How Do You Know?

Making the decision on what you want to do for a career can be one of the biggest challenges that you may face in life and I know that it has been a big one for me as well.  All my life, I've known that I wanted to pursue some sort of profession that involved me working with students, whether they'd be in grade school or undergraduate students.  After being in college for four years and changing my mind several times, I would say that I've finally reached a conclusion on what it is that I want to do, which is becoming a guidance counselor!  Although I am VERY happy to of made a final decision on what I want to do with the rest of my life as a professional, I really think it would of been helpful to have been given questions to ask myself for guiding myself in the right direction.  I strongly believe that many of us have some kind of direction that we know we want to be in for our lives, the part that we are unsure of is where exactly we want it to take us.
After reading the article, "Why Teach", by Herbert Kohl (attached below), I have come to realize that this is a wonderful source of information for anyone who is unsure of what it is that they want to do for a profession, particularly if they are interested with working either with some kind of demographic of students or with children in general.  Kohl provides a lot of questions for one to ask themselves including ones that I never thought to ask myself like, "Why exactly do you want to work with children", which can really lead one to finding what field they want to go into if it's involving recreational activities or becoming an educator for children.  Another one that really stood out to me was "What do you want from children", this is a question that I never really thought to think about myself and asking myself this really made me understand why I know that becoming a guidance counselor is the right career path for me! Among many other questions that Kohl provided for one could ask themselves, one last question that stood out to me was "What do you know that you can teach to or share with your students?".  Although my plans are not to become a teacher I know that I'll still have students as a guidance counselor and honestly asking myself this question helped me a lot as well because it made me realize that what I have to offer for students is good advice giving and the ability to give children the proper push to get themselves in the right direction.
I really truly enjoyed reading this article and I really believe that it can be beneficial for anyone to read, regardless if they're going into the academic field for their career, it has a lot of valuable information and it's extremely valuable for teachers to read as well since it also gives them many different perspectives of teaching and allows them to think about where exactly they may want to work too!
Source: Why Teach - Herbert Kohl.pdf