He's in class 10 and has picked his career from a salary table

bronze_rain_890824 Sept 2026

My older son is in class 10 and announced last week that he'll do whatever pays best. He has a spreadsheet: starting salaries for about fifteen careers, sorted high to low, mostly from videos. Architecture, which is what I do, sits somewhere in the middle, which he pointed out very kindly. I don't want to sneer at it. Money matters, and at least he's thinking ahead. But nothing on the sheet is about what the work is like day to day, whether he'd be any good at it, or whether he'd enjoy it. Nothing has to be decided for another year. How did others widen the conversation without it turning into a lecture?

1 comment

mango_balcony_111024 Sept 2026
My daughter ranked careers by salary in class 10 too, and teaching came near the bottom, which she made sure I knew. What shifted her wasn't anything I said. She helped at a summer camp at my school and found she cared about the hours and the people far more than the number. She chose something else in the end, but she chose it differently. Is there anyone in the top few jobs on his list he could sit down with for an hour?
- teal_sandal_272424 Sept 2026
  I see this every year in school. The students who rank careers by salary at sixteen have usually not seen any of those jobs from the inside, and the figures they quote are often the top of a range, not the start. An hour with someone in two or three of those roles is more information than the whole spreadsheet. I would keep the sheet, though. Asking him to add a column for 'what a normal Tuesday looks like' may do more than any argument.
- bronze_rain_890824 Sept 2026
  A couple. My brother-in-law is in one of his top three and has already offered. I'm wary of it becoming a sales pitch, but it's a start.
- bronze_rain_890825 Sept 2026
  Talked to him last night and tried the 'normal Tuesday' column from the reply above. He added it, then asked to meet people from four of the jobs, not two. The spreadsheet is now a project. We'll see.