Picking Your Final Career...

janitor for NASA?

if you are doing something that you like, go for it. its not about what they say, its what you want. I think you would be determined to learn and you would do really well in your classes. Go for it!

i looked at stuff i enjoy/show potential career interest in. Ive enjoyed learning photography over the past year+ and ive also enjoyed graphic arts and design, ive looked at going into photography/graphic arts/visual communications. Another thing ive always thought would be a job i would like is a teacher, possiably history because i find history to be one of my favorite classes and to have a good recolection of it. i figure that if i end up with a teaching degree in graphic arts/history, and a minor in photography i can find a job field any where.

choose some classe you really enjoyed in particular, and honestly dont let your self short fall of astronomy, if thats what you want to persue then do it, your parents dont have a choice in your career, or atleast you shouldnt let them.

ive always thought of it as, what job would i be able to look back in 40 years and say, shit i made the right choice of career, i had a awesome ass life and really enjoyed my job, so much that it didnt seem like a job even.

just go for it but if your not sure then just take some universal courses for your first year like first year english and physics

i think its a little unrealistic for your parents to have those expectations for you. more and more students these days are going to college to figure out what they want to do with their lives. the resources available to college students in the finding careers field are vast. 

yea this is the one thing that i want, i don't want to jump into a career, or steer in the wrong direction and end up with something that i can't afford to go back on, which would just suck

I would say, as long as you don't hate math, go for it.  Granted, I am only a Sophomore in high school, but I would imagine doing math towards something cool would be a whole lot more fun than doing it for homework.  Space would be super cool, unfortunately, I am not interested in it, but it would be such a dope career.

Go to school only if you think you are ready. You do not need to know what you want to do as a career, hell, you should not even think about that at this point. Go into what interests you right now, you might stick with it, or you might find something you like even more. Just bullshit to your parents, say you are gonna be somthing generic (teacher?). It's not like they will stop you if you decide you want to to change it up. If you are planning on going to school then they should be happy with just that.

agreed.

I'll admit that it is generally pretty easy to get into decent universities straight out of high school, and that's part of the allure and haste for many. But your parents are being naive to think that your future careers hinge on a decision right now, and going to school for that reason is dangerous in a sense because of the time and financial commitment. I think it is in your interest to go to a university if you have a really good idea of what you want to learn, rather than find out while in school. But, as mentioned, there are so many programs and resources you could dig around until something really catches your interest.
My girlfriend sort of tried to find her "calling" if you will while in school, and it was (in a nutshell) unfulfilled. She, too, didn't know what she wanted to pursue, but was pressured by her parents, akin to your situation. But with more time she found some stuff that was cool, and now is getting her masters.

I've been lucky that architecture has been in my mind pretty much my whole life, and that passion began to crystallize very early, and I just started doing things related to it when I could through middle and high school, and now I'm doing tons of shit with it in college. There was never any confusion or doubt.

You could just choose something, ski, get bitches, and get a degree, then just do stuff until something that might resemble a career materializes.

I agree with what he said for sure.

I happened to know what I wanted to do in college (sort of).  In high school after taking an economics class it sort of gave me a super small taste of business topics and I knew that whatever I did, I wanted to be successful, and by successful I mean make enough money to where I would not have to worry about paying bills and being able to afford doing the things I want to do with my life.

So...because of my interest/borderline obsession with money, I felt that business would be good for me.  Everybody I knew who had a dad who "was a businessman" was pretty damn well off, and so I said to myself, I want that in my life.  I applied to CU as a business major and got in, and they put me in as a management major just by default.  As it works here, you have to take intro classes to each business discipline - (management, marketing, finance, accounting) so after I had all 4 of those intro classes I found that finance was what interested me most, and what was also going to be a big challenge for me. 

Also, in my first 2 years of school I worked as a bank teller so I got a small eye into the financial services industry and I enjoyed it.  I liked the responsibility, I liked the respect I got even though I was young, and I liked being able to help people with their money (on a small scale of course).  Anyway, I'll wrap this novel up.  I decided that I really enjoyed helping people, and that I wanted to feel good about what I did for a living so I decided I wanted to be a financial adviser.  About a month before graduating I landed a job with a great financial advising firm and so for the past 5 months I have been learning/training/studying/getting licensed for my job as an adviser. 

Sorry for the long story, but hopefully that helps you somehow.  It takes time to figure out what you want to do, that's for sure.

Any college or university you end up at will have tons of help with choosing careers/majors.

I started off as a Journalism major, because I love writing and seeing my work published. However, with the economy these days, newspapers are going out of circuit, and one by one they're dying off. My major was nicknamed, "the dying breed." I realized that more and more newspapers were moving into an online direction, and that isn't what I wanted. I love the feel of paper hot off the press in my hands and actually being able to hold something I reead. So I switched my major to English, that will I still get to write, and Mass Communications so that if I can't make it with writing, I can fall back on PR and Advertisting.

You love astronomy, space, and the universe, I say go for a major related to it. Of course it will be difficult, but if you are determined and give it 100% effort you'd be surprised at what you can accomplish.

If you are interested in space and astrophysics you should get a mechanical engineering degree. This degree is the basis for all movement in the universe besides on the quantum scale and will give you a firm foundation for anything.

Its a super open ended degree with almost endless career choices in science. With a good Mech E degree you could have a good start in any grad program.

And everyone is good at math if they try, I would use the doubting of your parents as motivation to succeed. I found that the best motivation in college was not the people who say that you can but the people who say you can't. But I am an egotistical arrogant bastard who never likes to be wrong so to each his own.

Just don't go to college and party to hard and get a business degree or some shit.

i originally thought i was going to be a physical therapist but then my knee got fucked and i had to do physical therapy a fuckload and I just decided it wasnt for me. basically the shit was gayer than aids. so i figured since I love music i should put together fat ass music shows so i changed my major to business.

this

I went on a cruise, and was like, driving these will be my living, screw the navy.

Do what you love. You can take all sorts of courses that will get you up to speed on math/physics in university. Youre parents are douchebags for telling you that you cant do what you love.

How did you come up with this, its brilliant

the op loves space and wants to get his hands dirty.

I will be an itinerant, working when and where I can and skiing as much as possible.

Take a year off. I repeat. Take a year off. Pretty much everyone I know has been taking a year off after college only to find that their career choice is shit. Do it before college and enjoy the year and what ever you enjoyed most of that year, go to school for. Go do a 2 month internship with an astronomer or something. See if you really do like it before you go to school for it.