what to be when i grow up

i believe this has been discussed before, but for the life of me... i can't find a thread about it.

i have decided that i "will not die a college drop out" if i can help it. i want to go back to school in 2019. i have an associates (1998).

i have no idea what to go to school for. i don't know what i want to be when i grow up.

i would like to "find my passion."
i would like this investment of time and money to pay off with a decent salary... but i would hate to do something i hate for the next 30 years just because of a paycheck.
hell, i would prefer for the two to marry and have a baby where i make lots of money in my "passion."

how does one begin the process of figuring all this crap out as an 45-year-old empty nester?

what to be when i grow up

Take the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator test...it is very insightful about what drives you and may help point you in the right direction. I took it after I'd wound up in my right career after a couple of false starts. It was astonishingly accurate. If I had taken it before I would've known I was barking up the wrong tree, career-wise, based on my personality type.

Re: what to be when i grow up

As someone who made a major career change after investing a lot of time and money in my first career path (I was a corporate litigation attorney for 9 years, now I'm an associate real estate broker), I would say that the first step is having reasonable expectations. There is no "perfect job" - that doesn't mean that you cannot find a lucrative profession that you enjoy doing, but nothing is ideal, and I think there has to be acceptance of that to find true career satisfaction. Otherwise, the grass will always be greener.

I agree that it's important to really identify your personality traits (and strengths and weaknesses), so tests like Meyer-Briggs can help.

I would also make a list of your priorities - you mention making good income, but also pursuing your passion. You may be able to have both, but I think honing in on what are really the most important things to you in terms of finding a satisfying job that fits your lifestyle will really help guide you. Inevitably, there are tradeoffs. The highest paying jobs may not be the ones you are most drawn to, for example. Or you may have to trade off longer hours or further commute to get into a field you want. Are you willing to make those tradeoffs?

For me, flexibility and work-life balance were more important than prestige and money. Also, identifying skills I already had (negotiating, client counseling, knowledge of contract law) that I could put to use to some degree in my next career.

I would also advise networking to speak with people who are in the careers/industries that you are interested in to get a real idea of what it entails. Shadowing someone in their job can be really eye opening, if you can do that. I think we all tend to romanticize what it would be like if we did x, y, or z. Or sometimes we have hobbies/interests that seem like they would make a great career, but once you take a closer look, that's not the case.

Also, if you think of something you may like to do, there may be many types of positions or roles within that broader field. So just because one thing may not be the best fit doesn't mean another part of that field wouldn't be great for you. For example, I have two friends who went back to get a master's in library science as a second degree. One works in a school (elementary), and one said she would never work in a school - she wants to work in a public, community library. I have a cousin who is a research librarian at a university. All are very different focuses within the same broader profession.

So before you go down the road of really investing fully in that next step, I would try to do this research up front.

what to be when i grow up

ooh. i did myers-briggs at work. let me hunt down the results!

thanks for the advice.