Are you in your fourth year of college?
In the city, I see people who look like college students on graduation trips with their suitcases.
It is a real shame that people will not be able to travel abroad during covid-19.
Now, that brings me to today’s main theme: college students struggling with life.
Of course, I think that those who are thinking about a life well are greatly troubled even in high school and junior high school, if not in college.
I first began to think about the big road of life when I was a third year of college.
I think many of you probably thought seriously about your future life after you became a college student, and I hope I can write about that today.
The transition from the academic period to the work period
I think it is natural to say that college students think seriously about life for the first time.
This is because the period before college is the period in one’s life when one’s studies become one’s work.
In addition to compulsory education in elementary and middle school, there is a period of higher education in high school and college, and from the time when you think about things until you graduate at the age of about 22, there is a lot of work to be done.
For us, studying is synonymous with living, with work.
However, once we graduate from college, we must then engage in real social activities and earn money through work.
While we have managed to live passively up until now, we cannot live passively once we enter the workforce. You need to be active.
What kind of company should I work for, what kind of work should I do, and how should I live my life?
You will have to choose one among many options.
During the academic period, you only had to learn a limited number of subjects such as arithmetic, Japanese, science, and social studies.
However, a job is one of many, and you need to choose one based on your aptitude for the job.
Moreover, if you are not good at it, you will not be able to make money or eat.
In a sense, I think it is harsh for people who have been living their lives thinking only about their studies to suddenly be forced to choose a job.
I think it would be good to have a little more training like that during the academic period.
You can’t just pick and choose.
And this would be disastrous if you chose it at random.
As I mentioned above, because you can do it well, you can do the job and get paid for it. (You get paid)
But if you can’t do it well, you won’t do the job well, you won’t get promoted, and you won’t make any money. (And your salary will remain low.)
To this end, it is important to choose the right industry, as well as your aptitude.
If you choose an industry that is now in decline, even if you are good at your job, your salary may not go up that much.
Given this, you have to be smart about the times.
Also, most people spend about 40 years of their lives in such jobs, earning money and making a living.
In other words, about one-third of one’s life is spent working.
In this light, whether you can spend one-third of your life meaningfully or aimlessly depends on how you choose your work.
It is clear that work should never be chosen at random.
The lack of answers is the biggest enemy.
It is natural for college students to worry bout it because they have just had to study, but now the stage of their life is shifting to the work period.
And that job is where you will spend a one-third of your life, so you need to choose it properly.
Also, it is hard to make money if you are not good at it, so you need to know your aptitude and the time frame.
But I think that is really difficult.
What kind of jobs exist in the world? What kind of attitude do I have? What are the current trends in the world?
I think this is a very complex subject.
So the important thing is that there is no answer here.
The academic period, especially in Japan, has been all about how to come up with answers.
So we are strong in thinking that there is an answer somewhere and how to lead to that answer.
But we cannot solve a question that has no answer from the beginning (which job is the best).
I believe this is the biggest challenge that college students face in their job search and a major cause of their worries about life.
But what you don’t know, you don’t know.
If that is the case, I think the only thing to do is to try to come up with the best answer in your own way and make a choice.
The fact that there is no answer means that there are no mistakes.
In other words, if you feel that the answer you have come up with is not quite right, you can always re-evaluate your choice.
In this way, I think it is a good idea to find one’s own optimal solution, based on actual experience.
One thing I can say is that even adults are troubled.
No one knows the right answer, so they live their lives wondering if they did the right thing or not.
It is fine to think about it a lot, but I pray that you don’t get so worried that it becomes too hard for you.
