My recommendation for a new item to add to the FAIL blog? Career Services programs. Terrrrrible. That goes for high school as well as college programs. Modern career services programs are unsuccessful at letting students know about their options for potential jobs. The reasoning of the high schools is "Well, they'll probably pick what they want to do in college." The reasoning of the colleges is "They probably already know what they want to do or will figure it out on their own." Yeah, not so much. You don't need a multi-billion dollar endowment to tell you that most of your students are entering undeclared, undecided, and unconfident. In fact, when students apply to most colleges, they apply to a specialized school, such as a "School of Arts and Sciences," "School of Engineering," "School of Business," "School of Agriculture," etc. Thus, doors are already closing before kids even get a chance to glimpse at what's on the other side. I mean come on, who really has a decent chance to learn about all the potential engineering careers before they hit their freshman year of college? Additionally, there are SO many careers that are incredibly interdisciplinary that students never get a chance to learn about. When reading Michael Crichton's Prey, I was amazed by the interdisciplinary nature of Jack Forman's previous career: computer programming aimed at imitating natural animal behavior in order to solve real world problems. For instance, he would program evolution-like tedencies into some of his designs so that they could change and better themselves without human interference. By being promoted into a management position, he simultaneously got to deal with computer science, biology, and business, among other disciplines. How many high schoolers know that this is a potential career choice? The only cool career I learned about in high school general biology is being a scientist for the FBI (isn't it a little suspicious that all the cool careers we learn about in school are government ones? Hmm...someone's got a slight influence on education...) Ok, slight exaggeration. Regardless, even once students decide on potential careers, high schools and colleges in general do a poor job of letting them know potential major choices and getting them in contact with other alumni in the related fields. Granted, by the time students are in college, they should be taking their own initiative to learn about their careers, especially if they are passionate about them. However, I think it could really make a difference if high school and college career services programs took a more proactive role in helping kids find their ideal career.

(As you can see, I'm still a little iffy on what I want to do with my life and I'm looking for someone to blame =P. Feel free to comment on career suggestions. I'm sure you'd do a better job than career services.)