Career Choice Comparative Essay
Zach Maly
Mrs. Yoder
10/28/14
As a ninth grade student I have been pushed by my parents asking me “ What do you want to be when you get older?” I’m not sure, but I do know that my main interests are in the fields of civil engineering, petroleum engineering, and perhaps even an anesthesiologists.
Since I know I have the most interest in civil engineering, petroleum engineering , and anesthesiologists, I decided to look up the qualities of these jobs. The information I found is in the chart that follows:
Civil Engineering Petroleum Engineering Anesthesiologists
Level of Education
Bachelor’s Degree
Bachelor’s Degree
Doctoral or Professional Degree
Salary
$79,340 (2012)
$130,280 per year
$187,200 per year
Aptitudes/Abilities
Leadership Skills, Decision making skills, and Math Skills
Analytical Skills, Creativity Skills, and Math Skills
Communication Skills, Compassion, and Detail Oriented
Work Schedule
full time- 1 out of 4 work just over 40 hours a week
full time- 50 to 60 hours a week, sometimes a 84 hour shift rotations
full time- long, irregular, and overnight hours
Benefits
good pay, good percentage of being accepted into job, and only need Bachelor’s Degree
nice salary, only need Bachelor’s degree, and 26% job outlook
one of highest paying jobs, an 18% job outlook
Source: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics: http://www.bls.gov/ooh/ . 23 October 2014
After I examined the chart and qualities of the job, and my qualities of a good mathematician and problem-solver, I believe that civil engineering may be the best career choice for me in the near future. This is the best career choice for me because I possess about two-thirds amount of qualities that I would need to be a civil engineer.
Not only do I want to be a civil engineer because I enjoy math, which is an important subject in engineering, but I also like it because I find buildings interesting. Whenever I go on road trips with my family, I always find myself staring out the window examining buildings and sometimes unfinished highways, like the bridges in Dallas. There the highway bridges would be in the process and I would see those metal rods sticking out, and being so young I wasn’t sure what they were, so I turned to my dad who soon told me that those were metal rods that were to help support the concrete. Though no one in my real family is an engineer, I have an uncle who has his own civil engineering business that I find interesting. I found it interesting because with his own civil engineering company he built him and his wife’s dream house. There I got to see all the steps and the specific details and designs that had to be put into a house. To go along with that, my sister has a boyfriend in college who studies to become an engineer, and I saw a project where he had to build his own scale model that I was really fascinated me.
After a complete examination of the data, I have made my complete choice as to what career I will want to do. I have chosen to become a Civil Engineer.
Civil engineering would be the best choice for me as a career because I possess the natural skills needed for this career such as decision making skills, leadership skills, and math skills. Some additional skills I would need for this job include: organizational skills, problem-solving skills, and writing skills.
With seeing the results of all my achievements in classes, I would say that I possess most of these skills at an average to above average level. To me the two aptitudes that would be my weakness is organizational skills and writing skills, which makes me believe that this career would be the best for me.
Civil engineering isn’t much different from my other career choice in engineering, which is petroleum, where the education for both need a bachelor’s degree. The only career choice of mine that is different in education is Anesthesiologists, in which one would need a doctoral or professional degree. Besides that my other two careers, civil and petroleum engineering, only need bachelor’s degrees when applying for this job, while Anesthesiologists need a doctoral or professional degree.
All of the three careers I picked usually have workers working full time hours. Though all of them having full time hours civil engineers have the least amount of full time hours. With my other two careers the full time hours are more with petroleum engineering I might work 84 hour shifts per week then I rotate out, and Anesthesiologists I would work long and irregular hours that are sometimes overnight. While petroleum engineers and Anesthesiologists are doing that amount of work, that I’m working about just over 40 hours a week, if I’m the 1 out of 4 civil engineers that do. Thus, that would cause the benefit of having less working hours than the other two career choices I have.
Though neither of these three have a big area in similarities, they all seem fit for one of my careers, but out of them all I choose the career of civil engineering. This career will be the career that I choose to put my heart, soul, and dedication to in and out of school, so later in my life when I am deciding on where to go for what career, I’ll know, and I’ll know because I’ve done the research and i know what is closer to my heart.