first day of class/chapter 1

I found the first day of class to be moderately helpful in helping me figure out just what "career development" is. I was somewhat disappointed to hear that this is not a class designed to help us figure out the little details of what we want to do and how to get there in the most effective way. In my personal life, I have know what I wanted to do since middle school. As I got older, the details got more defined and I am and have been successfully jumping through the hoops that one must go through to become an clinical psychologist. But I'm stilll unsure about many things. The writing exercise at the beginning of class did not help me much in this area.
The second exercise, however, did help me a little bit in figuring out my own goals and what I want out of my career. It also helped me get to know my partner. We discovered a common theme, which was the desire to understand and help people. It also made me realize how close I got to getting off this track and going with a completely different passion -linguistics- and, still, a week later, I am wondering if I'm on the right path or if I should be studying and recording dying languages or something. I hate that in choosing a career path, I have to reduce the rest of my potential career choices to hobbies.
Nothing in chapter 1 really hit me, although I may have just been a little off-put by the author opening a career development book with depressing economic statistics. I've heard many of them from a friend of mine or my Multicultural summer class. I also grew up in St. Louis, MO and went to college in Illinois, so I've seen bad economic conditions first-hand. Many of my friends back home do not even have the luxury of health insurance and some spent their young life in a trailer. I went to Catholic school because kids were bringing weapons to the public schools. Some people that I know are fairing quite well, although they had a poverty-ridden childhood. They have had a lot of support from other people, however, and pretty much have luck on their side. Some, however, are not quite as lucky. I have one friend who is a 21 year-old African-American girl who is vibrant and exploding with personality, creative, and talented in many different areas, but she works at a military arsenal stocking shelves and barely pays her rent. She has no car because she's never had anyone to teach her to drive and no money for a decent vehicle anyways. She wants to go to a nearby massage therapy school, but they need her mother's signature on a FAFSA form, which her mother has not bothered to get to.
Sorry for getting to this so late, but I have not been able to look at a computer screen for the past few days due to a problem with my eye. Unfortunately, most of my homework for the week is computer related.