CONTINUED: Why it can be so dreadfully difficult to make good decisions about your college education - Part 1

---

Playing it safe

We’re conditioned to try and make the “right” choice. Think about your experiences in the classroom growing up. Taking tests or answering a teacher’s questions was usually about needing to have the right answers—your academic, and sometimes social, stature depended on it. Over time, this need became a habit of survival. And if you didn’t know the answer to a multiple choice question, the default answer to pick was “C”; it was supposed to give you the best statistical odds of getting it correct.

That’s well and good for situations like tests that have right answers, but not so great for less clear-cut circumstances. So instead of trying to make a “good” decision about something for which there is no one right answer (like which college to attend or career to pursue), you try to make the “absolute best” choice. But, best choice based on what criteria?

Absent a clear framework, many of us choose to do what we think is the safe option, a default we fall back on. If things don’t work out as satisfactorily as we’d hoped, we then blame ourselves for not being smart enough or wise enough. The fact is, for most of us, if an option doesn’t “feel right,” we’re not going to choose it—even if some other part of us wants to give it a chance.

“That is where I see undergrads repeatedly,” says Iyengar, “despite all their interest in actually wanting to create their own careers, I feel most of the time they kind of just fall into them.” She says students run into trouble because they mistakenly believe that all options are open to them and that all they have to do is casually ponder things for a while, expecting that the right answer will present itself. “I don’t think they can just go and reflect and then turn up their calling,” she says.

Everyone has limitations (stemming from things like natural ability or access to certain types of schools), yet many students discard realistic possibilities without ever giving them a fair chance. “If you absolutely detest science, maybe it’s not going to work out for you,” says Iyengar. “But it’s possible that you haven’t actually contemplated all the nuances of science, that you have a stereotype in your mind of what a career in science is, and that’s what is turning you off.”

Don’t be crippled by all the options

The “paradox of choice” can create emotional and mental chaos. But it doesn’t have to. Trying to weigh every single option from an extensive assortment in order to make the “one right choice” is a fool’s errand. “This is a recipe for paralysis and misery,” says Schwartz.

“Good enough is almost always good enough,” he says. “You don’t need to find the best. There’s virtually no difference between the best and any number of alternatives that are almost as good as the best. If you’re looking for a ‘good enough’ school or a ‘good enough’ set of courses to study, then choosing becomes a lot less onerous.”

It helps to work backwards. Imagine yourself close to the end of your life. What is most important to you? What do you want people to say about you when you’re gone? Where do you live? What purpose have you fulfilled? What risks are you glad to have taken? Narrow down your options by filtering all of the possibilities through this future vision.

If you’re younger, with caring (and mentally stable) parents, you might even consider what they have observed about you. “I actually think that parents have a very good idea of what their kids’ skill sets are,” says Iyengar. “And while parents don’t need to tell you what not to do, they can give you suggestions about what things you might be interested in and introduce you to those options.”

But be proactive. Learn about as many different careers as you can—preferably from people working within their fields. Move on to researching other practical matters such as school reputations, affordability, how well the graduates from different schools do when they try to enter the workforce, or how many transferrable skills you’ll graduate with. Give yourself a direction, and then make a plan.

Just don’t stress over these things more than you really need to. Although the educational path you choose can have a significant impact on your future options, it doesn’t have to lock you in to a life you decide you don’t really want.

“You don’t stop learning when you graduate from college,” says Schwartz. “Life is long. The result is that the consequences of decisions you make now are not irreversible. And that means it’s a lot less momentous.”