[firefighter369]

im 18 years old and im gonna graduate high school in 5 months and I have no idea what I want to do after. I have an idea I was planning on working with my father on construction but I don't know

[pegasus]

Hello,

Have you tried googling lots of different careers and read up on them and see which one sounds good to you. I think you can probably find a careers website where you can take an assessment of your interests and strengths and they come up with a list of careers that might suit you.

[Perna]

I would just make a plan where you can try a few things out; I'd work with your father for the summer, see if you liked construction and spend the time researching careers as Pegasus suggests and saving money and then maybe I'd take a couple courses at the local community college, either general things like English and math or specific ones for a trade you think you might like (engineering, computers, etc.) and see how comfortable you are in school (English/math for the long haul; math/science for a technical trade). I'd also think of a third option (summer for working with father/construction and seeing what that is about; fall for school and trying to decide between professional/trade options; third option would be spring, next Jan/Feb after the fall semester), perhaps line up an internship or job/volunteer or paid, in a field that might interest you but which you want to know more about before you get additional schooling.

Doing something, anything, will get you more information and get your thinking/feeling/imagination juices flowing. Few people know at your age what they really want and/or they want something but it changes over time. It's almost good to not know what you want; you can explore first instead of wanting something, going after it, and then discovering it's not exactly what you want and having to start the process "over".

Maybe check out this online book which helped me: http://wishcraft.com/