Self-Awareness for Students: Strengths, Values and What You Want

Self-awareness for students: why "what do you want to do?" is so hard to answer

At some point someone asks you: "So what do you actually want to do?" Maybe it is a teacher, a careers adviser, a relative at a wedding or the voice in your head the night before you pick a specialisation. And you realise you do not really know.

You know what your parents hope for. You know what is "safe", what pays, what your friends chose and what LinkedIn says is hot this year. But what you want, what you are good at and what matters to you are harder to see from the inside.

That is not a character flaw. Most of school trains you to meet other people's expectations: get the marks, pass the entry test, choose the respectable degree. Very little time goes into understanding yourself. This post is a practical way to start: your strengths, your values, your energy, and how to use what you learn to choose a degree, a specialisation or a first job.

Self-awareness is rarer than people think

The organisational psychologist Tasha Eurich and her team studied self-awareness for several years. In a 2018 Harvard Business Review article she reported their estimate that while about 95% of people think they are self-aware, only around 10 to 15% actually are.

She also split self-awareness into two kinds, which is useful for students:

• Internal self-awareness: how clearly you see your own values, passions, reactions and strengths.
• External self-awareness: how well you understand how other people see you.

You need both. Someone who knows they love building things but does not realise they come across as dismissive in group projects has a blind spot. So does someone who knows exactly how others see them but has never asked what they want.

One more finding from Eurich's work is worth stealing: people who asked themselves "what" questions ("What situations bring out my best?") tended to gain more insight than those who kept asking "why" ("Why am I like this?"). "Why" questions often lead to rumination. "What" questions lead to patterns and choices.

Part 1: Know your strengths

Strengths are not the same as marks

Your best subject is not automatically your strength. A strength is something you do well and that tends to energise you. You might get an A in accounting and feel drained by it, and get a B in a design module you could work on for hours.

Take the VIA survey

The VIA Character Strengths Survey is a free, research-based questionnaire from the VIA Institute on Character. It takes roughly 10 to 15 minutes and ranks 24 character strengths, such as curiosity, perseverance, kindness, fairness, love of learning and leadership, from your highest to lowest. The free results are enough; you do not need the paid report.

How to use your results well:

1. Look at your top five. These are often called signature strengths. Ask: do these feel like "me"? Where did I use them last week?
2. Look for where they show up in study and work. High curiosity might mean you enjoy research or debugging. High fairness might point towards roles in policy, quality or security. High social intelligence might mean you thrive in client-facing or team-lead roles.
3. Do not treat the bottom of the list as weaknesses. They are simply strengths you use less.

A note on personality tests

Tests like MBTI and the "16 personalities" style quizzes are fun and can start a good conversation. Treat them as that, not as truth about who you are. Researchers have long criticised MBTI's reliability, and many people get a different type when they retake it a few weeks later. If you want a research-backed personality model, psychologists mostly use the Big Five (openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness and neuroticism). Even then, a test result is a prompt for reflection, not a label to live inside.

Ask other people

External self-awareness needs other people's eyes. Pick three to five people who know you in different settings: a friend, a teacher, a teammate from a group project, a sibling. Ask each of them the same two questions by message:

• "When have you seen me at my best?"
• "What is one thing you think I could do more of, or less of?"

You will be surprised how often their answers overlap, and how often they name something you never counted as a strength.

Part 2: Know your values

Values are what matter to you when you have to choose. They explain why two people with the same degree can be happy in very different jobs.

A quick values exercise

Here is a list of common work values. Read it once, then pick the five that matter most to you right now. Then cut it to three.

• Financial security
• Helping people directly
• Learning and growth
• Independence and freedom
• Status and recognition
• Creativity
• Stability and predictability
• Being close to family
• Adventure, travel or living abroad
• Making things that last
• Fairness and justice
• Faith and community
• Work-life balance

Then, for each of your three, write one sentence on why it matters to you and one on what it would look like in a job. "Financial security, because I want to support my parents and younger siblings; a job with a steady salary from year one" is far more useful than a single word.

When your values and your family's values differ

This is common, especially in South Asian families where a degree is often a family decision. Your parents might value stability and status; you might value creativity and independence. Neither is wrong. Knowing the difference clearly is what lets you have a calm conversation instead of an argument. The family expectations roadmap has a full stage on understanding their view and making a respectful case for yours.

Part 3: Know your energy

Strengths and values are the big picture. Energy is the day-to-day evidence.

For two weeks, keep a simple log. At the end of each day, write down:

• One thing that gave you energy (you lost track of time, felt proud, wanted to do more)
• One thing that drained you (you procrastinated, felt bored or anxious, were relieved when it ended)
• When in the day you felt sharpest

After two weeks, look for patterns. Do you light up when explaining things to classmates? When you work alone on a hard problem? When you organise an event? When you design something visual? Do you drain fast in long meetings, or in solo work with no one to talk to?

These patterns tell you more about suitable work than any job title. Someone energised by solo problem-solving might enjoy backend engineering or research. Someone energised by people and persuasion might enjoy developer relations, product or sales engineering. Those are examples, not prescriptions.

Part 4: What you want versus what is expected

This is the hardest part, and the most honest.

Take a page and draw two columns. On the left, write "What is expected of me": the degree, the career, the city, the timeline, the salary. Be specific, including who expects it. On the right, write "What I actually want", even if it feels unrealistic or selfish.

Then look at three things:

1. Where do the columns overlap? There is usually more overlap than you think. Most parents want security and respect for you; many careers you might want can provide both.
2. Where do they conflict? Name the conflict precisely. "They want medicine, I want software" is a different conversation from "They want me to stay in the city, I want to work abroad".
3. What do you not know yet? Often "what I want" is really a guess based on one YouTube video. That is your signal to test it, not to decide.

Expectations are not the enemy. They often carry real wisdom and real constraints, like money, being the eldest child, or a family business. Self-awareness is about seeing them clearly so that your choice is a choice, not a default.

Part 5: Turn it into decisions

Choosing a degree or specialisation

Combine what you have learned into a simple table. For each option you are considering (for example, computer science, data science, electrical engineering, or a specialisation like AI versus web development), score from 1 to 5:

"Realistic" covers fees, entry requirements, location and family constraints. A table will not decide for you, but it turns a fog of worry into specific trade-offs.

Choosing a first job

The same lens works for first jobs. A role at a big brand might score high on status and security but low on learning. A small company might be the reverse. Your values ranking tells you which trade-off you can live with. If learning is your top value, a team that teaches you may beat a bigger salary in year one. If supporting your family is your top value, the salary may rightly come first.

Test before you commit

Self-awareness grows fastest through small experiments. Before you commit to a specialisation, try a short online course, build one small project, or talk to two people who do that work. If you can, spend a week shadowing or volunteering. Evidence from doing beats any amount of thinking about doing.

Keep it going: a 15-minute weekly habit

Self-awareness is not a one-off test. You change, and your situation changes. Once a week, spend 15 minutes with a notebook and answer:

• What gave me energy this week? What drained me?
• When did I act in line with my values, and when did I not?
• What did someone say about me that surprised me?
• What is one small experiment I want to try next week?

If journaling feels awkward, the free practices on Greater Good in Action from UC Berkeley offer structured prompts. For a longer read on why your twenties are a good time to do this work, Meg Jay's The Defining Decade is practical and direct.

FAQ

How can a student become more self-aware?

Combine a strengths survey like VIA, a short values exercise, a two-week energy log and feedback from three to five people who know you. Then review what you learn every week with "what" questions rather than "why" questions.

Is the VIA character strengths survey free?

Yes. The survey and a ranked list of your 24 strengths are free after registering on the VIA Institute's site. A more detailed report is paid, but you do not need it.

Should I choose a career based on my MBTI type?

No. Personality tests can start a useful conversation, but MBTI's reliability is widely questioned. Use real evidence from your strengths, values, energy and small experiments instead.

What if what I want is different from what my parents expect?

Start by writing both down clearly and finding the overlap. Then test your option with small experiments before having a calm, specific conversation.

Learn it on Sefism

• Knowing yourself roadmap: strengths, values, energy, feedback and turning it into choices
• Family expectations and your own path roadmap for the conversation at home
• Building real confidence roadmap for acting on what you learn
• Browse all roadmaps to test a specialisation before you commit

Ask your own question

If you are stuck between two paths and want an outside view, ask me a question with your strengths, values and options, and I will reply in writing.

Stay in touch

• LinkedIn: roadmaps, career advice and honest takes on choosing a path.
• Sefism Discord: talk options through with peers.
• Sefism on YouTube: walkthroughs and talks.

Cover photo by Cathryn Lavery on Unsplash.