Assess your skills and abilities as they relate to your chosen career option.

In your journal write:
Lifestyle goals are the way you want to spend your time, energy and resources in the future.

1. What do you want to accomplish in life?
2. Do you want to raise a family?
3. Where would you like to live – in a house or in an apartment? In a city or in the country?
4. How would you like to spend your free time?
5. Do you want a high income or just enough money to be comfortable?

Using these questions as a basis for brainstorming, and describe what your life will be like in 10 years. This description can be a sketch or a written description.

In your journal write:
Values are the principles that you want to live by and the beliefs that really matter to you.
Some values include:

1. Responsibility – fulfilling obligations in a dependable way
2. Relationships – if you value relationships, your friends and family are important to you.
3. Compassion – caring deeply about people and their well being
4. Courage – the ability to conquer fear or despair
5. Achievement – wanting to be successful in whatever you do
6. Recognition – you want other people to appreciate and respect your accomplishments

In your journal write:
Interests are the things you enjoy doing.
List your favorite activities (at least 10).
Think of activities you like to do with friend or by yourself, at school, at home, outdoors or at work.
Try to rank your list, numbering 1 as the most favorite, and so on.

In your journal write:
Interests can help determine whether you like to work with data, people or things.

1. The data category involves working with information, ideas, facts, symbols, figures or statistics
2. The people category includes working with people and animals
3. The things category involves working with physical objects of any size, such as instruments, tools, machinery, equipment, raw materials and vehicles.

Review your interests, and determine to which category each belongs using the above descriptions.

Using this self-analysis, what is your career plan?

The links below provide tools for searching careers based on your interests:

Using the USDOE listing, determine which career cluster is of interest to you and matches your skills and interests.

Visit NYSDOL Career Zone. This site provides information based on career clusters or you can develop your own personal profile. You can also learn what are the educational requirements for particular job titles, as well as the salary range.