High School and Beyond Plan

If you're uncertain about your path after high school, consider exploring these free assessments to gain insights into your personality and potential career directions. While these tools aren't definitive, they can serve as valuable guides in understanding your strengths and preferences. Learn more about the plan in [English opens new tab ] or [Spanish opens new tab]

Rather than focusing solely on "What do you want to do when you grow up?" it may be more effective to consider questions about personality fit, lifestyle goals, and in-demand local careers. This resource section is designed to help you explore your next steps in education or career training, where to pursue them, and how to access support along the way. To make the most of these tools, we recommend proceeding through the steps in order: Motivate, Whatcom & Skagit County Careers, Explore, and Support.

Who am I?

What can I become?

How do I become that?

Motivate: getting to know you

It can be daunting to pinpoint or narrow down an area of study, or find a career pathway that resonates with your skill-set without a lot of experience. If you find yourself in that description it can be useful to engage in some personal reflection tools, such as through these links, as well as talking with advisers and people who know you. We are sharing tools that you may use to develop curiosity and increase your awareness around your abilities and strengths. It’s not recommended that these tools be used as a firm diagnosis of fixed personality traits or career pathways. We view these surveys as interesting guides for exploring facets of your personality and would encourage you to view them with curiosity, as no test, no matter how good could fully capture the entirety of a person. You will also find a link to download your high school and beyond plan (it’s a graduation requirement, so you may as well do it now).

Whatcom/Skagit County Careers

Are you currently looking for a job and curious about what careers are in demand in Whatcom/Skagit County? Do you know which major will lead to your dream job? Here are some helpful resources online and in our community: connecting your strengths and post-secondary education plans to your next steps or long term goals in career attainment. We also feature a brief overview of the key-sector jobs that are anticipated to have the highest growth in the coming years.

Explore: local education and training programs

There are no on-size-fits-all plans for career and educational pathways, so we have included a bit of everything so that you can help find what is right for you. In this section you will find information about apprenticeships, Job Corps, military careers and our five local colleges: Bellingham Technical College, Northwest Indian College, Skagit Valley College, Western Washington University, and Whatcom Community College.

This resource section is proudly funded by the Alcoa Foundation, Superfeet and the Whatcom Community Foundation.

The mural artists on the resources banner are Gretchen Leggitt & Max McNett @92legit/@insta_snacx.