| OCR Text |
Show and KM Home cp 7 by -K Dr. Daryl J. McCarty Executive Secretary Utoh Education Association Being successful Having a successful career is the most important goal of most high school seniors. At least that's a conclusion of a survey taken by the National Center for Education Statistics. About 89 percent of the boys and 88 percent of the girls who were polled stated that "being successful suc-cessful in my line of work" is very important. im-portant. That's a higher percentage than for any other life goal of the seniors. It indicates that today's young people are well intentioned and well motivated, but it raises some questions. Of all those who want so much to be successful in their life's work, how many of them know what kinds of careers they want to pursue. How many of them understand the price they'll have to pay to become pilots, doctors, bricklayers and engineers? What are the chances of actually ac-tually getting a job after completing college, a trade course or an apprenticeship? appren-ticeship? Will a person who has decided on a career goal really be happy in that line of work? What happens if a college student stu-dent decides to change his or her "major" "ma-jor" (the course of study in which the student is enrolled, such as accounting or nursing) after two or three years of college? Those are only a few of the questions that haunt the young people who will be self-consciously stepping across the stages of high school auditoriums across the state, smiling at the school board members who offer the diplomas, and then... And then comes the scary feeling of dealing with the "real world." Even though the cap and gowned graduating seniors will inevitably feel scared and all alone, they needn't. Parents, job counselors, college counselors and others will be there with the answers to a lot of the questions bothering the new graduates. But that's not the most important asset they'll have. The desire to succeed may be the very best thing the class of '81 has going for it. Congratulations. |
