When I was about your age I'd play a game of getting a genuine, paper Yellow Pages and leafing through it? I'd imagine various jobs; owning them, working at them, what other side jobs there would be for a category, etc.

For me, thinking broadly what I like to do (read, write, work on the computer) and my skills (type 80 wpm, think/organize/plan well, good with word problems of all sorts), lots of things come up; way back when, "librarian" and "accountant" and "writer" and "teacher" appealed to me? Then looking into those broad categories and learning about them and thinking about further narrow categories within them, I came up with a few things to go toward.

When I was a junior in high school, my subjects I liked and were good at were History and English. My history teacher recommended a couple authors and I read them and fell in love, decided to become a "research historian". I had no idea what that was (this is back in 1967, w-a-a-a-y before computers or easy look up of stuff).

I went off to college in September 1968 and was a history major. Studying and me did not meld like one expected or hoped they would? My junior year in college I was on academic probation and nearly had a mental breakdown. I changed my major to Sociology, vaguely thinking to become a social worker, they didn't have social work majors, or departments or specialties back then for undergrads.

Anyway, I graduated college, barely, literally with something like a 2.00056 GPA? And, it was in the middle of the 1972/73 recession, Vietnam War, women-still-treated-like-teachersornurses only; I still remember reading the want ads in college where there were "Men Wanted" and "Women Wanted" columns, women could not apply for "men's" jobs. I took the exam to get in the Federal Goverment but Vietnam Vets got an automatic extra 5 points and everyone and their mother was trying to get a Federal job, it was like now, not enough jobs. I ended up a clerk at Sears Roebuck, got $5 extra a week in salary, $95/week instead of $90 because I was a college grad.

It is truly an adventure and no way you can "prepare" or really know what you will be doing, you have to try to follow your own heart and what you want to do because that will end up being the path you take through the rubble and circumstances around you. I would not worry so much about what job as what interests are yours and following them, rather than something that someone else is doing that is making that person money or giving them a life like you are hoping for? Take a wide variety of subjects while you can, so you can see if something surprises you; I didn't discover Accounting and I had an affinity until I was 40.

Now that I am retired, I am a genealogist, using that history and sociology, and am an excellent researcher :-) It all sprials around, over and over, like other aspects of life.