How to Find your Passion, Grow it, and Take Action

  • foster care rights, my rights
  • Resources for Teens and Young Adults
How to Find your Passion, Grow it, and Take Action

Often as human beings, we can easily talk about the things we love, but not necessarily the things we love about ourselves. Even though we know ourselves the best, it can be hard to list even a few good traits. When considering college or a career, it is important to think about your skills, achievements, hobbies, favorite classes, favorite subjects, and what you want your purpose in life to be. 

While you’re on the journey of finding your passion you may go through various types of opportunities before settling for what is truly fulfilling to you while also being able to support your way of living. Finding a career can be hard when you don't know your skills or where you can build on them. A good place to start is by looking at your hard and soft skills.

Soft skills are almost universal and are used mainly when socializing with various groups or jobs. To name a few, there are skills like communication, work ethic, patience, courtesy, being a team participant, professionalism, and responsibility.

A hard skill is used when putting a specific, measurable, and taught talent or ability to work. 
Some hard skills include analytical, technical, management, computer, and writing skills

Together, these skills will help you learn more about the working world but also about your own potential. 

Once you identify the skills you want to work on, you can then use them to find specific jobs you like with pay that is sufficient to satisfy your current needs. Finding a college major or job can be the hardest part of getting and having one. One way to find a job or student internship is online! Here are a few sites where you can find the right career, area to study, or intern for:

Remember: It is okay to have more than one field of study or work. For example, I am currently pursuing a Political Science degree with three minors; Gender and Women’s Studies, Latin American Studies, and Spanish! I had a hard time picking my college major until I decided that I didn’t have to choose just one area to study. There are often jobs that have an intersection of different areas of study and I think that is an opportunity that can truly fulfill your career desires. I plan to use my knowledge in all of these areas in public service administration. But, I don’t plan to stop there. I want to strengthen my hobbies and maybe use them to make a profit one day. Your passions may not always be profitable but they will fulfill you in other ways. 

When you’re looking for what you want to do in your life, remember, you can’t find YOU without YOU, so knowing and owning who you are as a person is important when pursuing your passions.

About the author:
Alexandria Ramos is a 22 year old senior at SUNY Plattsburgh, majoring in political science and interning for the Office of Children and Family Services. Alex was in foster care for seven years.

 

"Being a foster youth can be difficult, but luckily there are resources to help us." - Alexandria Ramos