Vocational Crisis In Adolescent Students
One of the most difficult decisions teens face is the path to follow once they finish school. It is clear that in adolescence young people feel a lot of pressure, as they must decide what will be the job of their future in a hurry, having to deal with the expectations of society, friends and parents; hence the vocational crisis in adolescent students is so recurrent.
The statistical data related to this issue are quite alarming, since according to certain studies at least a third of all school dropouts at the university level are caused by vocational crises. This can happen in the first semesters or even in the later ones.
Undoubtedly, one cannot be indifferent to this existential crisis suffered by young people and which has its origin in the haste when choosing their future. The lack of clarity about their true interests, their academic strengths and weaknesses also plays a central role.
If your child is going through this very decisive and delicate stage, you can use all the information about this existential break that we present here. Also, some tools are suggested to help you deal with the situation.
Dissertation on vocation
The vocation is understood as the link that a subject has with their tastes and interests and implies a deep personal knowledge. It is necessary to know who I am, what my character is like, what I like to do or what completely attracts my attention, what are my strengths and weaknesses.
Starting from this point, we can say that, for a person to define what their vocation is, there must be exhaustive introspection and a certain degree of maturity in the young person. It is clear then that this discovery process is complex and that the experience will be different for each individual.
If an adolescent manages to understand that the vocation responds to the true desires and interests and that the consequences of carrying out a job or a profession that they are not passionate about can cause frustrations and depressive states, they would definitely stop to make this decision more calmly.
It is essential that they are not coerced by their parents, classmates, and even the wrong opinions of some school motivators.
Vocational crisis in adolescent students
About 70% of students leaving high school do not know what to study in college or what profession is the most suitable for their lives. This figure is alarming, but it turns out that adolescents generally make that decision thinking about the tastes of the moment or because they follow wrong social precepts.
Thus, driven by people from their environment, they are convinced that the best careers are medicine, business or engineering; on the contrary, they end up discarding the arts or professions that are not financially profitable.
There two important aspects come into play: on the one hand there is the so-called ‘success’ in life, which according to most of society is only achieved if you earn a lot of money; on the other hand, there is the tranquility and daily joy of exercising day-to-day work with passion and enthusiasm.
Many of the young patients who attend consultations with psychologists are university students, or even adults, who report that they have frequently suffered from vocational crises and depression. The reason is that they want to go back in time and have made a different decision regarding their career.
How to make the right decisions?
To begin with, we must emphasize that it is not right for parents to force their children to study against their will. Nor that the school guides give their opinion on what career the student should take without conducting a personalized study of that young person.
In this case, you must work as a team. Parents, school and adolescent must discover and discard tastes and abilities. Another important aspect is that the decision must be made well in advance; It is not good for the adolescent to decide six months before finishing classes, when he is focused on his final exams, what his future job will be.
As a final recommendation, consider that it will not necessarily be a negative thing if your child does not start his university studies immediately. In fact, it may be okay if you put them off for up to two years. This action will give you maturity and clarity so that you can direct your life properly and do not have to fall into depression or university dropouts in the future.
