Encouraging Career Exploration among Adolescents Essay

Encouraging Career Exploration among Adolescents - Essay Example Adolescent age varies depending on gender, with girls experiencing it at an earlier age than boys. It is the age where risk behaviors appear through experimentation among the youths. During the experience, both sexes get a ray of decisions and pressure from all the sides interfering with their choices. Based on this regards, various factors affect career exploration among the adolescent. To start, career choices remain guided by the nature of jobs in the later life. When young, children tend to make decisions on future jobs depending on inspiration from their surroundings. This, however, changes during the adolescent stage where people often look for ideal jobs. This gets influenced by economic and social contextual factors forcing them to occupy new occupational paths (Nilsson, Schmidt, & Meek, 2002). The remarked transition according to psychological expert Doctor Bandura is because of new perceptions brought by ranging choices caused by many factors. This is the stage where many p eople feel they want to do more than expected hence engaging in things which go against societal expectations. They filter jobs to come up with the ideal jobs; they want to shape their careers based on job appropriateness (Hobbs & Stoops, 2002). Career decision making is a process that should be completed right from high school; however, the adolescent stage calls for a revision showing career immaturity. Consequently, the inability to make decisions also contributes to poor career choice during the adolescent stage. This is because many people in the adolescent stage feel they have the whole world in front of them. Settling on careers, therefore, remains a difficult activity which requires guidance (Gardner & Steinberg, 2005). Subsequently, migration plays an influential factor in adolescent career decision making. For instance, out-migration of rural adults creates a function of ruralist hence creating a feeling of limited job opportunities. Students in the adolescent stage found in rural areas, therefore, have problems making career choices for fear of job insecurity. The conflicting dilemma experienced by the rural youths is faced by adolescent youths, with many youths unable to judge the difference between urban employment and rural places. In this regard, youths tend to make career decisions which see urban employment guided by high income and more opportunities (Lent, Brown, & Hackett, 2002). Adolescent youths, for instance, argue rural jobs pay peanuts, and so they make the wrong decision of moving to towns while, in the real sense, urban employment pays high but is accompanied with many expenses. Apart from decisions based on rural or urban locations, career choice among the adolescent also faces other barriers. This includes qualification as well as financial obstacles. For instance, many adolescent youths hope for grandiose dreams with some wishing to be doctors while some hoe to be engineers (Gardner & Steinberg, 2005). In as much as these are poss ible, many youths in the adolescent ages fail to acquire the qualification for such careers.