How did you decide what you wanted to do with your life?

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For those of you who have gone through college, or just have an intense interest that they know everything about... granted, one cannot necessarily up and decide all of a sudden what they are interested in, but how do you maintain focus?

I think I may have ADHD, as my focuses shift all of the time. My interests are rarely the same from one month to the next.

College is becoming difficult due to the focus shifts, and I've only been in college for 2 semesters so far. I think I want to go into video game design, as it could be a LOT of fun, I think... but at the same time, I've also toyed with the ideas of forensics, philosophy, becoming an English major, writing, drawing, computer graphic design, and a few others that haven't cropped back up as bad as these. I realize it is common for people to shift from interest to interest while in college, to actually figure it out. But I hate the idea of taking a ton of random classes just to explore each area and try to base a decision off of it when they all are roughly equal areas of interest.

I really want to go into video game design, but I also realize with how often my interests shift, it's quite possible I'd just get bored with it after I learn a certain amount of things about it. I usually lose interest when I learn exactly what I'm wanting to learn, and cannot be sure that I will even want to stick with it after that. I don't really know if it is a hobby idea or an actual career idea for myself.

So how can you really tell the difference? Does anyone else go through this?

Sorry to say I always knew what I wanted to be ( job wise, anyway) from a very young age, no real reason for it but it was the route I followed.

Yes, I understand what you mean. I've always been interested in video games even at a very young age, which is probably why I still remain in that area and don't drift to the others. I just hate not being able to predict the outcome and whether or not I'll still be interested when I achieve what I'm after, lol.

Having seen a step daughter go through a whole can't decide what to do phase and then have to choose a university that did what she finally chose and then wait to see if they would accept her I think it was far easier for me when I knew what I wanted and there was no other choice!

lol, I bet. I wish I could just say with 100% accuracy what I want to do... I mean, I can do that, but I can't do it while KNOWING that is what I'll be happy with in the long run.

Yeah, I decided when I was like 2yo or 3yo, it was ELECTRONICS! Sadly, by 17, I figured that it wasn't the way to go, and changed slightly,COMPUTERS!

I got interested in electronics merely because of all the things made with them. I remember getting a house switch at a grocery store(They had a household isle that had such things), just to see how every little piece worked.

By the time I was 17, everything got so complicated and hard to prototype. Computers are easier, which is likely why they have taken over. Even SIMPLE things once done with discrete components are now done through computers. Just look at car engines!

With such things it is impossible to predict whether you will be happy or not in the future. I just know I would be very unhappy if I was not doing what i do now.

Anyway in the long run you can always change direction.

Better to have a plan now which can be changed/adapted later than to have no plan at all.

I'm still waiting for that magical thing to hit me on the head. I have a degree in early childhood education and two teaching licenses, but I can't seem to decide if I actually want to be trapped in a classroom all day. I've been doing lots of other things with my degree, but none of them are teaching. I have lots of knowledge and experience in ADD and autism, but that's not really a job. I often think what it would be like to be able to just sit and write all day. Or to sew all day. Then I start thinking that I prolly wouldn't like those things anymore if they were jobs.

I'll prolly never decide what I want to be when I grow up. I'll be hearing from my husband for the rest of my life about how I wasted all of that money to go to college and I don't even use my degree. I think his idea is that if I don't use it 24 hours a day, it's wasted.

I don't know. I'll just wait until I get fired from this job and go to VR and let them test me for AS and get a diagnosis and let them find me a job, I guess.

I would think graphic design would be a better fit because each commision is a different sort of challenge.

I never quite knew either, but now I think I want to be a math teacher (particularly for people with Aspergers, since I understand them better) because I really enjoy math--it's one of the things I've actually enjoyed more than I realized it; you may call it a hidden interest. Consistently throughout grade school and even university, I've always got good marks in math. I think my math 12 teacher helped me realize it too. There's also a good demand for math teachers, so I figured there would also be less competition if I decided to teach math.

Yeah, I'm seriously considering branching off from graphic design. Since a lot of the aspects are similar to video game design, if I wanted to go that route, I could always take classes and have some basic knowledge in dealing with the programs I would be using.

I'm kind of lucky, I think, in that aspect. My boyfriend just says to do what I think I want to do now, and if I decide I don't like it once I'm in the field, I can just save up to take other classes for something different, lol.

I always knew what I wanted to do with my life - something with natural sciences. And since I always had some obsession with stondes, mineralogy studies are the logical conclusion...
I guess it's more difficult if you don't know what you will be interested in next month. You'd have to chose something that's not too specialized, so anytime you get bored you can look for new interesting stuff.

I'm still really stuck undecided I'll be fifty before I get there?! !!

discovered im probably AS... and am now enrolled in a PhD neuroscience program and am working on autism research.

For me I have been obsessed with babies (seriously obsessed with them, ask my mom) since I was but a baby myself. So I wanted to be a mama and now I am and I still want babies (ask my significant other, hehe). So that was a given for me.

But besides taking care of my kids I'm a web developer and I really enjoy that. I have always liked art-type stuff. My interests along those lines have changed. First I wanted to be an animator, then a video game designer, then I got really into technical theatre and wanted to do lighting design, and while in college I really started enjoying set design. Then I left college and just kinda put stuff aside til I decided to make a website and that got me interested in web design which is how I arrived at my current place of web developer. I love all of it but my favorite is still graphics manipulation and the CSS structuring of the design

I really do love that but I still get interested in new things. And when I do I read voraciously about them. I mean every book at the library and check out interlibrary loan books, websites about it, and on and on and on and on. Two as of late have been Linux (and my sweetie got me a computer to install Linux on!!) and have a food pantry stocked to the hilt (and my sweetie has listened to me carry on endlessly about how I want to set pantry up, rotate food through, etc. etc. etc.)...

What I'm saying is that even when you decide "what you want to" you can still entertain, encourage, and grow through your periodic new interests. They make you a well balanced and very knowledgeable person.

I didn't finish college but my little bro did and he changed majors a million times finally graduating with as BS in Business Administration. And he still doesn't know what he wants to do so he's joining the Peace Corp to go overseas. And he's happy with that. So even if you don't figure it out right away you're still gonna be ok