try out’ all of these paths while there, and right after.
You can consider all the following ways to try out potential paths, which also give you useful career capital:
Doing 1-2 internships.
Doing a research project as part of your studies or during the summer.
Going to lots of talks from people in different areas.
Getting involved in relevant student societies (e.g. student newspaper for the media)
Doing side projects & self-study in free time (e.g. building a website, learning to program)
Near the end, you can apply to jobs in several categories as well as graduate school, and see where you get the best offers.
And even after college, you can probably then try something and switch again if it’s not working.
So, going in, you don’t need to have very definite plans. Besides being able to explore several paths within earning to give, I’d also encourage you to consider exploring some outside. As a starting point, some broad categories we often cover are: government and policy options, working at social impact organisations in your top cause areas (not just EA orgs), and graduate study (potentially leading into working at research organisations or as a researcher). Try to generate at least a couple of ideas within each of these.
Which subject should you study? A big factor should be personal fit – one factor there would be whether you’ll be able to get good grades in moderate time (since you can use that time to do the steps above and also to socialise—and many meet their lifetime friends and partner at university). Besides that, you could consider which subject will (i) be most helpful to the longer-term options you’re interested in and (ii) most keep your options open. If in doubt, applied quantitative subjects (e.g. economics and statistics) often do well on this analysis.
I agree with you whole heartedly! I definitely feel the pressure to narrow down and it’s hard to keep my “eye on the prize” so to speak.
I try to remind myself that I’m here to make “this” better, and it doesn’t matter how I do it. So I’ve been trying to diversify my overall look at the world.
I like the list of ideas, I hadn’t considered doing an internship or research project, it’s not something I’m very familiar with, so I’ll have to put a little more thought into it!
I definitely need to sit down and read everything 80K hours has put out, it’s pretty good advice (career and life!)
I’m kind of overwhelmed by the number of options I have, so I’ll have to put a lot of thought into it! Luckily for me I’ve got another year between now and when I have to start really making choices. A little time is better than none!
Hi Will,
James is asking a good question below, but I’m going to dive into a hot take :)
If you’re about to start university, I’m wondering if you might be narrowing down too early. My normal advice for someone entering college for figuring out their career would be something like:
Draw up a long list of potential longer-term options.
See if you can ‘try out’ all of these paths while there, and right after.
You can consider all the following ways to try out potential paths, which also give you useful career capital:
Doing 1-2 internships.
Doing a research project as part of your studies or during the summer.
Going to lots of talks from people in different areas.
Getting involved in relevant student societies (e.g. student newspaper for the media)
Doing side projects & self-study in free time (e.g. building a website, learning to program)
Near the end, you can apply to jobs in several categories as well as graduate school, and see where you get the best offers.
And even after college, you can probably then try something and switch again if it’s not working.
So, going in, you don’t need to have very definite plans. Besides being able to explore several paths within earning to give, I’d also encourage you to consider exploring some outside. As a starting point, some broad categories we often cover are: government and policy options, working at social impact organisations in your top cause areas (not just EA orgs), and graduate study (potentially leading into working at research organisations or as a researcher). Try to generate at least a couple of ideas within each of these.
Which subject should you study? A big factor should be personal fit – one factor there would be whether you’ll be able to get good grades in moderate time (since you can use that time to do the steps above and also to socialise—and many meet their lifetime friends and partner at university). Besides that, you could consider which subject will (i) be most helpful to the longer-term options you’re interested in and (ii) most keep your options open. If in doubt, applied quantitative subjects (e.g. economics and statistics) often do well on this analysis.
There’s a bunch more rough thoughts here.
I agree with you whole heartedly! I definitely feel the pressure to narrow down and it’s hard to keep my “eye on the prize” so to speak.
I try to remind myself that I’m here to make “this” better, and it doesn’t matter how I do it. So I’ve been trying to diversify my overall look at the world.
I like the list of ideas, I hadn’t considered doing an internship or research project, it’s not something I’m very familiar with, so I’ll have to put a little more thought into it!
I definitely need to sit down and read everything 80K hours has put out, it’s pretty good advice (career and life!)
I’m kind of overwhelmed by the number of options I have, so I’ll have to put a lot of thought into it! Luckily for me I’ve got another year between now and when I have to start really making choices. A little time is better than none!